OP Cleaning - Question and Answers

A. It is best to squeeze them out, do not wring them out, we advertise an hour dry, this allows us plenty of moisture for a quick deep clean. To dry of pads and you will not clean as deeply nor as quickly. Remember, we are VLM no NM LOL
Exceptions are olefins or where there is a lot of old soap in the carpets, there you clean with wrung out pads.

Q. What is mandatory after Op'ing a carpet?

A. Vacuuming the carpet, the nature of OP is to lift the carpet pile, once lifted you will remove more particulates than ever, plus the vacuuming of damp carpet does a great job of grooming the carpet fibers.

Q. How do you know when you are finished cleaning?

A. When the carpet looks great and the pads are GRAY, you will not get them to stay white, that is impossible. That is one of the reasons why when a TM newbie comes on one of the bbs's and states, "I HWE with my TM and then pad with a cotton pad and get NO soil, I usually type four letters.... L I A R .

Q. What do you do when you have a really bad graphite stain?

A. Vacuum good and then spray lightly as usual. Clean like normal and what doesn't come out use a DRY pad on.

Q. What is imperative when cleaning a soft top nylon residential carpet?

A. Using a glider, this keeps the OP machine from digging too deeply and distorting fibers. If the carpet is too soft or is a FRIEZE, then use EnCapSuPads, (synthetic pads) to eliminate any danger of tip blooming.

Q. What carpets look MUCH better after they are totally dry?

A. Olefins and polyesters always look MUCH better dry then when they are just finished being cleaned.

Q. How do you remove a soap or hair shampoo spill from the carpet with OP?

A. Use a SOPPING wet pad, agitate the soap and let it foam up real good, take your glider and scrape the carpet, putting the soap into the dirty pad bucket. Then use a dry pad. Now the soap is gone, don't believe me, use another wet pad and you will have NO FOAM at all.

Q. How do you ELIMINATE wickbacks on a heavy beverage spill?

A. Clean normally first, if it is quite heavy then use a wet pad followed by a couple of TOTALLY dry pads, they will take up the moistue and the remainder of the beverage spill.

Q. How long should you run a pad, or HOW do you know when it is time to change it or turn it over?

A. It is time to turn over or change a pad when it stops cleaning quickly. Watch the carpet as you clean, when you put down a new pad it cleans very fast, as soon as you see it slowing down turn it over or get another pad. If you go over the carpet with dirty pads you are a dirt swirler! LOL

Q. How do you pad a signficantly delaminated carpet like a rubber back that "should" be thrown out?

A. You use a thicker glider and you can clean it, keep the machine raised up off the carpet with the thicker glider and the pull on the carpet is minimal.

Q. How do you clean fast on FILTHY carpets?

A. It is very important to let the machine do the work, not YOU, so many will try to move the machine quickly over the carpet. Move the machine SLOWLY over the carpet and change pads quickly and you will see the square footage of cleaning per hour go up.

Q. Where does the dirt go?

A. So many fail to understand just how absorbent cotton pads are, when using a glider to clean, the glider has a very small hole in the center, yet if you clean a dirty carpet, it may have a dirty area the size of a quarter behind that little tiny hole, why? Because of the way cotton draws soils from other synthetic fibers, it makes it a very easy vehicle to remove soils.

Q. How do you clean corners?

A. Let's see, a convex area, maybe three inches? By hand of course, but SELDOM is that corner going to be very dirty. Usually vacuuming is more than enough, but cleaning that area by hand requires very little effort.

Q. A brief easy to understand statement on pad cleaning, and the differences between OP and Bonnet cleaning.

A. OP cleaning while "appearing" to be similar to bonnet cleaning is quite different.

Agitation being the MAIN difference. Oscillation by nature DIGS into the carpet where the rotary action of a floor machine wipes over the top. Combine that with the increased absorption and contact points of cotton terri as opposed to looped bonnets and you have a method that not only cleans better but deeper as well.

Q. Why don't carpet mills recommend it?

A. Interesting question, and a lot of politics can be added to this one! First off most mills have not tested OP cleaning, and equate it to bonnet cleaning. They see bonnet cleaning as a interim method of surface cleaning, not as the deep cleaning method that OP offers. In time the mills will see and test this and see what it does as far as cleaning is concerned and hopefully change their views, however this will take time, there are a lot of sacred cows in this industry, HWE being one of them.

*Note: The statement that OP cleaning VOIDS warranties is simply FALSE.

There is a mill currently considering making this the recommended method in Australia, they are manufacturers of commercial wool carpets.

Q. Will the Brat do encapsulating?

A. Absoltuely, and it can be done with the fiber plus or porko pads.

Q. Removing adhesives from carpeting.

A. This is just one of the many types of stains that is much easier for OP than most other methods. Once a pog is applied to the carpet stain, or adhesive in this instance, and once that stain is loosened the agitation of OP easily scrubs and lifts the adhesive from the carpet. The oscillating action digs deep to remove all the adhesive.

Q. Is it really dry in one hour?

A. We only care that the carpet is dry in one hour, however on lightly soiled carpets, much less time is required for drying. We do find however that it is easier and faster to clean using the squeezed out pads that are WETTER than to do it with drier slower cleaning pads. In short, we do not strive for faster than one hour dry, because it is to our advantage to use more moisture to enhance the speed of cleaning.

Q. Do you have tips for keeping the swiss cheese glider under the 17" oscillating pad carpet cleaning machine?

A. My favorite glider is the very small one, however if you like the swiss cheese glider then it may be beneficial to glue a couple small pieces of Velcro to the area between holes to enable it so stay under the machine without kicking out during carpet cleaning.