Don’t replace your carpets – Steam clean them instead

There’s not much worse in an otherwise clean and tidy room, than a carpet which has had the family trampling around on it with dirty shoes. Because the carpet covers such a large area, stains and marks are always visible.  Some can be removed with regular spot-cleaning, but this is only effective on small easy-to-remove stains.  When the homeowner reaches the stage when he thinks he needs to replace the carpet with new, the first thing he should think about is hiring a steam cleaner.

Steam cleaners are ideal for deep in-ground stains

Widely available from all hire shops, steam cleaners these days produce excellent results and will make even the most badly-stained carpets look like new.  The machines are simple to use, come with easy-to-follow instructions, as well as the special solution required, and can be hired for very little outlay. If you have just one carpet to clean, you can hire it for a few hours or, to tackle the whole house, for a weekend or longer. Most householders find that, once they have used a steam cleaner on the one dirty carpet they hired it for, and realised how effective it is, they want to do the entire house, so the advice would be to hire for more than one day.

To use a steam cleaner is simplicity itself. With most standard machines, you fill the water tank with water and the cleaning agent supplied, following the instructions to ensure you use the correct amount.  Empty the room of furniture. This may seem a nuisance but will ensure that the whole carpet is cleaned uniformly.  Vacuum the entire carpet thoroughly, then, starting in one corner of the room, push the machine forwards, at the same time releasing the solution using the trigger or switch on the handle. As you pull the machine back toward you, the cleaning action takes place, scrubbing the carpet clean and removing the excess water. Work methodically from side to side of the room; you may need more than one sweep of the machine to clean heavily-stained areas. Once you have completed the whole carpet and are happy with the results, leave it to dry completely before replacing the furniture.

To re-carpet even one room these days can cost hundreds of pounds; that cost, and all the inconvenience that goes with replacing carpets, can be avoided by hiring one of the excellent steam cleaners available; it is well worth considering when faced with that dirty carpet.