What is polypropylene carpet?
Polypropylene carpet or olefin is one of the five types of the carpet currently sold. Other types are: wool, nylon, acrylic and polyester. It is both durable and water- and stain- resistant and is good for commercial usage.
As poly it is less resilient than nylon, it is best used in low-pile carpets. Otherwise, it can mat or crush. It also has wide usage in rugs.
We have to keep in mind that if oil stain stays not treated for extended period of time (more then a week), it may lead to discoloration of the poly carpets or rugs.
Why is so hard to clean poly carpets?
- Material is easily crushed– not suitable for high footfall areas.
- Oil-based stains are hard to remove from the carpets.
- Polypropylene carpets due to their nature are sensitive to heat and friction.
4 steps of how to clean the poly carpets?
This is very important to identify the poly carpet as it will require different approach for cleaning than wool or nylon carpets. This may result of varying the prices for carpet cleaning depending of the difficulty to clean the carpet to up to 20%.
There is very important to keep the correct steps to prevent the browning or ‘wickback’ of the carpet:
- Remove the dry dust and dirt from the carpet
Try vacuuming at least 2 times. It helps to remove as much insoluble soil as possible before applying your cleaning solution. Most soil (79 %) is insoluble, meaning it will not return to a liquid state with water or dry solvents. Therefore, you better extract it before you apply water solvents.
- Pre-spray the carpet
If you apply the polybreak solutions – blend of solvents which help to liquefy the solvable soil by suspending it and help cleaning the polypropylene carpet better. You may need to leave it for 15 min before you go to next step.
- Remove the suspended dirt from the carpet
Once the soil has been suspended with previous step it must be physically removed. The use of an acid or
Considering the possibility of crashing the carpet fibers, it is advisable to reduce machine water pressure to between 100 and 150psi. Recommended for best results is the three-stroke wand method. First forward, to remove as much of the pre-spray and suspended soils as possible before applying more moisture. Secondly backwards, to rinse and extract suspended soils from fibers. Lastly, repeat stroke forward, as an additional drying step.
- Provide good ventilation for faster drying of the carpet
Where there has been a history of browning or wickback a dry pass over the cleaned area with a cotton bonnet is advisable. Use your groom to set the nap of the carpet. Ventilate the room as best as possible by opening the windows and turning fans if possible. This will help considerably to speed drying times down to 3-4 hours.