Pottery Barn rugs to run from…

December 17, 2011 — Rug Chick
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I like Pottery Barn. They have some cool household items and furnishings, some of which are good quality at a good price.

Their rug department however, is a different story… and in the rug cleaning world the term “POTTERY BARN RUG” is becoming synonymous with “PROBLEM RUGS.”

First of all, Pottery Barn does carry some VERY nice woven rugs coming from Afghanistan in particular. They have some very decorative wool hand woven rugs in their Arzu line. I like that they are funding a craft that is allowing women in Afghanistan to make a living for themselves and helps support education in the region. The ARZU project is a production line to absolutely support.

As you recall, you determine if a rug is “woven” by whether  you can see the design on the back of the rug exactly as you see it on the front, like this:

Woven wool rug.

So the WOVEN rugs that Pottery Barn is selling are very good rugs. But that is just a fraction of what they sell today.

The problems are coming from their “other” rugs, in particular their TUFTED rugs and other specialty pieces using “natural” fibers.

Tufted rugs have a material on the back, like this:

Tufted rugs have canvas material on the back.

Whoever is running their TUFTED rug department (including their Pottery Barn Kids rugs), and their “earth friendly” rug department are choosing some of the most difficult, if not impossible, rugs to live with and maintain.

As a professional cleaner (or a consumer shopping for rugs), these are the ones to keep an eye out for to avoid… or be very careful with:

RUG TO RUN FROM => TUFTED RUGS FROM INDIA

We wash hundreds of rugs a week, so we see “flawed” product relatively quickly because we wash a whole host of natural and synthetic woven and tufted rugs.

Without a doubt, there is something seriously wrong with the tufted rugs coming out of India today, and in particular the lines being sold at Pottery Barn. These are the problems we are seeing on a consistent basis from TUFTED rugs from India:

1) “Burnt Rubber” Odor from the Latex

I’ve discussed this problem on this blog before, the strong pungent odor that comes from these India tufted rugs. The latex is either mixed with filler that has contaminants that off-gas over time, or the latex itself has soured before application. Both lead to a smell that is similar to a mix between burnt rubber or asphalt and stinky dirty socks.

It is AWFUL.  And it is NOT correctible to my knowledge.

And if you don’t want to just take my word for it, here is just one post where SCORES of people post their smelly horror stories with these problem India tufted rugs from Pottery Barn.

To Pottery Barn’s credit, as you can see in the thread over several years of posts, you see that there is an “easy” exchange process for those who want to replace their rugs for ones that do not smell (i.e. the rugs WITHOUT latex used in the construction).

What I do not understand is why with such a high volume of documented complaints on-line, why they would insist on carrying so many TUFTED rugs in their Kids selections. When you have kids crawling and playing on rugs, why would you let them breathe in those *bad* odors?

I keep seeing statements that the odors are not “harmful” – but isn’t the fact that something smells bad enough to get away from it mean your body’s warning system is telling you it’s *bad*?

The problem seems to get worse over time, and becomes more noticeable when rolled up for a time, or closed up in a room with no air circulation. It also becomes more apparent when it gets wet – which means if you ever spill on it, or need to have it cleaned, there will be an issue.

So, in the worst case situations, these rugs are not cleanable. (Why would you own a rug you cannot clean?)

Here’s an example of a backing of one of these types of problem tufted rugs:

Tufted rug. The material is covering up latex, and it smells.

Here’s the labels on the back:

Labels. "Natural rubber latex" tends to be the smelly culprit.

2) Delamination of the Latex

In the India Tufted rugs, we are also seeing today a lot of “filler” being used with the latex mixture that simply cannot hold up to age, being walked on, or moisture. The latex delaminates and crumbles and cracks. One of the reasons they cover it up with that material is because without it you would have a HORRIBLE mess on your floor.

Here’s an India Tufted rug that is delaminating:

Latex is crumbling.

Here’s another one:

Backing has fallen off and latex is crumbling away.

The problem with these inferior grade India Tufted rugs, besides the mess, is that when this latex crumbles away the rug loses both its shape and the fibers themselves. This means that if the owner wants to continue using this rug, the professional rug cleaners needs to wash the piece very carefully, remove as much *bad* latex and filler as possible from the back side, and then apply a new latex coating (without the filler powder) and a new material backing.

This type of repair is NOT inexpensive. So people who choose to buy a TUFTED rug because it’s a bit cheap than a WOVEN rug, will end up having to pay for a wash and a repair – so it ends up costing them more to care for that rug.

Tufted rugs also only last years, whereas woven rugs last for decades, if not a century or more (if woven well and properly cared for). So as with all things, if you pay a cheaper price for it… there is probably a reason why…

…and you will find out soon enough.

3) Discoloration and “Uglying” of the Backing Material

The canvas or linen or jute backing material is covering up ugly latex. When the rugs are spilled on, or when they are washed, this backing gets water marks, latex discoloration, and browning as a result. This is a common sight on the back of TUFTED rugs:

India Tufted rug. Backing gets discolored.

Sometimes the discolorations are some “yellowing” from the cotton/linen/jute used, and can be improved with some additional cleaning of the back:

Tufted rug from China - light yellowing.

But on the whole, if you own a TUFTED rug, and particularly the ones from India with the added filler in it, you will be getting a rug with a blotchy and marked backing after it is cleaned. The material can be replaced, but I find that most people when given a substantial repair estimate do not really care what the back of the rug looks like as long as it is clean and the front looks good. They understand that washing a rug like this, that cotton backing acts as a “filter” as latex, filler, soil, and water all flows through it.

4) Buckling of the Top Side and Shedding of Fibers

With TUFTED rugs, how “square” it is or isn’t is based on that latex and the material backing. So when it begins to delaminate, the shape of the rug gets lost. The top side get waves in it, Sometimes a few:

Waves on top side.

Sometimes A LOT:

Bad latex leads to lots of buckling in the rug.

Coinciding with the deterioration of the latex, as mentioned before, the tufts of wool can pull loose when there is no strong latex holding it in place. You might find full strands pulling away from the rug, or if the rug is made of inferior grade wool (sometimes in India this can come from being sheared from dead sheep), then it will break off and shed.

You will notice when you are on the Pottery Barn website they mention that “some” shedding is expected from wool rugs. This is true. Wool is spun with many short strands together, and then the rug is shaved after being crafted to have an even pile on the front, so yes, there will be some shedding.

However, better quality production will WASH a rug after it is woven to remove many of these loose short clippings. So “some” shedding should be very little. If you have a rug that is consistently shedding, and when you run your fingers across the face it breaks away with pressure or light pulling, then that is a PROBLEM rug. That is a sign of bad wool. which you often will find in TUFTED rugs that are at cheaper prices.

Wool is strong. It is literally the best fiber for use in rugs.

If you ever have a wool rug that feels brittle, or breaks easily, that is a bad sign. Either it was bad quality wool to begin with, or it has been so heavily chemically processed, that it has become weak. You want to run from rugs like these.

RUG TO RUN FROM => CHUNKY WOOL SHAG RUGS

I’m not sure why these rugs were created.  Our nickname for these rugs are noodle rugs, because they look like big noodles:

Noodle shag rug.

They are big chunks of wool strung into a material backing. Sometimes they have latex on the backing, and sometimes they are just loosely strung in, which makes them state that the rug is “woven” when I would not of course ever call these “hand woven” or “hand knotted” rugs.

Here’s the label:

Label says keep in a "well-ventilated area" ... which means it STINKS too!

If you see these rugs at first you might look kind of cool, especially in their variety of colors…

…but if you have ever owned a shaggy dog, then you will understand why these rugs are super tough to maintain and care for. The problem is, getting soil, lint, and general “fuzziness”  out of these fibers is as tough to do as combing out those spurs and knots are from your shaggy dog’s fur.

These rugs often require a great deal of extra hand work after cleaning to literally comb through row by row to try to “pull up” anything that was tangled up too much in that felted type of wool to wash away.

This means cleaning these rugs, even though they are not super expensive to buy, will often cost you more to do than if you had gotten that higher price woven rug.

This is one of those rugs that when you first see them, you think they are cool, and then you realize that it was a completely impractical choice for a floor covering and that you should have run from it.

RUG TO RUN FROM => “EARTH-FRIENDLY” PLANT FIBER RUGS

First of all, the MOST earth friendly rug you can own is a woven wool rug. Wool is a completely sustainable and renewable resource that grows back year after year.

But several stores are crafting rugs they deem as “earth friendly” from plant fibers and attempting to imply that these are also good rug choices. These rugs are made from SISAL, JUTE, and RAYON.

The problem with sisal and jute, besides the fact that they feel like wicker furniture instead of a soft rug fiber like wool, is that they both release oil when wet, yellow, and get brittle with age.

What is interesting is that on their website they state that sisal is “stain-resistant” when actually stains are quite difficult to remove from sisal. When a spill gets on it, and oils from the plant fibers release, it makes darker areas that can be tough to even out. And if the owner of the sisal rug has pets, and the spill is pet urine, the rug cannot be soaked to remove the contaminants because the cloth border binding may shrink, or the rubber/latex backing may  have structural problems.

To be safe with sisal, you need to use it in areas where you don’t feel there will ever be any spills, and no pets. And you just need to know that if you have a spill disaster on the rug, that you may have to replace the rug.

With jute, when it gets wet it likes to yellow and brown badly. For some strange reason, jute is being used as a foundation fiber on many of today’s lesser quality rugs. (I guess I answered the “strange reason” – it’s used because it’s cheap! LOL.)

Here’s a cotton rug with jute foundation warps that are creating yellowing in this rug:

Jute on the inside of this rug is creating yellowing in the cotton rug.

When you wash these rugs, a cotton shampoo with an acid rinse can help lessen the browning of both the jute and the cotton, but over time this will become a more noticeable problem (especially if spills occur on the rug).

The problems with rayon/viscose rugs, which is used as artificial silk, are many that I’ve covered in depth on this blog. It bleeds and fades, it breaks, and it yellows.

These rugs all look great when they are brand new, and then they proceed on getting “less pretty” with time.  I know I keep hammering how woven rugs are the better choice, but that’s because after DECADES a good quality woven rug will still look like it did when new…

… but these plant fiber rugs begin to look worse in just a year. And if you spill on them, they look worse even faster.

Here is a Pottery Barn rug that has the TRIFECTA of tricky components: RAYON face fibers, JUTE foundation, and LATEX backing:

Rayon and jute rug.When this rug was new, it looked more like “silk” and was whiter. The fibers of rayon and jute, both of which yellow with moisture and age, are giving this rug a yellower look over time.

The label indicated the “fragile” strength of this rug in that it warns against many things: spills, sunlight, heavy furniture, and spot removers:

Warnings, warnings, warnings...

The owner did use some household spot removers on this rug, which due to the rayon did in fact make it lose what color it had in the fibers to begin with:

Sensible spotting led to bad results.

The fact is, if this rug had been wool this result would not have happened. It’s because the fibers are weak and sensitive that there was a problem.

(By the way – for safe spotting tips for spills on wool rugs, here are some safe rug care tips.)

You can see with this rug also, we have the LATEX factor, where a rug with any type of furniture on it is creating creasing problems in the backing construction itself.

Backing is not strong on plant fiber rugs.

Now, the person who bought this rug did so because she liked the look of it, and she believed that it was a quality piece because of the price she paid. She was not aware that the cloth binding material used would begin to buckle, that the backing latex would lose its flat shape, that the jute and rayon would begin to yellow, and that she would never be able to spill anything on the rug without it being a disaster to the way the rug looked.

With plant fibers it is sometimes possible to bleach out some problems, but this is extra work above and beyond regular cleaning, so it makes it more money to maintain this type of rug.

And that is what this all comes down to…

…EDUCATION.

The fact is, when consumers realize the differences between woven rugs and tufted rugs, or wool rugs and plant fiber rugs, and they are given the pros and cons of each, then they feel they can make educated buying decisions.

It’s when they buy a rug they like, and discover problems they were unaware of – strong odor, weak fibers, bad latex – that is when they feel they were sold bad goods. That’s when consumer feel ripped off…

…even if it was not a very expensive rug to begin with.

So now you know some of the common problem rugs being sold at Pottery Barn, and can choose whether to buy them or not – and if you are a cleaner, whether you want to clean them (or CAN clean them…) or not.

My hope is that there are enough complaints coming in about these specific rugs, that they are changing the rugs they carry. I don’t think any company likes to be knows for selling “rugs to run from.” And I know us rug cleaners don’t enjoy cleaning them. =)

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Just a heads-up that we are currently accepting applications for the 2012 Textile Pro Program, which is an advanced rug and fine fabric care training program by Jim Pemberton and myself. We are currently choosing the companies that we will be working with throughout 2012. If you think you might have what it takes to be a Textile Pro, then send an email with the subject RUG TRAINING to textilepros@gmail.com.  Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

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Rugs with material on the back.

November 5, 2011 — Rug Chick
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Most professional rug cleaners should know this, but in case you don’t…

… wool rugs with material on the back like this one, are called TUFTED rugs:

Tufted rug from China. Loose cotton material backing.

Some have a loosely attached material like the above one from China, and some have material that is more firmly in place like this one from India:

Tufted wool rug from India.

I call tufted rugs “fake rugs” because these are commodity rugs that are quickly constructed by punching tufts through a canvas backing, and covered in a great deal of latex adhesive to hold it together, and then they shear off the top loops so that it gives the illusion of a pile woven rug from the top side, when it’s not woven at all.

Woven rugs take months, sometimes years to weave. They are pieces of art.

Tufted rugs are a way to get the “look” of a real rug (to the untrained eye), at a fraction of the construction time and cost. Most are “commodity” rugs. These rugs take days to craft, as opposed to months, and they will last you several years of use as opposed to woven oriental rugs that often outlive several generations of owners.

So, as with anything where corners are being cut to create a faster, cheaper version, there are consequences. And especially consequences – and limitations – if you are cleaning these tufted rugs.

Regardless of the type of material on the back of tufted rugs, they are all covering up this ugly mess of latex on the back holding the tufts of wool in place:

Latex backing of a tufted rug.

It is much prettier when covered up with material, don’t you think? =)

We mentioned the “plus” of tufted rugs, which is primarily that they are crafted faster and as a result are much cheaper to buy versus woven rugs.

(There are some high-price exceptions like Edward Fields hand crafted tufted rugs, which are much higher quality than what I’m showing here, but that is 1% of the tufted rug market, so I am talking about what you are seeing coming out of China, India, U.S., and other countries today.)

Let’s talk about some of the “consequences” of choosing a commodity tufted wool rug instead of a woven wool rug, so you are not surprised when any of these challenges come up.

BUCKLING

If you take a tufted rug and place it on a soft surface (like putting it on top of wall-to-wall carpeting) and then set heavy furniture over it, you will be in for a surprise.

Tufted rug buckling from furniture.

Though a good amount of latex is used on the back of these rugs, it’s still susceptible to cracking when too much weight is focused on specific points. If there is not a durable pad under the rug to support the furniture, then these lumps in a rug like this may not be correctible.

Back of Chinese tufted rug.

These rugs, to keep their shape, need to be on top of a hard surface when used. These face fibers are not twisted around warps like woven rugs are, but rather are looped in the shape of a “U” – so the only thing holding them in place is a thin dollop of glue. Take a look at these fibers falling away from this torn corner of a tufted rug:

Tufts falling away from a damaged corner.

There really is not much there to hold those “U” fibers in place. In fact, even with brand new tufted rugs, if you grab one fiber and tug, you will be able to pull it out.

Because of this latex construction, you want to take care on what you place on top of it, even if the rug is brand new, because it can’t take too much weight and bending.

DELAMINATION

Over time latex will degrade and deteriorate. In the past this meant a bit of crumbling and cracking, but in some of today’s tufted rugs, delamination is a MUCH messier situation:

Backing deterioration from water exposure and inferior quality latex.

Some of the lesser quality tufted rugs, in particular some coming from India today (and also some US hooked rugs), are using latex mixed with “filler” to help extend the batch of the adhesive and also to provide a firmer application to give the rug some shape.

This filler is sometimes marble dust, and sometimes concrete. But it is always a MESS when it gets wet.

This is by far the biggest danger facing rug cleaners today in handling tufted rugs, is the fact that some of these rugs cannot be soaked without having to deal with a big ugly mess. The rug not only cracks, crumbles, and powders all across the back and often “poofing” up through the front also…

…but it also leads to the rug losing its shape, because it was that heavy latex and filler that was making the rug stiff and square in the first place:

Tufted rug lost its shape after the latex deteriorated from a flood.

If you need to wash the rug (because it’s quite dirty), pull off the material on a corner and see if you might be unleashing a disaster with getting the rug wet.

BACKING DISCOLORATION

What do you think happens when you have an ugly, messy latex application, and then place a nice clean cotton material backing over the top?

At first, it looks great. Then, over time it begins to yellow (wouldn’t you if you were laying up against glue 24/7?)…

…and then when you wash it, and the glue residue, soil, dyes, and other “unmentionables” go through that cotton, like a filter – what do you think that does to the cotton? Well, I’ll show you:

Water marks, dye marks, browning marks on the back of a clean tufted rug.

One of the unfortunate consequences of owning a tufted rug is that when it gets washed, that backing gets marks all over it.

If the tufted rug is not heavily soiled, then a cleaner may opt to surface clean it as best as he can, and not mark up the backing, but in most cases rugs that come in for cleaning need a good wash. And soaking these rugs, which gets them the cleanest, will change the look of the backing material.

Water marks and browning on backing material.

Some of these marks can be improved with additional cleaning on the back side with an upholstery tool, to try to remove some of the browning on the cotton material. It adds additional cleaning time, and cost for this, but many people often do not care what the back side of their rug looks like, as long as the top side is nice and clean.

If the additional cleaning time does not improve the backing enough for the owner, it is also an option to pay to replace the material backing with a new piece (sometimes that is easier than trying to carefully clean the back and strip out those discolorations).

STENCIL INK BLEED

Another problem that is sometimes uncovered in the lesser quality hand-tufted rugs is the use of stenciling ink (usually pink or blue) to mark where tufts are places, and this ink can wick out and bleed when wet.

Back of tufted rug - stencil ink bled into backing material.

If you are not careful when cleaning rugs with this type of manufacturing flaw, then washing the rug can wick that ink to the top side of the rug’s fibers, and create large ink stains, which can be difficult to remove.

It’s important to look for “clues” on the back side that indicate stenciling marks were used. You can also grin the front fibers and look for anything noticeable from the front side.

Stenciling can be a messy problem. If you see the ink in your inspection process, and it is heavy, and bleeds in your dye test, then you may opt to only surface clean the rug.

It’s not the most thorough cleaning process to surface clean it, but it will be the only safe option for you in that case, especially if you are not equipped with the right type of equipment to quickly remove the water from the tufted rug and dry it quickly.

DECONTAMINATION CHALLENGES

Decontaminating tufted rugs to remove pet urine odor, or to decontaminate from flood exposure, can be tough.

Repeated pet urine contamination on a tufted rug can be next to impossible to remove the stink. Think about it… urine penetrating heavy glue. Do you really think a quick cleaning can get the contaminants out of that adhesive?

Tufted rug - flood contaminated.

Whether the tufted rug was a pet toilet, or was involved in a flood, it needs to be fully soaked to wash and decontaminate. But, with the earlier problems mentioned, the longer you soak these rugs the more problems you have.

It’s a catch 22.

You need to soak it to remove the odor causing contaminants, but soaking it can contribute to delamination, yellowing, water marks and discoloration on the backing material, and possible stencil ink bleeding.

What’s a rug cleaner to do?!?

Communicate all of the dangers, and the options, and have the rug owner tell you what they want done. Just be sure if you go ahead with the wash that you have a release of liability in case the “worst case scenarios” unfold during the soaking. The cleaner should not be punished for limitations created by poor rug construction.

ODOR THAT IS NOT COMING OUT

On some tufted rugs, the odor will not be coming out no matter how long you soak the rug.

Tufted rug bad odor.

With a certain percentage of tufted rugs from India (including many of the problem India rugs being sold through Pottery Barn, at least in the San Diego area), the rugs have an awful odor present in brand new product.

The odor is a smell that is like a combination of burnt rubber and dirty sweaty socks. It’s rancid, and it gets WORSE with cleaning.

It appears to be situations where the latex has gone bad and soured, and they still use it anyway. This is a manufacturing flaw, and the rug should be returned for a problem-free one instead.

HOW TO HANDLE TUFTED RUGS:

If you own a tufted rug, and you’ve bought it from a reputable rug merchant, you will likely have no issues taking it to be professionally cleaned. Do not clean the rug yourself. These rugs take considerably longer to dry, and you open up yourself to a whole host of problems (and mess) if you try a D-I-Y clean.

These rugs also should never be cleaned in the home setting. Though there may be no warning signs on the rug itself, you open yourself up to potential damage to the floor underneath (yellowing, dye transfer, latex powder residue).

If you are a professional rug cleaner, these are the things you need to take into consideration, because today’s tufted rugs hold many more challenges than those from even a few years ago.

Your pre-wash inspection process needs to include front and back close evaluation, and grinning open the front tufts to look for stencil ink dangers. Give the back of the rug a whack and see if any powder POOFS out to the front, especially in areas where you see there have been spills on the rug. This will show you delamination dangers if you are unable to pull away the backing material to evaluate the strength of the latex.

Tufted hooked rug. Latex back.

It is always best to communicate expectations BEFORE the wash. Share how the rug is constructed, and why it has material covering up the back, and that this will get blotchy after cleaning.

It is possible, when rugs delaminate, to re-latex the back and put a new material backing on the rug. This takes time and adds a significant repair cost to the cleaning. But if the rug has gotten heavily soiled, or contaminated by pets or a flood, it may be necessary to fully wash and then fully repair the rug in this way.

And the work may end up approaching what they paid to purchase their rug to begin with, so you might give them the opportunity to buy another rug instead. Especially if there is a chance that the odor in the rug won’t be coming out of that glue. Unfortunately some of these rugs end up being “disposable rugs” when they get contaminated badly with pet urine, because getting the odor out can be tough.

When corners get cut to produce a product that is cheaper for the buyer – someone ALWAYS ends up paying.

I just wanted to point out some of the dangers lurking in some of these tufted rugs so professional cleaners don’t end up being the ones who end up paying. =)

If you are thorough with your pre-inspection process, you will see the warning signs to keep you on safer ground.

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Those of you anywhere near Fort Myers, Florida – I’m teaching an afternoon class at Excel Supply on Wednesday, November 9th. I rarely make it down south so come learn some valuable rug basics, and bring all the questions you have about this business and how to be the best at it. Sign up by calling 1-800-909-3590. See you there!

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Over-Dyed Rugs. (The BIG disaster awaiting careless cleaners.)

September 5, 2011 — Rug Chick
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There are a multitude of reasons why a rug’s dyes may run during cleaning. In fact, I wrote a post on several of those reasons behind how a rug’s dyes can bleed on you.

Blue dye migration on Wilton wool rug.

The careless cleaner approaches a rug as if they are all the same. “Wool is wool, what’s the big deal?”

Most don’t bother to do a dye test. Why? Honestly, I’m not sure why. It should be done on every rug, and it only takes a few minutes. This can be done with a high pH solution, or my personal preference of testing with hot water in a small area on the front AND the back.

Other careless cleaners do in fact do the dye test, but then they think if they use a dye stabilizing or dye locking solution that the rug becomes bulletproof to bleeding on them. That’s just not true, especially if the rug has colors that crock on a towel during a dry or damp towel.

The red dye crocks on to a damp towel.

When color crocks on to a cotton towel when it’s dry, or when it’s just damp, this is a serious problem. Especially if the color is a dark one.

In the case above, this is a tribal woven rug from Afghanistan. In some tribal areas, especially war-torn ones like in this weaving region, water is not always readily accessible to provide the thorough washing and scouring of the wool to remove the excess dyes and other impurities from the wool. So you have a rug that has some excess dye in the wool, that is going to move when it gets wet with a wash, so you better be seriously skilled to be able to handle that when it happens.

But sometimes the crocking is not from excess dye, but from color that has been added AFTER the rug was woven.

We call these rugs over-dyed rugs, and you will see these types of rugs come in two types:

1) TEA WASHED RUGS

A large number of rugs today, especially coming out of India, Pakistan, and China, are being given a tea wash treatment. This is a brown dye that is sometimes called henna wash, or also called having your rug “antiqued,” because it gives the rug a more muted look which makes it look older.

India tea washed rug

The tones vary from browns to golds to yellows. They make the rug darker, and also make the white cotton fringes beige or brown.

The better quality rugs are properly soaked in the dye to allow for even application, or are given multiple layers of application to ensure a good saturation and bonding of the tea wash dye to the rug fibers.

The lesser quality applications are sprayed on, usually on just one side, and it is often these lesser quality treatments that will crock on a dye test. This means that no matter how gentle you are with your cleaning process that over-dye is coming off. It’s like a spray-on fake tan… good until it’s time to take a shower.

Grin open the fibers and you see the bad tea wash job.

When you grin open the fibers you can see if there has been an over-dye treatment with tea wash. You can also see it on the fringe tassels by untwisting them to see if there is white under the beige tone.

Cleaning the fringe removes the tea wash dye on some.

And while you are closely inspecting the rug, look also for other pre-existing damage, because often a tea wash application is given to rugs to try to cover up damage such as pre-existing rug dye bleed or other stains.

It’s important to share with your client that the rug has been over-dyed with this tea wash treatment BEFORE you clean it, because likely some of it will come out no matter how gentle you are with your process. Especially if it crocks on you, that over-dye is coming off even if you choose a dry compound cleaning method.

But, at least it CAN be cleaned. You just need to share that this if it tests as a poorer quality application, that the rug has essentially been given a “spray-on tan” that needs to come off if they want it to be properly washed.

A much more perilous over-dye treatment isn’t dye at all… it’s ink.

2) INKED RUGS

Rug dealers for years have tried to hide small areas of damage on antique rugs with using India ink, or painting of worn areas to make them less noticeable.

Today this practice has unfortunately expanded to create some truly dangerous rugs.

New Hamadan rug bought on-line, and covered in INK.

The rug above is an example of one of the dangers of buying a rug on-line on one of these mass market retailers. When you buy rugs locally, at least you get the opportunity to “try it before you buy it” and take it out on approval. But more importantly you can do things like take a handkerchief and do a little dye test in the store just to make sure you are not buying inferior goods.

For a rug cleaner, this rug would be a nightmare. Every single color of this rug has been colored over with ink, which is why it has that blotchy, dark look to it. And when you grin the fibers open you can see that there is dark ink on the tips of the fibers.

Tips of the fibers are purple ink, base of the fibers are blue.

Taking a completely DRY towel to the face of this rug picked up every single color.

Dry towel picks up red from the rug easily.

Getting this rug even damp would make the inks pool together and make a mess not only of the rug, but of your wash floor.

So when you do your dye test on a rug, and it crocks, you want to investigate closely to see if it’s possibly ink applied to the fibers, because a dye stabilizing or locking solution is not going to do a thing for ink.

This rug, and others like it, is flawed product… and is not cleanable. And in the case of the rug being shown, the ink from the rug moved on to the underneath wall-to-wall carpeting which led to a much more expensive problem for the owner to handle.

Today more than ever, with the push to cut corners on production costs and get rugs to market faster and cheaper, there are more traps for rug cleaners today than ever before.

But if you are careful, and very thorough with your fiber and dye tests, and your pre-inspection checklists, then you can avoid the biggest rug disasters out there.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

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Rug Topics for CFI Members.

July 31, 2011 — Rug Chick
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I just had the privilege of speaking to a group of CFI members up in the Inland Empire. (That is the Carpet & Fabricare Institute, which is a professional trade association that covers cleaning and restoration professionals throughout California, Nevada, and Arizona.)

The topic was… I know you’re shocked… RUGS! =)

After several hours of non-stop teaching on my end, I promised the group I’d make a post to link to a number of posts here that covers some of the topics we talked about more in depth. So here’s the list!

CLICK HERE => Rug Shop Set-ups

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Pets

CLICK HERE => Rugs That Bleed

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Plants

CLICK HERE => Tea Wash Rugs

CLICK HERE => Why Some Rugs Buckle

CLICK HERE => Why Rugs Aren’t Cleaned In The Home

CLICK HERE => Rugs and Floods

CLICK HERE => Silk Rugs

CLICK HERE => Fake Silk (Viscose) Rugs

I’ve been a member of CFI for several decades, and I’ve met some of my closest industry friends – and best mentors – through this group. I served on their board for 11 years, a few of those as president, which was a highlight for me… even with all the “battles” we had in those good ol’ days – LOL!

It has been exciting to see the energy, creativity, and passion behind those on the board right now… and I’m looking forward to seeing what they have in store for the group and all of us members.

Thank you CFI – and thanks to Jason and Terrance for inviting me to come meet their members. I enjoyed it!

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner and do not have a trade association that you belong to, it’s worth taking a look at CFI. Their number is 1-800-CARPET-9 if you want to call to see about upcoming meetings and educational courses.

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Pet puddles on rugs. (Uh oh, urine trouble!)

July 11, 2011 — Rug Chick
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You’re in trouble indeed…

I know he chewed the rug... but he's so CUTE!

It’s all fun and games until the valuable oriental rug in the den gets a pet urine stain that’s not coming out.

Pet urine is at the top of the “uh oh” chart of rug disasters. The stains are usually permanent. But if the field has a busy design that might not be a big issue.

The odor though… well, that IS a lingering issue, and the longer that urine sits in those rug fibers, the worse of an issue it’s going to become to the rug and the floor.

The top topic this month from cleaners who wrote me “HELP ME!” emails was how to get pet urine odor out of rugs, so that’s my topic for this post.*

(*My disclaimer here for professional cleaners is, these are my opinions from our company’s experience and the experience of students I’ve trained. Please do NOT take my word as gospel here, they are simply educated recommendations because every rug and situation is different. My advice is not meant to be a substitute for your getting actual training in this craft, and seeking out additional real world experience to enhance your own skills. For goodness sakes TEST everything in small attempts first. Every rug must always be fiber tested, dye colorfast tested, and thoroughly pre-inspected before cleaning. Always. Okay… let’s go into some recommendations on pet puddles.)

If you happen to be a rug owner, and a pet owner, here is a post with some tips on what to do and why you need to jump on pet accidents right away => Pet Accidents Happen. Now What?

Otherwise, the rest of you professional cleaners, let’s talk about odor removal.

Pet Urine Odor Removal From Rugs

Remove The Source (Woven Rugs)

First things first… you need to remove the source of the odor, so the urine needs to come out of the middle of that rug.

Woven rugs are often constructed with wool knots wrapped around cotton warps and wefts (the foundation fibers).

Rug loom. Hand tying wool knots around cotton warps.

Cotton, as you know, is absorbent. This is why we use cotton towels to wipe things up – they pick up moisture.

So when warm pet urine hits a rug, it will be suspended for a short time (because wool has a natural repellency to moisture) and then it will penetrate the wool fibers and be pulled into those cotton fibers.

This is why when you see a urine stain on a rug, you know you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There is a larger amount of urine inside that rug than you are seeing.

This is a much BIGGER accident than what you see...

With rugs, removing the odor source means you are going to have to wash it out. You cannot surface clean an oriental rug with a truck mount or portable and remove the odor causing elements from the inside foundation fibers. It just does not work that way. And trying to cover up your incomplete work with a heavy fragrance deodorizer is going to just make it worse. It’s like spraying Lysol in a Port-a-Potty… floral smelling sewage ain’t going to cut it on this one.

(By the way, woven oriental rugs should never be surface cleaned in the home with carpet cleaning equipment, for a variety of reasons I shared in a recent post on “Why Rugs Aren’t Cleaned In The Home.” If you are going to be a real rug cleaner, you are going to have to clean rugs properly in your facility.)

The most thorough way to get to the odor-causing contaminants out of woven rugs is to WASH the rugs.

Quick FYI: “woven” rugs are rugs where you can see the design on the back the same as on the front, like this:

Woven rug, you see the design on the back same as the front. This one is woven by hand.

Here’s another woven rug, but by machine:

Woven rug. Machine made.

Removing the source means washing it out. This is what full-service rug cleaning facilities do.

They may wash in a wash pit, or on a larger wash floor, but they WASH the rugs clean.

Rug wash pit.

Wash floor - high volume water.

If you are not experienced at washing rugs, you need to be particularly careful when pet urine is involved, because this creates a lot of dangers for rug cleaners.

Dangers From Pet Urine To Woven Rugs

It’s not just the odor that is a problem for rug cleaners, there are 3 other big dangers to be wary of:

1) STAINS

Pet urine stains are often permanent, especially if they have been there for awhile. Sometimes chemical stain removers can be used to try to strip out the yellow urea staining, but this will create damage to the fibers as a result (all bleaching and stripping agents cause fiber damage), so you need to be especially careful in any stain removal attempts or your client’s pet stain may become worse… and become YOUR stain instead of theirs.

Pet urine stain on a Tabriz rug. Haphazard stain removal could easily make this rug worse.

Often the best path to take is to state that the stain is likely permanent, and with that being the case, do they still want the rug washed and the urine removed so that the odor is gone.

If the stained area improves during the wash, then that’s great. It’s just not wise to guarantee anything besides that you will try your very best, especially if the rug’s owner already tried a bunch of over-the-counter “miracle” stain removers before they brought it to you. They likely have “set” the stain worse in their panic.

If you are truly skilled at wool stain removal, then you can of course guarantee whatever you want to. I’ve just found over the years that when we’ve said “no problem” – we’ve jinxed the job… and sometimes when we’ve said it won’t get better at all, and tried to turn the job away, it’s actually washed up great.

You just never know, so it’s best to keep expectations low in any case involving pet urine, vomit, or feces.

2) DYE BLEED and COLOR LOSS

Even very colorfast dyes on a wool or silk rug can bleed with longterm exposure to pet urine. I’ve seen rugs that would never “bleed” even if involved in a flood for days (like a 1920′s American Sarouk rug with iron-clad dyes) bleed when exposed to repeated pet urine stains.

Over time pet urine stains shift from acidic to alkaline. The problem with alkalinity is that it can cause serious damage to acid rug dyes, and those areas can release and bleed the color when wet despite using your rug dye stabilizing solutions.

Red dye bleed on a silk rug from pet urine.

This alkalinity problem is the same one that creates dye bleeding problems for on-location carpet cleaners who use their carpet cleaning machines and solutions (which tend to be alkaline because they are meant for synthetic wall-to-wall carpeting) on natural fiber rugs. This mix often creates disasters.

This Chinese rug has strong dyes, but the combination of pet urine AND an improper use of high-pH traffic lane cleaner by a carpet cleaner made the red and green dyes bleed badly.

The danger of old pet urine stains is that even if you test the rug’s dyes, and it tests colorfast, it is very likely those urine affected areas will still bleed on you. In fact, you should expect them to, and inform your client that though you are taking every necessary precaution, that is dye damage that is pre-existing from their pet.

You also may have situations where the wash takes the dye that has “dissolved” away from the fibers due to the long term urine exposure, and you end up with situations of rug dye loss, where the color just washes away and disappears, and only the yellow urea remains.

Light gray color is gone where the urine stain is.

Blue has bled on this Wilton rug. Washing will created faded away areas as a result.

3) DRY ROT

The worst danger from long-term, repeated exposure to pet urine is that the cotton foundation fibers start to mildew, and begin to become rotten from dry rot. Dry rot is not correctible. In worst case scenarios, usually seen from plants on top of rugs where moisture slowly rots the rug away, this creates large holes as a result. This rug had a pot sitting along the end, and the owner never knew she was harming her rug:

Potted plant on end of rug eventually rots a hole in it due to moisture and spills over time.

When pets repeatedly puddle in the same area of a rug over and over again, this type of dry rot risk is likely to happen. So it is important to inspect the areas of the rug where you see pet stains, and inspect the back of the rug to see if you see any signs of dry rot, such as dark mildew activity in the cotton fibers and a stiffness to the affected area.

Urine stain visible on front of this Azeri rug. We need to look at the back.

Top arrow shows dark mildew growth in foundation fibers that is the sign of dry rot, and lower arrow shows how repeated urine has bled a brown dye that is colorfast.

With dry rot you risk creating a hole during cleaning if you are not careful, especially if you use an extractor. Proceed at your own risk. When a pet stain becomes a big hole, that will become “your” problem to the owner… even though it was pre-existing damage from the pet.

Remove The Source (Tufted Rugs)

Tufted rugs present a real challenge with odor removal. Unlike woven rugs, with tufted rugs you do not see the design on the back side – you either see a material backing or a latex mesh backing:

Tufted rugs today often have material backing to cover up the ugly latex holding it together.

 

 

 

I refer to tufted rugs as “fake rugs” because they are a quick way to create the look of a woven rug without the quality or care. And I am not a fan of the fact that these rugs are often held together with heavy latex adhesive that can sometimes smell like an acrid rubber tire, and is next to impossible to remove that odor and any other odors that may be added to it.

The dangers for woven rugs from long term pet urine exposure apply to tufted rugs also, but you have some additional concerns as well. One is delamination which will likely get worse while you try to thoroughly wash the pet urine out of the rug. The rug may fall apart on you, or at the least need an additional application of latex to try to hold it back in shape again.

Latex is crumbling away from a combination of age, repeated pet urine stains, and repeated washings needed to remove the odor-causing contaminants.

You need to make sure the rug is sturdy enough to handle a wash. You also need to test the tuft strength, because if the latex is deteriorating, those fibers may pull right out if you try to scrub or extract water from the rug.

Recommended Cleaning Steps For Woven & Tufted Rugs Contaminated By Pet Urine:

1) Pre-Inspect and Protect

The more time you spend thoroughly pre-inspecting a rug BEFORE the wash, the less time you will spend trying to correct mistakes made by failing to fiber test, dye test, or truly look at BOTH sides of a rug for any warning signs.

One big rookie mistake is doing a quick dye test, seeing the dyes are colorfast, and being shocked when the pet urine stained areas all bleed on you DESPITE your use of dye stabilizing solutions.

Pet urine on a rug means it will have problems, so if it your responsibility to explain this to the owner BEFORE the wash, that the rug is damaged and that the thorough washing required to remove the odor causing contaminants increases risks of dye migration in these urine affected areas. You need to be released from liability on this point because the damage to the dyes (and to the value of the rug) is pre-existing.

If the rug’s owner does not want to release you from this liability, then you need to turn the job away.

2) Pre-Treat Visible Pet Urine Stains

On rugs that have a potential to “bleed” on you (obviously natural color rugs with urine stains are not a dye bleed risk, so any colorful rug IS a risk, even with colorfast dyes) – this is a strategy I recommend to those who attend my courses in order to minimize the dye migration impact on the rug.

Soaking a rug in an acidic bath helps remove the urine salts in the middle of the rug that are causing the odor.

Many professional rug plants will soak the rug in vinegar (acetic acid 6% diluted down to 3%) to flush out the urine in a wash pit or floor. For those who don’t like the odor of vinegar Sapphire Scientific’s new Dye Stabilizer & Rinse will do the same, without that odor.

But, especially with a wash pit, you risk dye migration throughout the entire rug by just having it soak in an acid bath for an extended period of time no matter what you use.

A better strategy is to flush out the urine in the specific stained area without creating risk for the rest of the rug. You can do this by pouring your chosen pre-treat solution on the stain directly, wet it down for a few minutes, and then use the Water Claw Spot Flasher to extract out the urine from the innermost fibers.

Water Claw Flash Spotter

On woven rugs, this is best done from the back side of the rug, and it helps to have a pad or other type of cushioned surface to help create the “compression” to help pull out more moisture.

With tufted rugs you will not be able to get through that latex, so you need to do it from the front side.

You want to pre-treat the area more than once if you still see yellow water (urine) coming out from the stained area.

Instead of releasing the urine – and the dye – from these areas into a wash pit, where it’s affecting the entire rug, you can control the removal of a lot of the “source” spot by spot. Dyes will bleed in these areas, but the Water Claw will remove most of it along with the urine. This means less migration risk to you during the wash process, and a better chance of success of getting the rug odor-free (if it is woven… tufted rug latex is VERY difficult to remove urine odor from because it gets inside that adhesive).

3) Wash & Deodorize/Enzyme If Needed

After pre-treating the urine stained areas to remove as much of the odor-causing source as you can, then you proceed to your normal wash process.

(I am assuming here that you know how to dye test and know how to adjust your cleaning times and strategies based on whether they dyes test as colorfast or fugitive, and what products you need to use to properly and safely clean natural fiber or synthetic rugs. If you do NOT know this, then get more education before you attempt to wash rugs… otherwise you will end up buying them when you ruin them.)

In a pet urine affected rug, even if the dyes test as colorfast, I personally would wash it like I would a “bleeder” – quick and using a Dye Stabilizer solution and a cleaning solution in the neutral pH range, or acidic.

Based on your experience and judgment, choose your wash process to proceed with, and if there remains an odor on the wash floor, you can choose to use your preferred deodorizer or enzyme treatment at this point.

Often I find that the pre-treat process with our regular wash process is all that is required to remove the odor. But on heavily contaminated rugs, or tufted rugs that have the latex holding onto the urine smell, we will use a Deodorizer.

Deodorizers that I’ve had personal experience – and success – with are Sapphire Scientific’s Area Rug Deodorizer, OdorX’s Un-Doz-It, Masterblend’s Anti-Allergen Deodorizer (I prefer this to Masterblend’s Skunk Odor Remover because it has no fragrance and the SOR has a heavy fragrance – but some rug cleaners like to use SOR), and Bridgepoint’s Hydrocide.

I am sure there are other good products out there, including some enzyme products, these are just the ones I’ve had some experience with.

Be sure to thoroughly rinse the rug. I like to use an acid rinse to remove residue as some of these products get a bit foamy on you.

4) Dry Thoroughly & Additional Work If Needed

Remove the water from the rug and drying it thoroughly. If you want ideas on different tools and equipment to use for this step, and others from the wash process, you can reference my post on Rug Shop Set-up’s. All the current options are up there, including some D-I-Y set-ups.

Many long time rug operations have a COOL old school roller wringer like mine here:

Rug through roller wringer. Safely and quickly removes the excess water and flattens out the rug for quick drying.

This is the quickest way to get most of the water out of the rug, plus there is the added advantage of it “ironing” out the rug so that it is very flat and even during the final drying process. (By the way, they do not build these wringers any more here in the US – so most of us have bought them second-hand. I have a friend here in CA who is looking to sell his large roller wringer, so if you are interested, send me an email at rugchick@gmail.com and I’ll connect you to him. It’s a screaming deal… and a great piece of machinery. We LOVE our wringer.)

Back to pets…

If despite your pre-treat, wash, and deodorizing attempts, you still have a noticeable urine odor to the rug, your last chance of success short of washing the rug completely all over again, is using the Odorox machine - which we’ve used a few times on rugs with chronic pet urine contamination (multiple dogs over multiple years).

Odorox treatment to remove odor. Rug is under the tarp.

Though we have NOT had any success removing the awful rubber odor from bad latex tufted rugs… we have had success removing urine odor from rugs where repeated washings could not get the job completely done. I’ve been really happy with this machine so far.

Those are my tips for you to help you have more success in tackling the biggest challenge we have in the rug cleaning field – handling pet damaged rugs.

If you happen to have your clients asking you for some recommendations on rugs, and they happen to have pets, here are a few tips I share with our pet-owning clients. Feel free to use them as well.

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Tips for Rug Owners who have accident-prone Pets…

=> You need to own rugs that can be WASHED, so look for woven rugs instead of tufted ones. If price is an issue, look for machine woven rugs, or perhaps synthetic rugs. Synthetic fibers tend to be less expensive than natural fibers (they also are not as nice, because the best fiber for rugs is wool… but if your pets will be puddling often, you might as well have them do it on an inexpensive machine made synthetic rug).

=> Pick a rug with a BUSY design so yellow stains will not be obvious. Rug Cleaners can wash the odor out of woven rugs, but stains will likely be permanent.

=> Use a pad under the rug even if it does not slide or buckle on you, because this will help create a barrier between your rug and your floor. If pet urine penetrates the rug and gets into your flooring, you will have a much larger odor removal problem on your hands, especially if you have specialty hardwood floors. It may not be possible to remove the odor short of replacing the floor, so a pad can help protect you from the worst case scenario… or at least delay the inevitable if your puppies aren’t trained quickly.

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I hope you found some value in this post on pet puddles. If you have any questions on this post, please post them in the COMMENTS section down below. I don’t have all the answers… but I do my best to share what I know.

Happy rug cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. Next week the announcement for my upcoming training program for professional cleaners is being released. To receive that information, just make sure you are on my Rug Chick list. You do that by going to the top right corner of this blog, and putting your name and email into the Rug Disasters Report request box. This not only gets you my report on the most common rug disasters by cleaners, but officially puts you on “my list.” (Don’t worry, I’m not one of those “rug people” that writes you every other day with the next huge “big easy money” deal… I hate that. I just write once or twice a month with some additional *free* rug information, and I will announce my training program to these loyal readers first.)

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Why some rugs buckle.

July 1, 2011 — Rug Chick
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I receive a lot of “help me” calls from rug cleaners and rug owners on rugs that are buckling. They want to know what to do.

And my answer is usually… it depends.

That’s because there are a number of reasons why a rug is buckling on someone. Some of these reasons are correctable. Others are not.

Here is the list of different causes of buckling:

Weaving Characteristics

No hand woven rug is perfectly symmetrical. There will always be a little bit of variance in the width and length, and some fluctuation in the weaving tension throughout the rug itself.

A city rug (woven in rug factories in weaving cities) will of course have more quality control than rugs woven by tribal weavers. I personally prefer the tribal rugs because they have more character and personality.

Weaver using a horizontal loom.

That said, in some tribal weaving centers, especially in areas that are war-torn like Afghanistan, the consistency can vary beyond being an interesting weaving characteristic to being seen as a weaving flaw in some extreme cases:

Tension along end of this Afghan rug causes buckling.

Buckling from weaving tension changes, or width or length variations, are not unique to Afghanistan. You see examples of this in all weaving countries. And in most cases they are seen as unique characteristics of a rug’s personality. Like a few great laugh lines on a smiling face, or dimples, they are what make the rug have character.

And as with those lines or dimples, you can’t just take a steam iron and make those go away. There is no “Rug Botox” to use.

Sometimes a weaver – especially if the loom is a nomadic one – will not know the rug has a “buckling” problem until after it is completed and cut off the loom. In some cases a rug manufacturer will apply a sizing to the rug (similar to starch) to try to make the rug stiffer than it would naturally be.

The problem with sizing is that it will wash out, and it may be difficult to have it re-applied. So if you are buying a rug, or you are getting ready to clean a rug, you want to look closely at the shape of the rug and if you see any evidence of problems on the BACK side.

Creases can be clearly seen on the back of this Afghan rug. These are causing buckling on the front.

Sometimes a rug can be stretched to help it lay flatter, but this is a strenuous process that may damage the rug.

Stretching an Afghan rug to help it lay flatter.

In these cases you need to think about weaving variations as no different than one of your feet being a bit larger than the other. Think of what you would need to do to try to make them perfectly equal, and then apply that though to a rug, on the work that would be needed to make a side that may be an inch longer than the opposite one even.

It is often impossible to do. So your expectations need to be realistic, and if the variations are too much, then pass on purchasing the rug.

Material Backings

With embroidery, needlepoint, and hooked rugs, the buckling is often due to the construction especially if that construction includes a heavy material backing.

Embroidery needlepoint rug with a heavy cotton backing.

This type of weaving, though often very elegant, can also often not be perfectly symmetrical. And when you have two independent pieces – the hand crafted needlework and the material backing – that are loosely stitch to one another, this can create some buckling and waves.

Crewel stitch (aka chainstitch) needlepoint with material backing.

Hand crafted custom rugs using different fabrics and fibers can also lead to buckling, especially along the seams of there the pieces are put together.

Seam tape can split and buckle.

Seam tape can split under foot traffic, or with age, or from cleaning (especially if the individual piece are made of different fibers and may react differently during the cleaning process. Some fibers swell when wet, others condense. Some are stronger when wet, others are weaker. Some absorb more moisture and dry slowly, others dry quick. And these variances can split a seam if you are not careful.

Tufted Rugs (Latexed Material Backing)

Tufted rugs are the rugs you see with latex holding it together. Latex over time deteriorates and crumbles away, so often it is covered up with material to hide this kind of ugliness:

Old latex delaminating on a tufted rug.

Rugs are meant to be on a HARD floor, and not over soft wall-to-wall carpet. But, sometimes a soft floor is your only option.

While woven rugs (rugs you can see the design on the back of the rug same as the front) have some “give” to flex when over a soft floor, a tufted rug is not so forgiving.

Heavy furniture on top of a rug that is over a carpeted floor can stretch the fibers of a woven rug, and in worst cases create tears and holes. And with tufted rugs, which have a latex backing holding them together, they can create waves in the rug you won’t be able to get out.

Buckling in a tufted rug from furniture.

With these rugs, once they have been stretched from heavy furniture, and the latex backing cracks and bends, it’s damaged and will be very difficult to make flat again. It’s like when an elastic band gets over stretched, you can’t get it back to its original shape.

With woven rugs, you have a better chance of washing and reshaping a rug that has gotten buckles from furniture. And to protect BOTH types of rugs, short of putting them on top of a hard floor instead, you can seek out a stiff pad to place between the rug and the carpeted floor.

If your rug is tending to want to move and buckle even when it’s on a hard floor, then often a good rug pad will keep you from having any safety risks of people tripping on it. (Plus pads are “shock absorbers” for rugs and keep them from wearing from foot traffic as fast, and they also tend to deter bugs from wanting to find a home under your wool rugs. I personally love Durahold pad for rugs on hard floors.)

Edge Finishes (By Machine or By Hand)

Sometimes the ends or sides of a rug are finished a bit too tightly, or overdone, and this can create curling of a rug.

Heavy side cord wrap by hand on this dhurrie rug makes the corners curl up.

Machine serging of edges created curling of this rug.

The curling may be immediate, or only evident when the rug gets wet or damp. The level of buckling depends on how the fibers react to water. Some fibers get tighter when wet, and loosen when dry. This is especially evident on oriental rugs that are tightly woven, and the cotton foundation fibers tighten up when wet. (Think about your clothes when you take them out of the washer. Your cotton items are smaller and tighter, and your wool items are looser and stretchy. Most woven rugs are wool face fibers twisted around cotton foundation warps and wefts, so “wet” they can create some buckling that will go away when dry.)

Side curls on this damp Sarouk rug that is drying face down.

Leather or vinyl strips are sometimes sewn along the sides to help keep them flat on the floor.

If a hand woven wool rug is perfectly flat when dry, but curls when it is wet, then it will regain it’s proper shape when dry. Don’t panic.

An exception is Navajo and other American Indian weavings. Often the outside wrapping threads are not pre-washed before being used in the final weaving, and these strands may shrink a bit during cleaning, which can give the illusion that the overall rug has shrunk, when it is in reality just the outside cords.

Navajo rug from a flood, the outside cords have shrunk creating a buckling of the rug.

On the very first cleaning of a Navajo rug, the outside cord will need to be adjusted to make up for the shrinking of the cords, and future washes will not be a problem as far as buckling. (There are other concerns when handling American Indian textiles, from potential dye migration to wool fuzzing, that require an expert’s touch when cleaning. These rugs can be quite valuable, so always seek out someone with expertise in handling these pieces, as well as any investment textile or rug.)

Floods and Extraction Equipment

When rugs are exposed to flood water for extended periods of time, buckling can result from the absorption of the water in the cotton foundation fibers. In most cases, this buckling will be correctable. Though you need to follow the right steps to make sure you thoroughly clean and decontaminate any rugs exposed to flood waters.  Click here => for tips on handling rugs from floods.

Heavy extraction equipment (Rover and Xtreme Extractor) though excellent at pulling out the water, can sometimes create some buckling on looser woven rugs that may or may not be correctable. Whether it’s this type of equipment, or other extracting wands, it is better on the rug to extract from the BACK of the rug to try to avoid any marks or buckles from equipment. When using a wand it can help to have someone stand on the edge you are extracting to help hold the rug flat while doing the work.

Most rug cleaning facilities have roller or spinner wringers to remove water, which removes the buckling risk. Especially with the rollers, which tend to flatten out the rug smoothly for the drying process. But if extraction is your water removal method, you just want to make sure you are not too aggressive in this step.

Buckling in field of a rug from extracting.

Hanging Rugs To Dry

There are a couple negatives to hanging rugs up to dry if you do not have a professional climate controlled drying tower like the large rug washing plants have.

Hanging up a rather wet rug can bleed the dyes into the fringe. It can also create browning and discoloring of the fringe.

It can also, from the weight of the water, create a creasing of the rug that is difficult to remove, especially if the rug is tufted.

Some ways to lessen the risks are to try to get as much water out of the rug before hanging. If you do not have large water removal equipment, you can use a Water Claw in addition to your portable or truck mount wand to boost your extracting. The Rover, with its teflon head is excellent at removing water from heftier rugs without leaving any marks (even if you have to extract from the front side). Just make sure the rug is not too fragile.

Instead of hanging rugs on narrow planks, you can place a PVC pipe around the planks so that you can have it curved enough to help prevent creasing. You can also hang the rugs at at angle so there will not be a clean line of where the rug was bent to hang, like this:

Hang rugs at an angel to lessen potential creasing.

We dry our rugs out flat to avoid these risks, but most rug cleaning companies do not have the space to do this. So this helps if you have a mini-rack system that you are using.

* * *

These are the most common reasons behind rug buckling, and the situations where something can be done about it… or can’t.

Happy rug cleaning!

Lisa

P.S. I’m super excited because I’m finally ready to announce my return to the “rug training circuit” with a program that will be the best educational experience in our industry for crafting experts in the field of rug care. If you love rugs, and want to learn directly from me, then make sure I have your name on my Rug Chick list by entering your name and email in the “Rug Disasters Report Request” box up in the top right corner of this website. I’ll be picking a small number of companies in the coming weeks from my list to work with this year, so if you are interested in getting serious about rug cleaning, plug your name in up top! =)

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House plant damage to rugs. Your options.

June 9, 2011 — Rug Chick
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Watering a potted plant near a rug can lead to a big ugly dry rot hole in a rug if it’s left undisturbed for too long.

If you want to know why this happens, please read this => Don’t Water The Rugs!

That’s what happened to this runner. The moisture from a potted plant was absorbed by the cotton foundation of this rug, all underneath the pot, and it began to mildew and then rotted from the inside out until it crumbled into a big hole:

Hole created from a house plant.

This damage is not reversible, or correctible. If you’ve ever seen drapes that have been so exposed to sun for so many years that they just begin to fray in your hands like paper, then you can recognize how deterioration like that is not correctible.

If the rug is an investment textile, you might consider paying thousands to send the rug to a company – perhaps in the country of origin – to reweave the area… but it will never be the same. You cannot truly “restore” a rug back to its original condition when it’s had this type of structural damage.

What you may consider doing is to have the damaged area patched. This would entail removing all of the damaged and mildew affected areas completely, and securing a patch into the hole to allow the rug to be strong and useable again. This is typically the repair choice for rug owners who uncover significant dry rot in their rug.

Another option is to do what was done to the runner shown above with the big hole, which was to shorten it in a way that made it look as if it were meant to be the size it ended up being.

Runner was taken from 6 medallions down to 5 - but it looks like it was meant to be 5 in this photo after the repair.

To see the steps taken to shorten this plant-damaged rug, visit this post => Runner Repair Post

If you are a cleaner picking up rugs to take to your facility, pay special attention to the rugs near plants. You want to look for signs of dye bleed, the sign or odor of mildew, or any stiffness to the area that you feel. These are all warning signs of water damage.

If you are an owner of rugs, you want to take care to keep the plants OFF your rugs, or at the very least elevated, and that the rugs are folded away from the plants during watering time.

As you are inspecting the rugs for any planter water damage, take a look also for any bug activity, especially with rugs that have been undisturbed for months. For tips on how to spot bug activity, and how to keep the moths and carpet beetles away, read this post => Bugs Don’t Eat My Rugs!

The damage – whether it’s from plants or bugs – only gets severe when it’s left unattended for months. If you make it a habit to check your rugs regularly, you can catch it before it becomes too expensive to repair.

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional rug cleaner looking for second-hand large rug cleaning equipment, I’ve been asked to locate interested cleaners for a 16-ft roller wringer ($13,500 – or best offer) and a 24-pole electric wrench dry pole system ($11,500 – or best offer). These machines are located in southern California. Wringers are hard to find second-hand these days, and to get a new centrifugal spinning wringers instead, only up to 14 ft. long, will run you around $50,000 from U.S. suppliers. A bit less from the European suppliers. The dry racks are selling for around $10,000 new for only a dozen poles. If you are seriously interested (i.e. you have the funds to purchase and ship to your location), then send me an email at rugchick@gmail.com. These will go fast, so if it’s sold by the time you write me, I apologize in advance.

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FAKE silk rugs. What you need to know.

May 29, 2011 — Rug Chick
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“I know better.”

That is EXACTLY what I said in my head as I was looking at a cute shiny, smooth blue top at Nordstrom…

…and saw the label said “60% rayon.”

You see, I know that rayon (also sold as viscose) is one of the weakest fibers out there. It’s one of the fibers that is used to create artificial silk.

But it’s weak, it yellows, it loses color, and it ages and gets ugly FAST. It may look like silk to an inexperienced eye in the beginning, but it does not have the strength, vibrancy, and feel of real cultivated silk. Side by side silk will look great after years, and rayon will not.

I knew better… but I was rationalizing the purchase. My head said that I could hand wash it gently. That I could avoid wringing it, or using any high steam or heat when ironing it. That I am a fiber and fabric care expert, so I could handle this.

But alas, I’ve worn the top once, and washed it once, and the fabric is no longer smooth – there are breaks in it already, and a little less sheen. And no one to blame but myself.  That makes me mad. Almost as mad as the fact that even though rayon is “fake silk” to help designers get product made cheaper – that they don’t bother to make the tops any cheaper. Rayon is all over the place in clothes today. And not cheap to buy clothes.

LAME.

And we are seeing it in RUGS. The bigger issue here being that rayon and viscose cannot stand up to the foot traffic or soil in a typical home.

Double LAME.

So – if you are a buyer beware. And if you are a rug cleaner, here are some tips and facts about artificial silk rugs for you.

How to identify “Artificial Silk” rugs? What to look for.

As I mentioned in the previous post on Real Silk rugs – high quality silk rugs are not only very thin and pliable, but also incredibly detailed due to some very high knot counts per square inch.

Take a look at this corner again, of a real silk rug – it’s thin, and detailed design.

Real silk rug. Hand woven.

Then take a look at a typical Art Silk rug, this one from China, and it’s thick, the pile color is flat looking, no sheen of a true silk rug.

Art (artificial) Silk rug. Folded over corner, and thicker pile.

The Art Silk category is sometimes also referred to as Faux Silk (that’s the fancy sounding French word for FAKE). =)

The most problematic of this category are the ones made of rayon (also known as viscose) – which as I mentioned is an incredibly weak fiber. I’ve mentioned in the past that viscose is the sausage of the fiber world, as it’s chemically reprocessed cotton by-products lumped together and spun into a fiber for the weaving process.

You will find these rugs today coming out of China, Europe (Belgian machine woven product), and in the US (as highlights in some machine woven wool rug products).

You will also find it in product from China where it is blended with real silk by-products. Not blended with quality cultivated silk, but poor quality wild silk.

Cultivated silk is product from silk worms with a mulberry or otherwise controlled diet, where the cocoons are boiled and unraveled into ONE single continuous filament that is incredibly strong and with intense sheen. (Sorry but yes the worms die in this process.)

Wild silk is product from silk worms with no controlled diet, and where the worms bust through their cocoons, so the fibers are broken. Instead of one single filament, it is broken pieces that are spun together into a thicker, but weaker, thread for weaving.

Wild silk is similar to rayon in that it is broken staple fibers spun to create something that can be used for weaving. They will blend this “reject” quality silk with rayon so that they can get away with technically calling the rug “silk.” They also will sometimes use the excess silk waste from a real silk rug weaving to spin into these Art Silk knock-off’s.

Think about it – that is like taking the lint from your lint filter in your clothes dryer and trying to spin that waste into some fiber to create a new top for yourself. It’s meant to be thrown away, and not reused like rayon is.

And so with these rugs you will see shedding that looks almost like a cat has clawed the face of the rug, like this:

Artificial Silk rayon rug with shedding of fibers.

Your fiber test on these rugs will give you mixed results. The chemical test will show some dissolving (from the crappy but technically “real” silk) but also a lack of dissolving from the rayon. And the burn test will give you mixed up ash and smell because you have a blend of protein and cellulose fibers.

You will get frustrated trying to give a definitive answer.

Though many of these “problem” Artificial Silk rugs are coming from China, it does not mean that all Chinese rugs are not quality rugs. There is actually some excellent quality rugs coming out of China. In fact, EVERY country that has weaving will have the extreme examples of mediocre and magnificent rugs coming out of it.

Here’s a mediocre Artificial Silk rug from China. Note the flat color, and the shaggy looking pile.

Artificial Silk blend from China - rayon and crummy silk blend.

Now here is a magnificent piece from China – true cultivated silk:

Cultivated high quality silk hand woven rug from China

If you want to see other beautiful silk rugs from China, a great website to visit is the China Silk Carpet site.

Even in the photos you can see the difference in the fiber sheen, and absolutely the level of detail of one versus the other. This is why experienced rug cleaners can immediately identify a fake from a real one, because it’s obvious. Even when dirty, you can tell the difference.

Here is a dirty Artificial Silk rug from China:

Artificial Silk rug needs to be cleaned. Blend of rayon and wild silk. Folded over ends with fringe tassels strung into the folded edges.

Here is a real silk rug from Iran, and note how the back of the rug shines.

Real silk rug from Iran - note the detail of the design.

You will also see Artificial Silk rugs coming from Turkey, though these rugs are mercerized cotton rather than rayon, and they are much sturdier construction. Generally you will see these as Artificial Silk prayer rugs, like this rug:

Turkish mercerized cotton Art Silk rug.

This is not a bad looking piece at all, and will last the owner decades. The mercerized cotton fibers do not shed like rayon, and the rugs wash up well and last well under foot traffic. So you get the general “look” of real silk without having to pay thousands of dollars for the rug. But alas, it is not a REAL silk prayer rug like this one:

Real silk prayer rug.

Here is a caption from the China Silk Carpet site regarding silk rug weaving:

It will take one girl about half a year to make a 2×3 ft carpet of 300 lines (90,000 knots per square foot), 1.5 years to weave a 2×3 ft silk carpet of 500 lines (250,000 knots per square foot), two years to knot a 2×1.5 feet silk carpet with 800 lines (640,000 knots per square foot) and 3 years to make a 1.2×1.5 feet silk carpet with 1000 lines(1000,000 knots per square foot). The silk thread used to knot top quality carpet is as thin as a hair. When knotting, weavers even need to use magnifier. The work is so harmful to weavers’ eyes that they seldom can make the second same piece. So this kind of silk carpet is named “soft gold”.

In today’s commodity market of making rugs cheap to sell more of them, there is more demand for the Artificial Silk rugs than the real deal. This is why cleaners see more and more of them to clean today.

The “problem” Artificial Rugs will be the ones made of rayon/viscose, or blends of bad wild silk and rayon spun together coming from China, the cheap viscose Belgian machine made rugs, as well as some American Karastan rugs that are using viscose as “silk highlights” in some of their machine woven rugs.

The mercerized cotton rugs from Turkey are (in our experience) not a problem at all to clean. They wash up great:

Turkish Art Silk (before wash)

Turkish Art Silk (after wash)

These are the problems cleaners will see with these rayon/viscose rugs Art Silk rugs, and solutions to help minimize the rug disasters that often come with these inferior grade rugs.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Dyes that bleed and fade.

These viscose rugs like to bleed.

Bled corner of a Belgian machine made viscose Art Silk rug.

As part of your pre-inspection process, a fiber and dye stability test should be done. Your dye stabilizing solution should be tested to see if it will in fact stabilize the dyes during your cleaning process.

Sometimes, when the dyes are too inferior to be “cleanable” – you may need to clean the rug as you would tricky fine fabric, so literally cleaning it with an upholstery hand tool that has excellent moisture control and will not “mark up” the fibers. I like the Upholstery Pro for this type of work.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that yellow.

Rayon likes to yellow.

Here is a rayon blend rug that was cleaned in the home improperly. (Rugs should NEVER be cleaned on location in the home.)  Look at how badly the rug yellowed. A piece of white paper is placed in the middle to show the difference before the cleaning of how bad the yellowing/browning occurred. (The rug cleaner thought he would have to buy this rug because of his cleaning errors.)

Inexperienced rug cleaner browns out a rayon Art Silk rug.

Notice how bad the cellulose browning is. You really cannot see the colors in the flowers in the field of this rug.

Once the rug was properly washed – TWICE – and given an acid rinse to help reverse the browning and remove the heavy application of the alkaline cleaning solutions used in the improper cleaning – the colors and the white of the rug came back to life.

Several washes helped to reverse the damage.

Professionally trained cleaners understand that cotton by-products have a tendency to brown/yellow under certain circumstances. To help minimize yellowing of rayon rugs:

- Wash thoroughly. (If you are able to safely clean – i.e. the dyes are colorfast – then wash so that you can remove the soil. Wicked up soil from a surface cleaning by on-location equipment can sometimes be mistaken for “browning” when it’s just simply still dirty. Wash rugs in plant whenever possible.)

- Use a pure acidic rinse. (This helps to remove cleaning residue and helps to minimize browning or yellowing of rayon.)

- If possible, dry the rug face down. (This will concentrate any browning or yellowing of the rayon to the BACK of the rug instead of the front. Make sure the rug is properly groomed prior to being placed face down on a CLEAN drying surface. Use air movers to speed up the drying process. My favorite quick drying air movers are the Drieaz Studebaker Airpaths.)

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that shed and break.

With rayon (viscose) Artificial Silk rugs, there is no way to stop the shedding. These are loose fibers spun together. You can vacuum up the loose pieces, but the shedding will always be a problem exaggerated by any type of regular foot traffic on these rugs.

Washing will wash away some of the fiber pulls. You will want to use a soft brush for the agitation during the cleaning process so that you can minimize the shedding. If your cleaning process incorporates a wand or hand tool, it would be important to have a teflon glide so that you do not leave marks in the fibers during any extraction strokes.

If you are the type of cleaner who likes to use bonnets on rugs, it will be too aggressive for this rug – so be warned.

For regular maintenance, a beater bar upright vacuum will be too aggressive for a fiber as weak as rayon is. Recommend that they use a canister vacuum, or the upholstery vacuum attachment on their machine to regularly “dust” the rug. And let your client know that it IS okay to clip the pulls off, or pull them off. (Sometimes a big lint roller can pull away more of them quicker.) These fibers are already ready to leave the rug, so the client is not going to harm their rug.

It is already a damaged product by the nature of how and what it’s made of. It’s what happens when you cut corners to create a cheap rug, so they need to become accustomed to having a rug that sheds.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Fibers that get stiff.

Artificial silk fibers may have a tendency of getting stiff after a cleaning. This can be groomed out with a brush, by slowly brushing against the grain, and then with it. (This brushing backwards and then with the fibers helps release the stiffness and helps it to lay soft again.)

A good rinse in the wash process usually alleviates this stiffness problem, as most matting and stiffness with rayon comes from the rug still having some soil and residue still in its fibers.

Some cleaners will lightly mist a fabric softener mixed with warm water onto the damp surface of these rugs (and some silk rugs) to help soften the fibers stiffness. Just take care to not leave too much of this residue behind. Tacky residue on a rug can lead to resoiling problems.

ART SILK PROBLEM: Ink stenciling that bleeds out.

This is not a common problem, but I’ve seen more than a few incidents with Artificial Silk rugs having stenciling problems. In this case, ink is used to cartoon the design element placement for the weavers and when the rug is washed the ink can bleed out. Because these stencil marks are often in a color like bright pink or blue, they can suddenly wick up and shock an unwary rug cleaner.

Since most rugs are quickly washed before they are sent off to sell, you should be able to see warning signs of stenciling that have already bled onto the back side. Note the pink ink lines on the back of this rayon Art Silk rug:

Artificial Silk - stencil ink noticeable on back.

If the rug was not washed before going to market, or if your client has not spilled on the rug enough to give you some pink or blue ink clues, then you may not discover the problem until it’s too late. You can try to grin open the fibers from the front to see if you can locate any ink on the foundation fibers. (Stenciling is a common problem in hooked rugs, and you can see how to grin those rugs to find this problem in a post I did on this exact problem.)

Your dye stabilizing solution will not work to stabilize ink, so this becomes a dangerous cleaning scenario.

Sometimes washing the rug quickly and drying the rug face down can concentrate the ink to the back side of the rug, but there are no guarantees. If the rug owner will not release you from liability on this rug cleaning, then you may have to turn the rug away… or opt for a less-than-thorough cleaning with a dry compound cleaning method, or other low-moisture cleaning method.

Rugs really should be washed, but in this situation where the inferior construction presents dangers of ruining the rug with a proper wash, you may have to choose an improper surface cleaning method because it is your only choice other than simply leaving the rug filthy.

However, because Artificial Silk rugs should be inexpensive you might recommend to the owner of a rug that cannot be safely and thoroughly cleaned to simply buy a new one. That would be better than never cleaning the stenciled one they have. And then you can give them recommendations on choosing a better quality rug – such as a wool rug if they want a sturdy rug on their floor that will last them forever… or a real silk rug to mount on the wall as a beautiful piece of weaving art for their home.

Hope this post helps keep those of you who clean Art Silk rugs out of trouble. Happy rug washing!

- Lisa

 

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Silk rugs. What you need to know.

May 15, 2011 — Rug Chick
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Silk is known as a fabric, and fiber, of luxury.

Silk strands.

People think you need to baby silk items, but silk is actually a very strong – and beautiful – fiber. (Unlike rayon and viscose, both names for artificial silk rug fibers, which are incredibly weak, yellow, lose color, and break at an alarming rate under foot traffic.)

Silk has strong tensile strength, and apparently has unique properties that beyond making fabulous looking fabrics and textiles, may become known for many other things. This short video on TED shares some of the magic of silk in other uses (this was amazing to watch):

If silk was not strong, weavers would not be able to weave these intricate designs, at a knot count that can exceed 1500 knots per square inch for the finest of weaves.

Silk rug loom. Knots tied by hand.

If it was not strong, those strands would break – which is why real silk rugs will be thinner, more pliable, and much more detailed designs than any of the “fake” knock-off’s.

Here’s a real silk Qum rug (hand woven in Persia):

Silk Qum rug.

(If you want to learn more about Qum rugs specifically, here is a great page from Barry O’Connell’s site Oriental Rug Notes on these textiles.)

Silk rugs are woven in many countries besides the Middle East, you see many from China, India, and Turkey as well. And their construction, as you can see is fine, thin, and very colorful:

Turkish Hereke silk rug, very fine weave as seen on back side.

Compare the last photo with this rayon (viscose) rug from China, which is thicker, cruder, shaggier, and overall obviously *not* the real deal:

Fake silk rug (rayon) from China

Rug cleaners – especially new ones – are frightened of handling silk rugs.

And they should be.

Not because silk is not strong enough to be washed. It most certainly is. The problem is not with the fiber strength, but with the dyes…

…and the fact that silk rugs, especially finely woven ones, are VERY expensive to replace if you happen to bleed them. (And your insurance may not cover this – you have to check with your agent.)

It’s not unusual for a small silk rug to have been purchased for thousands of dollars, especially if it is a fine quality Qum or Hereke.

So if you are a rug cleaner, and have a silk rug on your hands, these are the questions you need to ask yourself:

1) Is this real silk or artificial silk?

You will not necessarily clean it differently, because due to rayon/viscose being horribly weak you have to treat that inferior fiber very gently so you may follow the same steps as with real silk. But what matters is the VALUE of the piece, and whether you are insured if a lack of experience on your part results in ruining the rug during cleaning. That is why you want to know if it is the real thing.

A rough rule of thumb, obviously with exceptions (there are ALWAYS exceptions in the rug world), the thinner the nap of the pile and the higher the knot count per square inch, the more valuable the piece. That is for silk, not for wool. Wool rugs and value are another ball game entirely.

2) Do you have experience and the facility to clean silk?

If you have a full rug cleaning facility, with a roller wringer to feed the rug through, then it is possible to quickly wash a silk rug. And that is what is needed for a silk rug, a quick overall wash process. Using the right dye stabilizing solution, keeping the cleaning solution on the acidic side, and removing the excess water as soon as humanly possible.

You have to be a MASTER at fiber and dye testing, and pre-inspection, so that you know exactly what needs to be done with the textile to clean it – or to know if you cannot clean it safely.

If you have dry cleaning capabilities, some rug plants will dry clean silk rugs.

We personally like to wash rugs. I don’t like to leave residue in fibers. I like them truly clean. And I am sensitive to dry cleaning solvents, so I’m not a fan of them. That said, we have a roller wringer that allows us to remove the moisture in under a minute to that the rug can then lay out flat to dry very quickly. If you do not have a wringer, you will not want to tackle handling any silk – or fake silk – rugs for washing. Subcontract them to a full service rug cleaning facility with experience with silk.

Another tool I have found that works extremely well for cleaning silk fabric furnishings, and silk rugs which may be too risky to fully soak in a wash due to dye migration risks, and rayon/viscose rugs that can’t take much agitation at all, is the new Upholstery Pro by Sapphire Scientific.

The advantages this tool has in regards to riskier fibers/fabrics is that it has two vacuums surrounding the moisture delivery, so it is thorough, controlled, and immediate wash and extraction:

Two vacuums and a smooth head makes no marks.

My friend and peer Jim Pemberton, who is an expert in fine fabric care, has used this tool successfully on both microfiber upholstery, rayon, and aged (i.e. fragile) upholstery with no marking, excellent cleaning, and complete control of the moisture delivery and removal.

I’ve used the tool on rugs that normally I would turn away due to the risks of proper cleaning. Real silk rugs that due to age were too fragile to put through a proper wash, as well as rayon rugs that were too crummy that even brushing them was causing fibers to break off.

It also is excellent for any spot work you need to do on a rug, where you would like to work a bit more on a specific area without keeping the entire rug under water during that extra specialty servicing.

This is absolutely a tool that every professional rug cleaner, or fine fabric specialist, needs in their facility.

That said, even the best tool in an untrained hand, will lead to a disaster. So if you are just getting into the professional rug cleaning field, plan to get your rug cleaning education through courses and real-world training on rugs that you own first. Thrift stores and garage sales offer a myriad of cheap and filthy rugs of all shapes, sizes, and qualities – so if you are serious about getting into rugs, don’t practice on rugs owned by others, that’s tempting fate. Even eBay has lots of cheap rugs to invest in to get some practice.

And while you are doing this, find a local long-time rug cleaning plant to subcontract the valuable textiles that your clients send to you. Sometimes the best (and easiest) thing to do is to put your client’s valued textiles into more experienced hands.

Now, if you are the owner of an investment silk rug reading this post, I personally feel that the last place a silk rug belongs is on the floor. Why? Again, not because it is not strong. It is.

The nature of the silk fiber, being a smooth single filament, means it does not have “pockets” to hide soil in it like wool does. This means silk rugs (and cotton and rayon as well) look soiled quicker than wool rugs when exposed to the same amount of foot traffic and dust settling on them. It’s just in the nature of the fiber.

Silk also reflects light brilliantly, and when you walk around the rug it has a very distinct bright “light” direction, and a deeper dark direction. Wool does the same thing, which I’ve written about in a wool rug post, but with silk this difference is much more stark. You can literally change the look and colors of the same rug by walking from one end to the other. (Go ahead, walk around your silk rug and see what I’m talking about.)

This means any foot traffic on a silk rug that distorts the fibers will make it reflect light differently in those spots, giving you a mix of dark and light areas that might give you the illusion it is dirty… when it’s just got “messed up” pile.

The finer silk rugs are intricate pieces of art, and many of our clients prefer to mount them on the wall as textile art, rather than having their silk rugs on the floor, and worrying about feet, paws, or spills.

We use velcro to hang silk rugs flat against the wall:

Velcro along the top of silk rug for hanging.

Here’s why rugs are generally hung with velcro => Hanging Rugs

Some of the most magnificent rugs I’ve seen in my life have been finely woven silk textiles. Hopefully these tips will help cleaners stay out of trouble when handling these pieces of textile art, and help those who own them to better showcase, and care, for them.

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner and missed our “Rugs and Fine Fabric Webinar” – do not worry your little head off… the replay is up! You can join Jim Pemberton and myself for an educational session on textiles! (Don’t worry, we’ve gotten great reviews – you won’t be bored… and you won’t be “sold” anything like the other industry webinars you’ve been on, it’s just solid education! Hope you enjoy it.)

CLICK HERE to get access => Rugs & Fine Fabric Webinar

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Rug Shop Set-up. (The mother of all equipment posts.)

April 11, 2011 — Rug Chick
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The most common question I get from professional carpet cleaners (besides “oh God, can you help me save this rug!”) is this => “What rug cleaning equipment should I buy?”

And my answer is always the same.

It depends.

Are you doing rug cleaning as an occasional add-on service, or as your primary service? Are you expecting to wash 5 rugs a week, or 500? Do you have a trained team to support larger volume?

What amount of space do you have? What kind of capital do you have to sink into pouring a wash floor and getting larger equipment? What equipment do you already own free and clear? Are you picking up and delivering?

How much do you really enjoy rugs? Is it a passing fad (like the other equipment you just sold off at the last carpet cleaners swap meet…) – or do you want to truly be a Textile Pro?

Are you a rug enthusiast? =)

I have helped more professional carpet cleaners start up into the rug cleaning craft successfully than perhaps all of the other trainers lumped together. Here’s why.

I had a distributor friend of mine who has hosted four IICRC courses (taught by others) over the past 2 years poll the students to see how many were TODAY actively cleaning rugs full-time as a result of the class. The answer… THREE. Out of almost 100 who attended and got “certified.”

That is sad. But it’s also a sign of uncertainty. If they did not leave the class confident about cleaning rugs (or even knowing how to GET the jobs), it makes sense they would stick to their prior comfort zone. Rugs can be scary if you don’t understand them.

That said, I can point to Piranha Members and Rug Secrets alumni of mine all over the US, Canada, and overseas, who are actively cleaning rugs and growing their rug cleaning companies.

So why are my “students” not quitting? It’s the same reason you are reading this blog post. Because I make “sense.” I teach in a very clear style. And when you understand something, you TAKE ACTION on it.

I also have a very clear understanding on how to be smart about growing a rug cleaning company. I’ve seen enough people do it wrong and crash and burn, and I don’t want to see that with any of the cleaners and restorers I work with.

So instead of pushing them into some huge equipment lease package (that I may or may not get a kick-back from…LOL) – I am very conservative with them. I show them low-tech options to build their skills in (and make sure they LOVE rugs…), and then graduate up to cooler, pricier options when they are ready.

So…with this post I am going to throw out every tool option to come to mind on how to properly set up YOUR rug cleaning workshop. Bookmark this post, because you are going to come back to it. And I’ll organize it from “low tech/small money” to “high tech/BIG money” so that you can truly choose what is best for you in your current financial and space position.**

(**My disclaimer** – I am listing options for your information, this is NOT an endorsement by me of any item in particular. I will tell you what we actually use, but that does NOT mean this is the *best* choice – it’s just what we use and like. Anything not shared does NOT mean you shouldn’t buy it… it means perhaps I don’t know about it. And of course everything in this blog, and all of my blogs, is my opinion only. I know a lot, but I do NOT know it all. It’s because there is a lot of misinformation out there about rugs that I’m sharing this. All suggestions require trained cleaners - so please don’t be a *rug idiot* and see a rug wet and think any rug can just simply be dunked with no consequences. Education is required and should be invested in before the equipment.)

Most Important Factor => The Rug Cleaner not the Rug Cleaning Equipment

We began our washing process in the back sloped cement driveway of our antique rug gallery in sunny La Jolla, California. We kids were “rug brats” who climbed the stacks of rugs like the Himalayas, and helped scrub rugs by hand outside with our parents – just like a car wash (wax on – wax off!!!). It was fun, it was low tech, and the results were great.

A garden of rugs...

There are very large automated rug cleaning plants in Los Angeles, couple hours north of us. A thousand rugs a week going through them. Very little prep work, just feed it on the treadmill, every rug exactly the same. Like an automated car wash…you can end up still with dirt on the side doors or caked on the windshield.

Now – I can guarantee you that I can out clean one rug versus the big operations in LA, because I would be focused on creating the best result possible. It would take me several hours…but I would out clean them in quality, even with low-tech tools (a vacuum, bucket of suds, hand brushes, squeegee, cool water, a wet vac, and white vinegar to stabilize the dyes and rinse). My “boutique” rug operation could have stellar results… but only be able to do a few rugs a day. It would be more labor-intensive.

I would be the “car detailer” versus their “”automatic car wash” – and just like real detailing gets me $125 versus the $9 drive through wash – I would be able to attract investment rugs to care for by my expert hand.

The best LARGE rug cleaning operations are a combination of these two styles, with the care/attention of a boutique workshop on the wash floor BEFORE and AFTER it is fed through the automatic rinsing/wringing process. I can name a half dozen operations in my head across the US that have that level of quality. Unfortunately, for as many great large operations as there are, there are not-so-great ones too.

My point though is this – larger equipment options do not automatically equal “best” cleaning. You can have best with low-tech. It falls more on the care and attention to detail of the RUG CLEANER, and not the rug cleaning equipment.

What the equipment does is this – it allows you to perform wash process steps more efficiently. And being more efficient allows you do get more done in the same time.

So my advice to those getting into the business is start low-tech, and move up as you grow. I’ve seen several friends sink a fortune into large equipment and space, thinking “if I build it, they will come,” and then go out of business.

The rug cleaning business is a growing opportunity – but it is not “easy” money. It’s hard work. (Business owners are not afraid of hard work…as long as it’s something they really enjoy.) So you better make sure you are crazy about rugs before you dive into the deep end.

Here are the main steps of the rug wash process – and some different equipment options/ideas for you.

DUSTING EQUIPMENT

SMALL bucks => Vacuum Cleaner

Vacuum back of rug to "shake" loose soil.

If you already own a good beater bar vacuum, then this option is “free” for you. By dusting the back side of the rug, you shake/vibrate loose the embedded soil in the rug. As you saw in the last blog post on “Why rugs are not cleaned in the home” – this is a VERY important first step to proper rug cleaning.

We use commercial Sanitaire upright vacuum cleaners, with the brushes in the bar replaced with metal slide in plates, because the “bristles” are not needed. They are super sturdy, and work great, so we’ve never needed to “move up” to bigger, louder equipment here. However, our clients value their rugs and keeping their homes clean so they wash them regularly, and don’t let them get caked up in abrasive soil and contaminants.

Placing rugs over tile grates or mats can help elevate rugs so that more soil can shake loose and away from the rug. I did a Google search for “interlocking plastic floor tiles” and came up with a wide variety of colors and strengths. This can be used for a dusting platform, as well as to place in a wash pit (if you do not have a wash floor poured yet…) to allow water flow under the rug, and to keep you from slipping. =)

>>>UPDATE<<<

A few of you have contacted me asking about the metal slide in replacements for the brushes on the Sanitaire vacuums, and that you have had problems finding these parts. I’ve been told to contact Jon-Don and ask for Fernando, and he knows EXACTLY what you are looking for. You also can get a narrower design brush which works very well for dusting/vibrating rugs from the backside – we use the Sanitaire Alumimum VGI-12″ Brush Roller for this. Let me know if you have any other questions on this. Or Google that word “Sanitaire Aluminum VGI-12 brush” to see what it is. Thanks!

>>>End Update<<<

BIG bucks => mini-DUSTERS, compressed air dusting, large dusting machines

There are two portable “mini” dusters out right now in the US. I’ve only used one, the Rug Badger:

Rug Badger removed soil by beating the back of the rug.

Straps "smack" the back of the rug.

I know a number of cleaners who own a Rug Badger and are very happy with it.

The other mini-portable duster is the Wolverine by Centrum-Force. I do not know anyone personally who owns one of these, it’s a new piece on the market that looks very similar to the Rug Badger, but blue instead of red. The price for both competitive units runs around $3,500.

I also came across another company building mini-dusters in Greece. (Many long established rug cleaning operations purchase their large and small rug cleaning machinery from Turkey and Greece – which makes sense because many rugs are woven there, so they require these machines to wash the rugs before they are sold.)

A bid I received for this particular unit, which has a roller on the front to hold the rug down securely (they are sending me photos of the rest of the construction) – was $2,000 for one unit (lower pricing for more) => HANTA Systems mini-DUSTER

With international freight costs, this might not be cost effective, but I wanted you to be aware of all the options I have seen.

Another option is the compressed air dusting system which is part of the overall Auserehlian Oriental Rug Washing system, which incorporates a large inflatable wash pit and several proprietary tools to create a “jacuzzi wash.” Phil Auserehl and Ron Toney are the “pioneers” of the rug bath system we see in many cleaning operations today.

Air dusting with the Auserehlian method.

Air dusting is a very thorough method. Obviously good containment is required, and a good compressor to power it. It’s my understanding that you buy the complete system, and not just the “dusting” tool ala carte.

Large automated dusters, where you feed in a rug to be beaten as it is rolled through a system of straps, also are available.  Here is one by Centrum-Force that shows the straps along top.

Automated dusting machine on display at trade show.

Now obviously, if you are looking to purchase a large dusting machine in excess of $40,000, you better be handling a good number of rugs. Larger plants handling hundreds a week, use machines like these to handle their volume without skipping the all important step of dusting BEFORE the wash.

Other suppliers of large automated dusting machines and links to their specific machines are => HANTA Systems (Greece) and TankMakina.com (Turkey).

There also are second-hand large equipment from long-time companies closing their doors, so you will see some Mor equipment available. This was a long time builder of large rug/carpet machinery in Illinois. Though some of his pieces also look very familiar when compared to these Greek and Turkish suppliers, so I do not know if Mor manufactured his pieces from ground zero, or if he ordered parts from Europe and assembled them in the US.

Today it seems that “parts” are mostly made overseas. I know my “American” car is made of European parts. My friend’s German BMW was built in the US, with German parts, but is considered a German car. So I would not be surprised if there are a few core suppliers of main components for many rug washing companies, because with this large equipment, they all look very similar. But, that is simply an observation I could be 100% wrong on.

Those are your choices – low tech to high tech.

WASH/RINSE EQUIPMENT

Small bucks => D-I-Y Wash Pit*

(*Before you get ANY rug wet, you better know what you are doing. Be sure you are fiber testing, dye testing, checking the structural integrity of the textile, and using the proper cleaning chemistry and techniques to safely and thoroughly clean the rug. All photos shared are from experienced plants and experienced cleaners.)

First off, if you have an existing sloped (and clean) surface, with an ability to capture the water so it does not go into the storm drain, you may not need a “pit” at all. Depends on what you have.

But a pit can be as low-tech or high-tech as you want. A simple tarp with some PVC pipes with elbow joints to make a pit is the lowest-tech way.

 

 

Low-tech D-I-Y wash pit.

I’ve seen others made with wood planks and using a heavier pond liner for the rug (you can get pond liner at www.pondliners.com). You can set up these systems for a few hundred dollars in materials.

Medium bucks => The rug instructors pits-ready-for-you packages.

In past rug workshops I’ve taught, we used a wash pit that had an inflatable perimeter:

 

 

Small wash pit with inflated sides.

These types of wash pits I’ve seen sold by two companies => Masterblend (tied to the IICRC course taught by Aaron Groseclose) and Rug Badger (tied to the IICRC course taught by Ruth Travis & Jeff Bishop). Depending on the accessories you buy, I’ve been told by students in the classes that you can spend several thousand and get the basics taken care of.

The tiles used often in the bottom of these types of wash pits, to help elevate the rugs a bit, while also keeping the surface from being too slippery, can be found by Googling “interlocking plastic floor tiles.” Here are some I found in at just two sites I came across in my search, Rubber Flooring Inc. and Cart Wheel Factory.

I have also found pits with inflatable sides prevalent in the automobile mobile washing industry, where water containment is extremely important, and tough material as well with all of the rough surfaces it comes in contact with. This might be another area to research.

I found this car wash mat for $538 on Amazon (they sell EVERYTHING!) => Mobile Car Wash Mat & Containment

You can Google “mobile car wash mat” to find more choices and styles.

The wash pit from the Auserehlian system is much more “serious” with larger side walls, and sturdy inside tiles. The other systems I’ve seen on the market are kind of a toss up between paying for them, or just building it yourself – but not with the Auserehlian option. They build some nice pits. Again, it’s my understanding that this is part of a complete system and that you cannot buy the pit ala carte.

 

 

Large size wash pit with system for fresh water exchanges.

BIG bucks => Inclined Wash Floor, Automated Rug Wash Machinery & Tubs

When you graduate from washing rugs in a temporary wash pit and decide to pour a wash floor and acquire some “higher-tech” tools, the biggest cost is not pouring an inclined floor, it will be in running the drainage, and actually having the SPACE to do that in the first place.

There are many ways to construct your floor. Here is one floor where the area doubles as a place to pull in vehicles at night. You can see the trench along the lower half of the slightly inclined floor to capture the water flow.

 

 

Squeegeeing a rug on the wash floor.

Here are several other wash floor set-ups:

Scrubbing a rug on the wash floor with rotary scrubber.

If using a CIMEX machine, use SOFT brushes on rugs.

Soft brush head on fully wet rug.

Your brush choice depends on the structure of the rug and how wet you have it (water acts as a buffer to rotary machines). Most large rug facilities have a variety of brushes from rotary scrubbers with soft brush heads, to hand broom brushes (like window washing brushes), to small hand held brushes.

After washing, the rinsing begins, and this can also be done by an assortment of tools, from running clean water underneath a rug and using a squeegee – or a linoleum roller – to help rinse away the suds and soil.

Squeegee being used to rinse away the suds.

Or using a pressure washer to do the same:

Pressure wash rinsing of rug. Watch the pressure!

Slow pressure washer rinse of rug before placed in the wringer.

These methods so far are scrubbing and rinsing on the wash floors, but there also are large rug washing machinery that can do the scrubbing and rinsing in a conveyor belt type “automated car wash” set-up. Though as I mentioned before, the best of the largest rug cleaning companies tend to do “individualized” prep work and cleaning on a wash floor BEFORE they feed the rugs into this type of machine. And some of these facilities turn off the scrub brushes to only use them for the massive rinsing capabilities.

Large automated rug washing machines are sold by several large manufacturers => CarpetWashingMachine.com and TankMakina.com are two of them. You can also find a whole host of manufacturers on Alibaba.com, where you can request bids and get references and additional information on participating companies. Several of my large rug plant peers have used this site to coordinate their overseas purchases.

If you Google “carpet washing machine Turkey” you will find a list of options if you are building a serious rug cleaning facility with serious volume.

There are also rug washing tubs that have come to market. Actually, they have been around for some time, primarily for blanket and quilt washing, but have recently been marketed as for “rugs” as well.

One is made by Centrum-Force => Rug Washing Tub

Another is made by Tank Makina => Washing Paddle Wheel Tub

I am not personally “sold” on the wash tub concept, especially since they appear to be developed for quilts and blankets, and not specifically “rugs.” But I will see what several of my peers who have purchased units from Greece and Turkey have to tell me once they see my post here. =)

WATER REMOVAL EQUIPMENT

Small bucks => Your EXISTING equipment.

If you already have a cleaning company, you have tools developed for extracting water. Your wand (ideally with Teflon covers to keep from marking any delicate surfaces):

Using a Water Claw (medium size) on the BACK side of the rug can help remove the moisture from the innermost foundation fibers, which tend to be cotton and hold a great deal of water. Many cleaners who start up do this – roll the wet rug on a PVC pipe or plank of wood, and tilt it up against a wall so the weight of the water flows down and away from the rug. After just a few minutes, they lay the rug out to extract the BACK side with a Water Claw, and then follow up with the wand.

The Water Claw portion can take time, so when funds allow (or if you do any restoration work you may already have this), you can add a Dri-Eaz Rover to your equipment. Running about $3,500, this allows you to ride and extract, and the smooth heads leave NO marks on the rug whether you do it on the back side of the front.

Using a Rover for extracting water.

I have also used an Xtreme Extractor successfully, but have also seen it mark up a rug, so if using that tool, be sure to only use it from the back side. Runs closer to $4,000 – what’s weird is that I saw that price on Amazon. (Again – Amazon sells EVERYTHING! LOL.)

These are good intermediary options, about a tenth of the cost of additional large water extraction machinery. So when you are looking to bump up your production, and are ready to invest $30-50K on a piece of equipment to remove water from rugs, then you are ready for this next batch of options.

BIG bucks => Wringers and Revolution/Centrifugal Machines

Back in “the day” (*ahem*… before my time…) – we had manual wash tub wringers. Cute ones like this:

 

 

Small hand-crank wash tub wringer for clothes.

For rugs they became much bigger, and pneumatic:

Large rug roller wringer.

Today roller wringers are generally found only second-hand. The trend today is more toward centrifugal wringers which “spin” the excess water out of a rug, similar to your washing machine spin cycle for your clothes. These are called centrifuge wringers.

Two US companies selling these are => Rug Badger Revolution which is a footed stationary model and Centrum-Force centrifuge spin extractors.

The prices all range from $30K – $50+K depending on size and of course leasing added interest. But if you have the volume – and the funds – it is a way to dramatically boost your production. And as mentioned in the very beginning, make sure you have rug training because you will need to know which rugs may structurally be at risk so that you can make adjustments as needed to the controls.

I also found a whole host of centrifugal machines on Alibaba’s website. => Carpet Wringing Machines

Tank Makina has both footed and wheeled models => Centrifugal Spinners

CleanTem Machines I got a bid of $7,500 for this unit (finding out the freight and custom fees to get a more accurate full ticket price) => Centrifugal Machine

Hanta Systems in Greece also had several models, as well as videos on all of their product options. (By the way, if the sites do not show English you can click the flag for US or UK to make that happen, or Google has a translator plug-in. Using Alibaba as your portal helps if you get confused on any of these websites – but they are fairly easy to navigate, and to get bids and details from.)

DRYING EQUIPMENT

Small bucks => D-I-Y Hand Pulley Rack System

I’ve seen a lot of make shift rug hanging set-ups. This, like with the wash pit, can be as low-tech or high-tech as you want. You can build something for a few hundred dollars, or go drop $30K or more on a pre-made, electric hoist system for several dozen rugs.

 

 

Low tech rack with pipe around it to prevent creasing.

Manual pulley construction with wood planks.

We dry many of our rugs out flat (for various reasons), but have a pulley rack system to hang a few rugs as needed. We use both Dri-Eaz LGR dehumidifiers to control the humidity in our wash facility, and I am a HUGE fan of their Studebaker AirPath air movers.

 

Yes, I'll admit it... I love the Airpath for speed drying!

We also use their Sahara air movers, just as this D-I-Y guy who created a very creative drying platform for this Kerman rug being washed out of his home. Here is his “speed dry” system for drying his rug out flat (warmer weather helps!):

 

Rug is sun bathing out flat. (Be careful of sun fade.)

BIG bucks => Electric pulley large dry rack systems.

Some large rug cleaning facilities have climate controlled dry towers with 100+ racks in them, and warm air to dry the rugs quickly. If you have the space and the volume, then this may be your choice. Or you may hire a local company to custom build you a system to fit your needs. We paid a local engineer to draft a pulley system that met weight and safety requirements, and had it made out of wood. But again, we dry most of our rugs out flat, so it is not an elaborate rack. This may be more of what you are looking for, a metal mechanized pulley dry rack system:

 

Large dry rack system.

Both small and large drying rack systems are available through Rug Badger and Centrum-Force.

The Mother-of-all-Rug-Equipment-Posts is DONE!

I have to say…not only did this take much longer to write than planned…but I did not realize I had so many options to share with you all until I started writing.

I hope this gives you a lot to think about and research in setting up your own rug cleaning operation, and doing it in a smart – and successful – manner.

If you have any questions, or additional ideas for items I missed in this overview, please post in the comments. If you have photos to share with me of “your” set-up, I’d love to see them. Please email them to me at rugchick@gmail.com.

Also – many of the links I referenced as hyperlinks in this post go to specific detailed pages (not simply their home pages), so you can see exactly what pages I was looking at as I was researching specific items.

I hope you found value from this. Now when I’m asked “Lisa, what should I buy...” – I have a BIG post to send them to in order to come up with their own perfect “educated” answer.

- Lisa

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