I am shampooing the living room carpet. Not sure how much good it will do.....but I am pulling a lot of dirt out of the carpet. The carpet is OLD....not sure how old, but our neighbors who just moved out (bought a house) had lived in their side of the duplex for 16 or 17 years....and the carpets were down when they moved in...and they were old then. 25, 30 years, maybe older even. This place was built back in 1976....and it would not surprise me if these are the original carpets...especially in the living room and hallway.
I do one section at a time.....8 feet long by 5 foot wide or so. Each section gets sprayed with a solution of HOT HOT water, color safe bleach and Oxi-clean. Sprayed until nice and wet. I allow that to soak for 10 minutes. Then I do a "shampoo" with just plain hot water to pull the bleach/Oci-clean solution up out of the carpet...along with some very nasty amounts of dirt. I make 4 passes over the area before the water tank and collection bin is empty. Then I empty the collection tank, refill the water tank more hot hot water. 4 more passes over the area. Then I do it a third and fourth time. So, basically, I am shampooing the carpet 16 times....and the water that gets sucked up the last time is nearly as nasty as the water from the first tank.
I didn't shampoo the carpet at all last year...but 2008....I did it about 6 times through out the year. 2005 another 6 times. I run the vacuum cleaner twice a week, so it's not like we are slobs.....it's just that 30 year old carpet is packed with dirt and yuk!
How I would love to have hard wood floors through the entire house....maybe some nice thick Italian terra cotta tile in the kitchen.....but the rest I could go with hard wood. So much easier to clean and keep clean.
OBIO
I do one section at a time.....8 feet long by 5 foot wide or so. Each section gets sprayed with a solution of HOT HOT water, color safe bleach and Oxi-clean. Sprayed until nice and wet. I allow that to soak for 10 minutes. Then I do a "shampoo" with just plain hot water to pull the bleach/Oci-clean solution up out of the carpet...along with some very nasty amounts of dirt. I make 4 passes over the area before the water tank and collection bin is empty. Then I empty the collection tank, refill the water tank more hot hot water. 4 more passes over the area. Then I do it a third and fourth time. So, basically, I am shampooing the carpet 16 times....and the water that gets sucked up the last time is nearly as nasty as the water from the first tank.
I didn't shampoo the carpet at all last year...but 2008....I did it about 6 times through out the year. 2005 another 6 times. I run the vacuum cleaner twice a week, so it's not like we are slobs.....it's just that 30 year old carpet is packed with dirt and yuk!
How I would love to have hard wood floors through the entire house....maybe some nice thick Italian terra cotta tile in the kitchen.....but the rest I could go with hard wood. So much easier to clean and keep clean.
OBIO