Everywhere you go in New York City you are most likely to encounter carpeting every time you go inside someone’s home or most business premises. That’s a lot of carpet and, maybe, some of them are green in color but, for sure, they will all get dirty sometime. It is not only the green ones that will need carpet cleaning in NYC.
How Are Carpets Cleaned
Not only in New York but just about everywhere that carpets are in use; there are several ways to keep them clean. In the old days, a carpet would be regularly taken out of doors and hung over a line so it could be cleaned of all its dust by strenuous use of a carpet beater. This certainly removed a lot of dust, even if it did require a lot of human effort to carry out a thorough beating. It was also somewhat impractical for anyone living in an apartment block in any city since they lacked an open space in which to do the job.
Mechanical devices were invented to overcome this problem. For example, in 1860 one Daniel Hess of Iowa invented a carpet sweeper that used a rotating brush to “beat” the carpet in combination with a bellows to generate suction and gather up the dust. Devices such as this led to the development of today’s vacuum cleaners which form the backbone of all carpet cleaning.
However, vacuuming alone is not 100% efficient and is virtually useless for removing stains from a carpet. Hot water, steam, detergents, solvents and other chemicals will often be needed if a carpet of any type or color is to be efficiently fully cleaned back to its original condition. However, carpets are made from fibers that may be either natural (e.g. wool, cotton, etc) or synthetic (such as “Nylon”). Natural fibers can shrink when exposed to water and all fibers could be attacked if exposed to the wrong chemicals. Care has to be taken over which chemicals and method of application are to be applied to a carpet. With the correct choice, the carpet emerges looking like new – make the wrong choice and the carpet could be damaged beyond repair. For major cleaning, it is strongly recommended that a professional carpet cleaner be contacted.
Environmental Considerations
This is where the concept of green carpet cleaning in NYC enters the picture. It is unfortunate that many of the earlier developed carpet cleaning chemicals have since been shown to have a negative effect on the environment. This could be escaping molecules rising up and damaging the ozone layer or, residues being flushed away and getting into the planet’s water system. This is on top of health hazards to the users of some chemicals. Responsible carpet cleaners ensure that the only use environmentally sound (green) chemicals and methods.
