What I have written Below is a cautionary tale of how NOT to deal with pet stains if you are a home owner or renter and if you are a landlord be very selective for whom you rent your unit too! 

 Typically around the middle of the month I receive some last minute calls for people moving out on the 15th. Almost always you can hear the urgency in the callers voice. Having the carpets cleaned professionally  sometimes is over looked when tenants are looking for a new place to live, packing and moving. More often then not this this will occur the case when roommates are involved.

This week I had young man call me in the afternoon to book an appointment. I was just returning from carpet cleaning in Surrey and told him that I could squeeze him in the following day in the late afternoon.  This did not work for him since his landlord was coming at noon the following day for a move out inspection. Consequently, he needed the carpets cleaned that evening. Since he only lived 5 minutes away from my house I agreed. 

I asked him the typical questions: how many areas do you need cleaned, do you have pets, is their an elevator in the building and parking. He wanted 5 areas cleaned and he did have pets and their was and elevator and a underground for parking. He did mention that his pets had some accidents but that it was nothing major. He declined having me perform a pet treatment. 

From my experience renters rarely invest in additional services. They simply wanted to clean the carpets at the lowest price point to an acceptable level so they can receive their damage deposit back. 

I arrived to one of Coquitlam's newest  luxury condos about an hour after the customer and I  first spoke. I knew that his unit was going to be nice since it was a large unit. Not many of the newer apartments buildings have 3 bedrooms. 

The customer met me in the underground and brought me up to his unit. As soon as he opened the door it hit me: urine. Not a faint smell but a strong deep pungent smell. I walked in and was shocked! From our brief conversation on the phone I could have never expected what awaited me.

Above is a small sample of what the apartment looked like in and every room. Urine and dog poop  dotted the landscape from wall to wall. He saw the look in my eyes after we were done doing the initial walk through. I told him that I could clean his carpets but I could not guarantee  that I would remove the stains or the smell and that the price would be significantly higher. He had been in the apartment for two years and his dogs (yes plural he had 3 of them and one just gave birth to 5 puppies). He once again declined additional services and asked me to do my best. Within minutes of me arriving I witnessed the dog urinate twice on the carpet. 

If he had agreed to additional services we would have given him different options. We could do a subsurface extraction on each and every spot or we could pull the carpet and replace the padding underneath  and clean and seal the subfloor and then clean the carpets. 

You can't always get what you want and I had to treat this carpet like a regular carpet because the customer would not pay to have it cleaned the right way.  I explained to the customer on numerous occasions that a regular carpet cleaning was going to do very little to remedy his situation. 

First I vacuumed then  pre-sprayed the unit with an acid to neutralize the alkaline urine salts. I let the acid dwell for about twenty minutes. I then pre-sprayed with an enzyme based pre-spray (bio break) mixed with a USR (urine stain remover product). Again I let this dwell for about fifteen minutes. I then extracted with an acid rinse. The end result was as expected: the majority of stains remained and some where removed.

I asked the customer where he was moving too and what type of accommodations (house townhouse or condo) he was moving to and more importantly what type of flooring was in his new place. He gave me a  nervous look and said he was moving to another all carpeted condo. I gave him my opinion that he more than likely was not going to get his damage deposit back. As well,  he should consider himself lucky if the condo owners don't sue him in small claims court because his dogs have done thousands of dollars worth of damage to this unit. 

When I was packing up my gear (portable carpet cleaning machine) the customer asked me how much it costs and where he could get one. I don't usually do this but I suggested that he invest in a small portable spotter cleaning machine. In the carpet cleaning industry us technicians use it for small spots or stains or callbacks. Normally I would never recommend a customer purchase a tool meant for professional  carpet cleaners. However, in this instance I thought it was the appropriate since it may reduce the harm to both himself (it can't be healthy living in that environment) and his future landlord (the thousands of dollars in damage done by the dogs have to be paid for by somebody). 

Ed Scott

Today was an interesting day. I had a local real-estate agent ask me if I could clean the carpet of a 2100 sqft townhouse in Port Moody. She explained to me that the house was going to be put on the market by weeks end the carpets were in desperate need of a  steam cleaning cleaning. I had another real estate agent use the analogy of selling a car to illustrate  the point that home should be in tip top shape prior to being put on the market. The logic is that a person would be less willing to pay top dollar for a used car if it was dirty.  This makes sense.  The asking price for the 3 level 4 bedroom townhouse is over $800,000.

The total amounts of areas that needed carpet cleaning in this Port Moody townhouse was 11.  One of the worst areas in the house was the carpeted dinning room. Why builders continue install carpets in adinning area is beyond me.  

As you can see by the pictures,  this carpet did need a professional carpet cleaning. The worst areas were directly in front of the kitchen. Because of this I decided to use a enzyme based pre-spray. Enzyme pre-sprays are excellent for food based stains, oils and greases. I also added a oxygen booster to my pre-spray because of the white carpets. An oxygen booster really makes the white in the carpet pop. 

I pre-treated some of the other spots and stains with Avenge Legendary Spotter. After I had pre-vacuumed, I pre-sprayed the entire area. I let the solution dwell for around 15 minutes. I then used my Rotovac 360i to extract with an acid rinse. As you can see, once I started cleaning my Rotovac  360i cut through the dirt and grime like a hot knife through butter!

My operating temperatures during this process was at 220 degrees and the PSI was set at 400. As is always the case,  I was sure to do many dry passes with my Rotovac 360i to ensure that the carpets would be dry within a couple hours. 

The carpets turned out great and the listing agent was happy. As an added bonus the neighbour booked me to clean her townhouse the following day. 

Ed Scott

I have decided to change the style of my blog to a "week in review style." Each and every week I will summarize my work week. I will show you some of jobs I encountered and how I cleaned them. 

I will also tell you under what circumstances I obtained the work. I hope you all like this style and find tie bits of information that may help you choose the right carpet cleaner in Vancouver and Surrey.

It was 2:30 in the afternoon and I had just finnished my last job of the day (3 in total) when I received the call. I was just heading back from cleaning carpet in Port Moody. The female customer had just been released from the hospital and needed her carpets cleaned ASAP.  The carpet cleaning job was in Vancouver. The customer  had three dogs (2 large and one small) that had free reign of the house while she was in the hospital. Her neighbours had been feeding them and giving them water in her absence and taking them outside for bathroom breaks. 

Unfortunately, the dogs had some accidents. The Neighbours had closed all of the bedroom doors but the dogs had urinated on the tile floor  directly in front of the master bedroom. The urine seeped under the door and saturated the carpet. 

I arrived at 3:30 that afternoon. First I vacuumed the bedrooms. I immediately saturated the pet stain with a Odour Stain Remover  (OSR) product. I saturated the area fully to ensure the OSR would seep into the padding underneath the carpet.  Pet stains are like icebergs insofar as what you can see on the surface is a fraction what lies beneath. For effective pet stain treatment, it is imperative to treat the carpet padding.

I then pre sprayed the rest of the area with a high ph cleaning solution and 220 degree water. The next step was to use a carpet cleaning rake to agate the cleaning solution into the carpet.  After about fifteen minutes I began the hot water extraction process with our Roto-Vac 360i extractor and a acid rinse with a deodorizer (low ph cleaning solution to bring the carpets ph level back to neutrality)

After the carpets were cleaned (including the pet stain) I used a water claw to perform the subsurface extraction on the pet stain. The water claw was placed directly over top of the pet stain and extracted the OSR solution from the pad. I flushed the area with hot water until I could visually see that no more yellow liquid was being extracted from the water claw. For the final step I injected a low ph acid into the carpet pad and subfloor to neutralize any remaining contaminates. 

The job turned out well and the customer was happy with the clean carpets and the pet stain removal performed by Pacific Mist Carpet Cleaning. 

Ed Scott