They are “certified” – they hired the southern contingent rug training duo to teach them the IICRC course – so they were able to memorize the facts to pass the test… and they bought the products the instructors were selling… but it appears that perhaps they did not come away with “knowing” and understanding proper rug care in terms of heavy equipment on more fragile rugs.

For one thing… they mentioned the rug had already been properly “pit” cleaned by their instructors’ process.

Here’s a shot of one area – that by the way still STINKS:

The "clean" rug from the competitor still stinks.

Using a pit for cleaning is WAY better than surface cleaning with other methods (portable or truck mount) – but when you are dealing with a rug with dyes that are NOT colorfast, and you are NOT knowledgeable about how to clean rugs in that circumstance, then you do it too quickly from fear – and it does not come out being free of the contaminants… which is why this rug still smells.

There is still dog urine in it.

This company does a good volume of rugs, always has, but their target market is more those who are looking for the cheapest rug cleaning, versus the best care for the rugs. There’s a difference.

Some rugs are very inexpensive and the owners are not looking for specialists. They have a coupon. But sometimes people who have valuable rugs may not know it.  So though this company handles a lot of the commodity rugs out there, they do get “real” oriental rugs through their doors, and some of these we see…sometimes after things have gone wrong.  We get their “uh-oh’s.”

And this one was indeed an uh-oh… but not from the pee-pee.

Take a look:

This Turkish rug was brought in with several very large tears in it.  It is a strong woven rug, and we pulled on the torn areas to see if it was weak from dry rot or any other reason – nope, it was strong as can be.

But all of these torn areas…?!?  So my mother asked what happened, and their technician answered…

“It was BADGERED.”

Now, the Rug Badger is a dusting machine that BEATS the heck out of a rug to pound dirt out of it. This makes the wash process more thorough…but you have to be VERY careful with using this equipment on textiles.

The straps turn around and beat and beat, and it can pull up the edge of a rug, and BAM – this happens:

Long tears along the bottom half of the rug.

Now… my mother can repair this. It will take a bit of work, because it is 7 tears all along the bottom, each about a foot in length, but the cuts are clean cuts.

But what makes me mad is that these technicians feel confident about handling woven oriental rugs, because they have an IICRC patch, when they are simply not ready to be handling hand-woven rugs with very limited book-learning knowledge.

They provide inexpensive in-home cleaning of wall-to-wall carpet, but they believe in a few days of a sit-down test that they can now be “oriental rug specialists.” They in fact advertise this service (as do many carpet cleaning companies who specialize in in-home wall-to-wall carpeting but not natural fiber woven rugs).

I don’t fault them for trying to make more money by offering more services to their customers, and actually, there are more rugs to clean than skilled rug cleaners – so it’s a good specialty to get trained in.

It’s just if they are going to do a SPECIALIZED service, they should spend some time to REALLY learn it.

There is a myth in the rug cleaning industry – and in cleaning wall-to-wall carpet – that it is ALL about the equipment you use.

But in reality, it is the PERSON behind the equipment that is more valuable.

I can take a bucket of shampoo, some vinegar, and some hand brushes, and because I understand textiles and their care VERY well… I could out-clean a rug versus a person with a fully mechanized rug plant with hundreds of thousands in equipment.

In fact, this weekend in Las Vegas, I build a very rudimentary wash pit, and cleaned one of the most dangerous rug bleeders out there – a bright red Afghan wool rug – and did an excellent job with tools that were not made for “rugs.” But with the right cleaning solutions to stabilize the dye, the right shampoo, and keeping an eye on the process, several students and I got that rug washed and dried and looking fabulous.

Anyone else, with no understanding of the basics of rug cleaning, would have ruined that rug.

Why could I with low-tech tools be able to out clean a high-tech operation?

Because I understand what I am working on, and I have the attention to detail that would make the difference. A big difference.

It’s like the difference between running your car through the $7 car wash at Chevron, and getting a $200 mobile car detailing where every inch inside and out is sparkling.

This rug disaster is a crime.

It’s what happens when you put good equipment with bad training and give them a good rug to clean.

This is not the Badger’s fault – it is the operator’s fault. He should have been more aware that a soft woven rug like this could not take the beating.

I shouldn’t complain, because it’s a rug repair invoice, so it’s technically “business”… but it just irks me that these classes taught by instructors who have NEVER run a successful rug cleaning operation can mislead their students into thinking that EVERY rug is a piece of cake to clean, and that every piece of equipment can be equally applied to every rug.

There must be adjustments, and these adjustments come from understanding what you are working on, and predicting disasters BEFORE they happen.

For those of you who own Rug Badgers – please pay attention.  If you have a flexible wool rug, and you get too close to the edge, you run this risk here.

I personally do not have a Rug Badger in our plant, not because it is a bad piece of equipment – it can be a good time saver for smaller operations.  I just prefer the control of a Sanitaire vacuum, and it works well for us.  I’m not a big fan of aggressively beating natural fiber woven rugs.

I warn my students that sometimes this heavy equipment can risk structural damage. Besides this “badgering” – I have also seen the Centrifuge spinner unit split the backing foundation of a machine woven rug because it went too fast.

Just be careful and attentive. And ALWAYS check the foundation of the rugs closely for existing dry rot or structural problems BEFORE you beat the heck out of it.

- Lisa

Rugs shouldn't smell like farm animals.

#1) PET PUDDLES

With pet urine, this hits a wool rug, penetrates those face fibers, and gets absorbed deep into the innermost cotton warp and weft foundation threads. Ever run for hours and take off those sweaty cotton socks?  Then you know how much moisture cotton can hold.  A LOT.

So lots of urine absorbed into the middle of your rug, it’s not good news.

Specifically, besides the odor, pet urine can create dye migration or loss that is permanent, as well as yellowing that often is permanent damage as well. (Rug owners are shocked when I explain their $10,000 rug is no longer worth that because of some puppy puddles. They would never pay full price for a bridal gown with a urine stain on it… yet they seem unaware of the devaluation from urine stains on their rugs.) It also, if left unaddressed for months, can lead to dry rot and a nice big hole where the problem is.

Surface cleaning a rug in the home with a portable or truck mount is only cleaning the surface and not the MIDDLE where the problem is. (By the way, cleaning rugs in the home, especially wool rugs, is a huge NO-NO. We will get into that in detail in a future post, right now we are talking odors only.)

Rugs with odors, especially pet odors, need to be WASHED.

Urine contaminated rugs need to be soaked and washed.

Repeat rinsing and squeegeeing to remove the urine.

If you do not use thorough rug washing methods, you will not remove the source of the odor. You will lessen it. Maybe some will use a fragrance to try to cover it up (ever get a whiff of a sweaty man using cologne to hide it? yeah… it’s not much better having a “floral” pet urine smell in your rug…). These are not solutions to the problem.

Moral of the story is – pet problem, wash the rug.  And use a professional for it, otherwise the rug could have more damage done than the puppy did to it.

If you have a pet accident – some tips on what to do right now.

#2) FLOODS

Rugs that get improperly wet can get a musty, moldy odor as mildew sets in. We see this mostly with rugs not prepared properly for storage, and the unit gets damp, or has a flood.  Or, an unskilled cleaner does not verify the rug is 100% dry (by using a moisture probe) and rolls up a rug that feels dry, but isn’t.

Neighboring planters that leak are also a BIG creator of water damage to rugs, because again that innermost foundation is made up of absorbent cotton, and it sucks up that water you spill over sometimes, and it leads to mildew, dye bleeding, and over time dry rot.  I’ve seen a rug literally have a big hole crumble apart from long term water exposure. In fact, here’s one:

Rug got wet in a storage unit, and fell apart.

Rugs improperly exposed to water need to be properly washed to remove the contaminants from those foundation fibers and the face fibers. If you step in a puddle, you don’t wring the sock, wipe it off, dry it, and it’s clean enough to wear again. (At least I hope you don’t do that!) You wash it.

Same with rugs. You need to soak the rug in the proper sanitizing solution, and then thoroughly clean it. This needs to be handled by professional rug cleaners who are experienced at handling flood-affected contents, and bringing them back to pre-loss condition.

#3) BAD LATEX:

With some tufted rugs (these are the rugs that you do NOT see the same design on the back as the front because instead you see a material backing) – there can be some odor issues.

Due to a lack of consistent quality control, some latex used to hold these cheaply made rugs together can end up souring, and not be properly cured. This gives off a VERY bad smell that is best described as a combination of sweaty old socks, rubber, and livestock.

Nice, huh?  Here’s one of these culprits, a tufted rug from India:

Smelly tufted rug from India. RUN!!!

When you are looking at a new tufted rug, and it smells bad when you put your nose to it, then just RUN! It is a “Rug To Run From.”

When you try to clean it to make it smell better, it will get WORSE. The water activates the odor-causing elements more.

I would say about 10-15% of the tufted rugs we see from India have this problem. And I always tell my clients to take the rugs IMMEDIATELY back to the store they bought it and demand a replacement (that doesn’t smell) or their money back. This is a manufacturing flaw.

I have read some comments from retailers that say the odor is nothing to worry about. It’s not “dangerous.”

Do you think someone might say this in order to keep people from getting refunds?

Yeah, I think so too.

Here’s what I know… when something smells really bad, my natural instinct is to move away quickly and make a really ugly face.

kinda like this....

Your body does that to PROTECT you. If my nose tells me to “get away” – then I know it is harming me.

What is really scary is that many of the tufted rugs I see on the market today are made for kids. They have goofy designs on them, and some are cute… but the ones with the odors, I certainly would not want any kids around those.

Cleaning does NOT improve this odor. So watch out.

There you have it – 3 typical smelly rug sources, and a little insight on what can and can’t be done with them.

I think I’ll go out now and get some fresh air…

- Lisa

With an inexpensive tufted rug, this can be a blessing because it is protecting a much more valuable wood floor underneath it.

With an oriental rug (hand woven), this can be a curse because pet urine on a rug is one of the most dangerous spills on a textile – not only for the rug itself, but for the occupants if you allow the accidents to happen over and over.

With woven rugs, the foundation fibers are typically cotton. This means the wool fibers are tied around cotton warps. So pet urine (or vomit or #2) will penetrate the wool fibers – because this accident is hot and acidic – and will become absorbed by the cotton interior fibers. This means the accident you see is only the tip of the sewage iceburg.

This Chinese rug has much more urine absorbed within its foundation fibers.

Ideally, when you notice an accident has happened – you jump to action. These are your spills steps:

1) If there is anything to scoop up – scoop it up. Blot up what you can with a cotton towel.

2) Pour some club soda (or if you have no soda water – a 50/50 mixture of white vinegar and cool water) into a container. Use a sponge, wringing out the excess, and DAMPEN the affected area. Then blot with a cotton towel to pull out the urine or vomit or fecal matter.

3) Blot until you see nothing coming into the towel. Then take a hair dryer on warm (not hot) and dry the fibers. Ideally raise the rug up in this area so air flow is along both sides.

WARNINGS! If you see the rug dyes transfer into the towel, you need to stop getting the rug damp, and blot and dry as quickly as possible. If you get a woven rug too wet you will risk potential mildew and mold problems, so do not get the fibers WET, just damp. If you SCRUB wool instead of blot, you can potentially create fiber distortion/breaking.

The bigger problem with rugs comes when you allow repeated pet accidents on your rugs. The stains will be permanent, the odor strong, and long term exposure can lead to mildew and dry rot of the rug.

Besides of course the fact that this becomes an open pet toilet in your living space – which is not good for the health of you or your family.

Mildew growth on back of Persian rug with repeated pet urine activity - this is the stage before dry rot sets in.

The only way to remove the urine from the inside of these rugs is to have them completely immersed in a plant specializing in washing rugs. The rug needs a thorough bath.

Cleaning rugs like these in the home only surface cleans them. It gets the top fibers cleaner, but does nothing to the inside fiber contamination.

They may spray some disinfectant, or deodorizer on the rug to make it smell “good” – but smelling good does not mean it is CLEAN. This is not any different than spraying fragrance on a diaper, and then expecting it to be used again. It may not smell bad – but you know that would be completely unacceptable and unhealthy.

Proper cleaning presents a catch 22 though, because what is needed is a good thorough soak for an extended period of time. You soak it first in white vinegar (acetic acid) to penetrate the inside of the rug to liquify and help remove the urine salts from the inside of the rug – many times you can see the water literally run gold from pet problems.

However, pet urine stains, if they have sat on the rug for longer than a week, can create a break in the dye bond to the wool and can make even very colorfast rugs “bleed” during the wash.

The catch 22 is that because there are pet urine stains, the rug needs to be soaked completely… but because there are pet urine spills the dyes will likely bleed if the rug is washed, no matter what a professional cleaner does to stabilize dyes during cleaning.

It is important, if you are a rug cleaner, to inform your client of this, and to make sure they are informed of these four things: 1) the rug must be given a wet wash to remove the odor causing contaminants from the inside of the rug; 2) that pet urine stains are permanent; 3) that even though white vinegar will be used to remove the urine salts, and stabilize dyes during the wash process, pet affected areas are likely to bleed despite all of your best efforts; and 4) that pet urine causes damage to rugs that devalues them permanently.

If a rug can be cleaned properly soon after any significant pet accident, you can avert permanent damage. If a rug cleaning cannot happen quickly, then the steps outlined in this post can help you minimize the damage.

It might be a good idea to either toss some cheaper rugs over the top of your valuable ones during the hectic holidays, or roll them up until your company – and happy chaos – passes and your pets get back to being wonderfully well-behaved.

Happy New Year!

- Lisa

It may be a fine silk rug, or an older collectible piece in some disrepair, that they don’t want foot traffic on.

It may be that they have some dogs prone to accidents, or cats marking their territory, so they want to save their textiles from abuse (or save their pocketbooks from having to clean the rugs every other month!).

They may have a home full of wall-to-wall carpeting and so the rugs simply do not lay well on the soft floor. Or they just want to SEE the rugs up on the wall as a piece of art to enjoy looking at.

Whatever the reason, here is what we recommend: using Velcro for hanging rugs. (This is also what is recommended by the Textile Museum, along with their how-to instructions.)

Velcro hand sewn to the rug for mounting on the wall.

What I like about using Velcro is that unlike a sleeve and rod, this allows a rug to hang smoothly and evenly against the wall. The weight is evenly distributed along the strip, and because ALL rugs have some unevenness to them, you can adjust them in spots where needed.

It also makes it very easy to take the rugs down for regular dusting, or if there is a wildfire fast approaching (something I’ve experienced myself in San Diego) you can run through your house and grab your old rugs quickly and jolt for the car.

Fringe can hang loose or be tucked under.

The rug sets smoothly against the wall.

It is important that the Velcro strip is attached BY HAND on a handmade rug. Using a fine, strong needle and upholstery thread, you can slide your stitches in between the warps and wefts of the rug so you are NOT structurally altering the rug in any way.

A sewing machine cannot move inbetween foundation fibers so it powers THROUGH them, and causes damage to the foundation of the rug. If you go hogwild with the sewing machine you can almost perforate the rug, leading to the edge tearing away and off over time.

It is a rule of thumb that machine repairs should NOT be executed on hand woven rugs.

New fringe, sidecord serging, or velcro – all should be done by hand not machine on real rugs (i.e. hand woven rugs).  Commodity area rugs, like tufted rugs, or machine made product, then there is no risk of devaluation with machine repairs because there is not much “value” there to take away.  And, some have such a heavy construction (sometimes using latex and adhesive) that the ONLY way to repair them is by machine (or a glue gun).

Speaking of glue – do NOT attach Velcro to rugs with glue either. Pretty please.

If you want to enjoy looking at your rugs up on the wall – then this is the way to go! Velcro!

- Lisa

You have a little round frame that segments and holds tight a section taut of the cotton mesh (with a design imprinted on it) so you can do a series of stitches. It is almost color-by-numbers, where you use wool to stitch your little piece of art.

If you remember, it did not lay perfectly flat when you were done. Most of the times you made it into a pillow to help smooth this unevenness out.  Or perhaps you framed it.  If it was small this might not have been very noticeable, but as you tackled larger pieces it was trickier to keep the tension even in your stitching. A natural characteristic of a hand made product, the tension is never even.

There are needlepoint rugs on the market. Some quite large. Some done by hand, and some by machine, and they bring with it their own unique characteristics and a few “challenges.” 

Needlepoint rug from China

This is a typical new needlepoint rug. Attractive design. Nice colors.

Do you notice though, that it is a little uneven along the edges? That if you were to lay it out and measure it, that there would be some differences in the width and length?

Let’s take a closer look:

Front corner of the needlepoint rug.

Back corner of the same rug.

See along the edges of this rug, that even before its very first wash, when it is BRAND new, there is some buckling along the edges.  Just like with your little needlepoint pillow way back when.

Can you also see the stitching, and how there needs to be some colors tied off, and some areas doubled-over, so that it does not give the rug a completely smooth back?

Characteristics like these lead to a couple must-knows about needlepoints.

They are rarely perfectly stragith or symmetrical.

They rarely lay flat on a floor.

They are easy to kick up the edges if they are over wall-to-wall carpet.

They are easy to slide on if they are on a hard floor.

If you are cleaning them – there is a danger of some buckling of the cotton or synthetic mesh if you are not careful on its first cleaning. (If you are a professional rug cleaner with a facility, you have two options here: 1) Give the rug a bath and tack it out on a stretching floor during the dry time, or 2) tack the rug onto a floor BEFORE cleaning and clean it with a hand tool as you would tricky upholstery.)

Though I have seen some gorgeous needlepoint rugs in my lifetime, I tend to prefer these and tapestries up on a wall displayed rather than on the floor. And because of the thin structure of these rugs, laying them over wall-to-wall carpeting and placing any furniture on top of them would be a rug DISASTER. You will tear the foundation over time, as rugs are meant to be on hard floors, and with a solid pad underneath them.

When hanging rugs, I prefer having a strip of velcro attached to the back BY HAND … I’ll post some photos of this in my next blog post so you can see what I mean exactly.

If you own some great needlepoint rugs, or tapestries, you could consider putting them on display on your walls. (If you have some great old rugs, but also have some great old dogs in your home, you can save your rugs by mounting them on the walls also – nothing damages rugs more than pet urine.)

Just a few pointers on needlepoints, hope they help!

- Lisa

Take a look at any hand woven rug, and you can grab one single fringe tassel, and it literally runs all the way through the middle of the rug to the opposite side. The knots are wrapped around each of these warp strands.

Each cotton fringe tassel runs the entire length of this rug.

Most rugs have a cotton interior “skeleton” to them – and as we know, cotton is absorbent (it’s why we use it for our towels).

This means when you have a rug with a spill on it – what you can see on the surface is just the tip of the iceburg, especially if the spill is an acidic spill like juice, soda, coffee, tea, or the worst spill – pet urine or vomit.

This is bad... but it is just the tip of the iceburg.

Ideally, when you spill something on a wool rug, you go to blot it up immediately. Wool has a certain level of repellency to liquid so it does give a level of protection that allows you to grab a cotton towel and blot the spill up.

But when a spill is allowed to sit for awhile, and soak into the cotton interior, you have several problems as a result. It can cause color loss, stiffness of the area (and potential mildew and dry rot if left damp too long), odor, and also if the spill is food-related it can end up being a food source for a host of different insects.

With significant spills, of course the rug needs to head to a rug cleaning plant and given a bath in order to remove not just the contaminants in the surface wool fuzzy face fibers, but also to flush out what has been absorbed into the middle of the rug cotton foundation fibers.

Thorough cleaning like this cannot be done in the home, it can only be surfaced cleaned.  The rug needs to be given a bath and by companies who know how to fiber test, dye test, and who have experience handling both woven and tufted rugs.

If you keep trying to clean an area on your rug, and it seems that the problem keeps coming back again and again – now you know why. You are treating the tip of the iceburg, and you need someone to help clean all of the contaminants that are lodged inside the middle of your rug.

- Lisa

It was an energetic, and very knowledgeable group – great questions and dialogue back and forth.

And… one of the attendees brought us a “surprise” – a silk rug:

Here I am explaining the dangers of this silk rug.

This particular rug had a few issues that made it an interesting case study: 1) it had been cleaned several times with a dry-compound cleaning agent which had left a great deal of residue and yellowing in the ivory; 2) it had multiple pet stains and dye bleed of the blue in these areas; and 3) this rug is a BLEEDER – it tested “not colorfast” with our hot water quick test. (View my post on dye migration for the link to the video on how to properly test for colorfast versus fugitive dyes.)

We opted to stabilize the dyes with Bridgepoint’s Dye-Loc, then used a Hydramaster Dri-master hand tool to control the amount of moisture during rinsing the shampoo and extracting , and followed up with using the Dri-Eaz Airpath to speed up the dry time significantly.

Blue is one of the most difficult colors to strip in a rug to try to correct prior damage. Our goal was to clean the rug safely, without causing additional damage to the textile. This gave us the opportunity to show how to handle a rug “bleeder” and also how to handle silk rugs in general – from cleaning to grooming.  Silk rugs tend to create more problems than wool rugs for professional cleaners, so giving them a proper good bath for cleaning often is not an option.

This was not an investment grade rug at all, but it was a good example of a commonly found silk blend rug in homes in this region. And it gave us the opportunity to talk about damage inevitably caused by pets on rugs, and some tricks of the trade to help you have success in cleaning rugs with multiple “danger” signs.

Off to Atlanta next… we’ve sold out the house (again!) – should be another fantastic group.

Thanks to Interlink for being our host, and to all of the professionals who took their day to come learn with us.

- Lisa

My attitude toward pets is pretty much the same I have with kids … I love them when they are OTHER people’s.

More than 60% of homes have pets.  More and more homes these days have hard surfaces, and of course rugs. And – rugs and pets simply don’t mix.

Here’s a shame right here … and I’m sure it’s a sweet dog (one that would not be living long in my home):

A very expensive Pet Toilet.

There seems to be this belief in some pet owners that urine and fecal matter consistently spread on rugs – and in their home on the livingroom carpeting - because it’s from a pet means… it’s okay!  Ignore the fact that when you visit their home your eyes water and your nose crinkles up in disgust – it’s okay, it’s just Fluffy’s accident.

(I’m sure Fluffy knew exactly what she was doing … it’s only an accident when you accidentally step in it.)

Here’s the problem with long term urine damage – besides the fact that it’s creating an open air toilet in your home’s living quarters – it’s bad for the rug. It leads to: 1) dye migration/bleeding; 2) dye loss/fading; and 3) dry rot if left unattended too long.

The urine, because it’s warm and acidic, penetrates the rug’s own acid-based dyes, causing many times a permanent discoloration. (TIP: if you love your pets more than your rugs, buy a lot of YELLOW rugs)

But it also penetrates the rug face fibers (most of the time wool) and sinks into the inner foundation threads of the rug (most of the time absorbent cotton) which then leads to mildew and dry rot.  If you pull up a rug (like the one pictured in this blog) and you see large pet stains on the backside, and when you knock it with your knuckles it sounds like hollow wood – then you’ve got dry rot.  During the wash you may risk the whole area deteriorating and creating a large hole.

A rug that someone paid thousands of dollars for… suddenly worth nothing.  But I know… he’s so cuuuuuute!

Please – if you have collectible rugs, and pets you love, please store the rugs or give them to someone who can enjoy them without allowing it to become a toilet.  It’s heartbreaking to see a rug that is meant to last multiple lifetimes ruined after a year of misuse and abuse.

I know there are trained pets out there, but I have heard the shock of “but she never does that INSIDE the house!” so many times to know that dogs will be dogs… and they can go wherever they want outside, so why not inside too? I guess it’s part of the collateral damage of those who try to force animals to be people, and then wonder why their health is not as healthy as it could be. 

At the very least … recommend to your pet-owning and rug-owning clients to have their homes cleaned several times a year, for their own health, the health of their pets & family, and the health of the rug ( to take care of damage before it becomes too severe to mitigate).

I do love dogs … I just love them outside. (They seem to like it better there too… we’re the crazy ones who choose to live in a closed up house in the middle of a gated community!)

- Lisa