subject: Do Not Use Chemicals With Bleach To Clean Carpet [print this page] According to Michael Voorhees, the CEO of Capital Carpet Cleaning & Dye, putting harmful chemicals on the floor in a misguided effort to clean up a spill that has already occurred is the biggest mistake that he sees homeowners making when it comes to carpeting.
The most damaging thing that homeowners do to their carpets is clean them using household products that contain bleach. As a carpet cleaning professional in Detroit, I have seen it all when it comes to the products and chemicals people put on their carpets. Oftentimes, the chemicals people use on their carpets are actually doing more harm than good, especially when those chemicals contain powerful bleaching agents.
Harm Caused by Bleach
People dont realize how many household cleaners contain bleach. Unfortunately, using a chemical that contains bleach to clean a nylon carpetor any other type of carpeting that is susceptible to color losswill do more than just remove the spill or stain in question. The bleach in the product will also remove the color from the carpet, leaving the homeowner with a large white spot that oftentimes looks worse than the original soiled spot that the chemical was supposed to get rid of.
At Capital Carpet Cleaning & Dye, we handle both carpet cleaning and dyeing for clients in Detroit. A lot of times, we get calls from frantic homeowners who arent sure what their next steps should be once they notice bleached spots in their carpet. Most of the time, the bleach spots that homeowners have caused are small enough to be fixed by a professional carpet dye company like my own. Every once in a while, though, I see a spot that is so large that the damage is just too extensive to repair.
Every now and then, a customer will have a gallon jug of bleach that they are bringing into the home to do laundry, and it will have spilled onto the carpet in a straight form. Even if you get to it immediately, you will have some damage. In the worst case scenario, a homeowner may accidentally spill bleach in a straight form directly onto the carpet without realizing it, which means that the bleach could be left sitting on the carpet for an extended period of time. This is especially dangerous because leaving non-diluted bleach on the carpet will actually destroy the fiber itself.
What I Recommend
To avoid the situation, I recommend that homeowners try to dilute the bleach spill or spot on as quickly as possible once they realize what has occurred. Wetting the area or trying to rinse it out with a towel is typically the first step that people will take, and it is the right thing to do. Anything you do to help minimize the amount of bleach that is in the carpet, if you do have an accident like that, is going to lessen the amount of fiber damage that is done. Unfortunately, not everyone gets to their bleach spots quite as quickly as I would like them to.
We go out on dye jobs quite frequently where the customer has spilled a large amount of bleach on the carpet and just left it there, and the carpet fiber has just disintegrated. In cases like that, there is nothing that a carpet cleaning company in Detroit can do for a client. Even dyeing is not a solution in these cases, because the disintegrated fiber cannot take on any new dye.
In addition, I recommend that homeowners use a very small amount of liquid dish detergent, rather than trying to clean out a soil spot with a product that could contain bleach. It is not the type you use in your electric dishwasher, because that does have bleach in it. Mixing a small amount of that soap in a bowl of warm water, dipping a terrycloth towel into the solution, and then using that towel to scrub away at the spot is usually the best way to get rid of stains without creating any new problems with unexpected bleaching agents. That is not really the ideal solution, but it will remove soil. For bigger jobs, its a good idea to call a carpet cleaner for a professional cleaning.
