Cleaning Wool Carpets in Your Palm Harbor, Florida Home

This guide is written to help you maintain your wall to wall wool carpet. It is not meant for wool Oriental rugs. These rugs may have loose dye that will bleed or crock. I recommend that you have these rugs taken to a professional carpet cleaner or rug plant that specializes in wool rugs. Oriental rugs should never be cleaned at your home since the dies may bleed. If you do decide to spot clean your Oriental rug, make sure you test every color separately for color fastness. You may have 10 colors in your rug and only one bleeds. You test for color fastness by taking a white cotton towel that has been dipped with a small amount of wool safe cleaner, and then clamping the towel on each color separately.

If you have recently purchased a wool carpet for your Palm Harbor, Florida home, please go to your pantry which holds all your carpet cleaning spotters and throw them away. Never use a soap or carpet cleaning chemical on wool carpet unless it has a PH between 4.5 and 8.5. To be completely safe you could stay below a PH of 7 (neutral and will not cause the dyes to bleed). Be especially careful of using bleach products near your wool carpet. Bleach will actually dissolve wool carpet and leave you with a giant hole. Now that we have discussed what not to do, we can establish how to better maintain your wool carpet.

Vacuum as often as you can in your Palm Harbor, Florida home. This is akin to washing your hair. How many days a week do you skip washing your hair? Only use low PH cleaners. Using over the counter products on wool carpets is like using Tide on your hair! High PH cleaners will break down the cuticle or hard scaly surface that holds the fiber together. Breaking down the cuticle would leave us with a fuzzy mess. When using a wool safe product - blot. Scrubbing will also cause the fiber to fuzz out. I also recommend that you blot up the wool safe spotter with an acidic rinse ( 1 part white vinegar 3 part water). This will remove any residue and leave the wool fiber slightly acidic which will help maintain the wools softness. You also want to speed dry your wool carpet. If the carpet takes too long to dry it can turn yellow or brown. Using too high a PH cleaner on your wool carpet can also turn the fibers brown or yellow. We call this PH browning.

In conclusion vacuum as often as you can. Spot clean with wool safe products. Blot rinse with an acidic rinse and never use bleach (causes wool to dissolve) or products with a high PH. Have your carpets cleaned at least once a year by a professional carpet cleaner who uses wool safe products. If you follow the above advice, your wool carpets in your Palm Harbor, Florida home will reward you with many years of use and look great while doing so!

Customer Review:
"Ross, the owner of Green Tech Carpet and Tile Cleaning, beautifully cleaned our Oriental rugs. He picked them up at our convenience and promptly returned them within a few days. Our Orientals are bright and clean. We are very happy our friend recommended Ross.".
Roberta H., Palm Harbor, FL 34683
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Green Tech Carpet and Tile Cleaning
3600 Westminister Court
Holiday, FL 34691 | 727-916-2314

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Republished with permission: Keith Wroblewski is an IICRC Master Carpet Cleaner who has been in the cleaning industry for 20 years.