Choosing the most effective pre-conditioners for each carpet cleaning situation can make a tremendous difference in customer satisfaction and your profit per job.

Pre-conditioning agents (traffic lane cleaners, presprays, etc.) are the single most important products that you use. With so many types to choose from, the decision on which one or ones are right for your particular use can easily lead to confusion.

To eliminate information overload, in this first article of a series of three, I will be discussing preconditioning agents exclusively for carpet, as opposed to upholstery or decorator rugs, which have far different requirements.

This series of articles will be broken down into three categories: Category #1 Fibers, Category #2 Soils, and, finally Category #3 The products you can choose from and why you should do so. I will publish one each week over the next three weeks.

Category #1  CARPET FIBERS

First you must consider the fiber type of the carpet to be cleaned, when making your choice of pre-conditioners. They are . . .

1. Nylon
2. Olefin
3. Wool

(Special Note: Polyester represents about 10% of the market at this time. New generation fibers similar to polyester, such as PPT and 3GT will be continuing to change this figure.  For purposes of this discussion, polyester will be evaluated with nylon, although it has some of olefins positive water based stain resistant characteristics, as well as some of its negative oil bonding characteristics.)

#1 Nylon

Nylon remains the most popular carpet fiber for residential use. Its dominance in commercial carpet has been deeply eroded by olefin, but you will still encounter a great deal of nylon carpet in your commercial work as well. Of the three major fiber categories, nylon is the easiest to clean, and will cause you the least amount of "post cleaning situations". Oily soils do not bind to nylon nearly as readily as they do to olefin, nor does nylon tend to allow wicking as much as olefin does. Nylon is more tolerant of a wide range of spot and stain removal products (including red dye removers and color safe bleaches) than is wool.

#2 Olefin

Cleaners first encountered olefin fibers in the late 70's as they were first used in upholstery construction. Hercules Corporation introduced Herculon™ for upholstery fiber use, and cleaners loved it! Upholstery fabrics made from olefin fibers cleaned easily, dried quickly, and there was no risk of bleeding, shrinkage, or browning. When olefin fibers became more popular for carpet fibers in the mid 80's, the cleaning industry initially applauded what seemed to be the "friendliest fiber" a cleaner could clean!

How wrong we were! Olefin fibers create more cleaning challenges for our industry than all the other fibers put together! 

Problems with olefin include, but are not limited to:

• Wicking:  The low absorbency of olefin (a seeming advantage for drying and spotting issues) allows soils and spills that are deep in the carpet's nap to migrate to the surface after spotting and/or cleaning. Cleaners have more frustrating "return visits" to homes and commercial settings for this reason than any other. There are dozens of special cleaning agents, tools, and procedures that have been developed simply because of this issue alone.
   
• Oil Bonding: Olefin has a greater affinity for oil and oily soils than any other fiber. This oil bonding makes cleaning of commercial olefin carpet particularly challenging in industrial environments.  Additionally, many black top sealers track off onto olefin carpet and create a yellow/brown discoloration that is often impossible to completely remove.

#3 Wool

Wool represents a very small percentage of the carpet that you will clean. However, since wool has many very unique characteristics in regard to cleaning products and processes, and because wool is several times more expensive than is olefin or nylon, wool deserves special attention here.

Unlike nylon and olefin, which are synthetic materials, wool is a natural produced protein fiber. Carpet made from wool responds well to vacuuming, and when cleaned regularly with the proper pH products (4.5-8.5), wool will clean well and stay beautiful for many years. However, wool fibers are sensitive to extreme pH ranges, reducing agents, and bleaches.  Therefore, many spotting and stain removal agents that we use safely on synthetic fibers cannot be used on wool fibers.

Next weeks article will cover soil types and how they influence your choice of preconditioning products.