We recently did a walk-through for an office management company who had just received a contract for a new corporate office building and was looking for someone to help with their carpet cleaning. As we toured the lobbies and office suites, both myself and the property office manager noticed the condition of the carpet. It looked like a nylon flat carpet texture and it had been installed in the early 90’s. We both could tell it had seen better days.
The first question I was asked was “are we able to fix this carpet with cleaning, or will it need to be replaced?”. If you work in the property management profession, we understand the pressure there is to fix first and replace last. In this blog post, we’ll share how we assessed the carpet for this property manager, which recommendations we provided, and how we were ultimately able to save the carpet through cleaning instead of replacing it.
Carpet assessment
When we conduct walkthroughs for carpet cleaning clients, there’s a few key areas we’re looking for to determine the level of damage, and whether we can clean it, or if it will need to be replaced.
- Carpet threading
Some commercial carpets made from olefin and polyester woven fiber and lower ounce weight can begin to thread bear over time. These are long strands of carpet that peel up and get worse the more you vacuum them, roll a chair over the area or walk over it.
Most modern offices will use higher grade carpet tiles that are more durable and easier to replace if an area gets damaged, but most older offices will still have the lower quality carpet. If the carpet is thread bearing, we can still clean it, but there’s a risk of it becoming worse. Ultimately, replacing the carpet will be a smarter investment.
- Ware spots
These are areas where the carpet grinds down into itself and is mostly common in industrial or heavy commercial spaces where heavy equipment or larger volumes of traffic are passing through each day.
If the ware spot is matted, there’s a chance we can revive it by using a carpet scrubber. However, if the fibers have been ground away over time, the best option will be to have it replaced.
- Mold outbreak
Thankfully mold outbreaks aren’t as common as ware and tare issues. You might see mold growing due to unattended liquid spills (a water or coffee spill in the break room or lobby) or a major flooding (toilet overflow or roof leaking.)
If mold is an issue, we wouldn’t be able to clean that in a normal maintenance carpet cleaning, but we can certainly upgrade the cleaning which allows us to use additional products and time to treat and remove the mold.
Recommendations
During our walk through with the property manager, the only carpet damage we saw was in the main reception area, where of course the highest traffic occurred. Coming into the front doors, you could see a lot of noticeable wear and a little thread bearing.
The rest of the office spaces, conference rooms and hallways were mostly soiled with dirt and occasional liquid stains, which would be easy to remove.
My recommendations for the damaged carpet was to let us clean those areas, and since they were so close to the front entrance, have them lay down door mats to help cover up the ware.
While normally this isn’t a good long term solution, in their situation where money was tight, this proved to be the perfect quick fix.
From there, we decided on carpet cleaning the rest of the areas, and these were my recommendations for them moving forward:
- Give a face lift through steam extraction
The property managers main goal was to remove the spots and soil build up to make it more inviting for both tenants and their customers. Chances are whether you’re a realtor, property manager or building landlord, you’ll have the same expectations as well.
Not only were we able to remove the stains throughout the building, but we were able to revive the entire carpet and bring back some of its original color and texture. - Maintain quality be scheduling regular cleanings
Carpet is going to be one of the top 5 most expensive investments you make in your commercial property. Some customers we’ve worked with admitted to replacing their carpets every 2-3 years. The underlying issue was a lack of consistent carpet cleaning, and they paid dearly for it.If you’re in a low-key office building that’s used mostly for your employees or tenants, we recommend scheduling a carpet cleaning at least twice per year.
However, if you’re in a higher traffic industrial or retail space where both employees and customers are creating a lot of daily foot traffic, you’ll really want to consider either a spot carpet cleaning once per week, or a full detailed carpet cleaning each month.
If places like Walmart and Target are treating their floors multiple times per week, the minimum you’ll want to treat your floors is once per week, but no less than once per month.
- Schedule sections at a time to reduce costs
For this client, we decided to schedule a cleaning for the whole building at one time.
However in many cases due to budgeting costs, it makes more sense to schedule sections of the building at different times.
For one three story office building, we scheduled a carpet cleaning for the first floor once a month, the second floor the next month, and the third floor the last month. We would then repeat this cycle, and it helped our client avoid a cash flow problem.This is also more common for retail customers too when it comes to carpet and tile bundling jobs. If your building has both carpet and tile, it might make more sense to schedule carpet cleaning the first week of the month, and tile waxing the third week of the month.
Cleaning process
If you’re needing a reliable carpet cleaning service to consult you on your next commercial carpet cleaning, or would like more information on our services, please let us know! We specialize in many carpet cleaning areas, including:
- Spot treatment and removal
Whether it’s an organic or synthetic stain, we offer effective and safe cleaning products to remove spots. - Steam disinfectant technology
We use green cleaning technology for carpet cleaning. While that includes a large variety of different products, the primary way we remove dirt and disinfect areas is through steam cleaning.
This is the process of releasing hot steam into your carpet which both kills germs and breaks up old soil and stains. - Extraction
After we’ve released the steam, we use a secondary extraction process, which includes powerful air suction to remove the water, dirt and stains from the carpet.
Contact us today!
Our friendly customer care team is ready to take your questions and will listen to any concerns you have. We offer no-pressure quotes, and stand behind our work. If you’re not satisfied with our service, we’ll pay for the next cleaning service you hire and if you’re ever dissatisfied with our performance you’ll get that day free.
