Commercial carpet cleaning machines are different from regular housekeeping vacuum cleaners. It is harder to operate professional carpet cleaning equipment and special training is required.
Basically, the main difference between regular carpet cleaning machines (such as vacuum cleaners) and commercial carpet cleaning equipment is the market. Vacuum cleaners are mostly used by housekeepers. Commercial carpet cleaners on the other hand are used by professional caper cleaners.
This page is about commercial carpet cleaning equipment. These machines are great solution for business owner.
As a business owner, whether they own a restaurant, movie theatre, or any other type of business, they need to clean large areas in short period of time and because of commercial nature of these areas, the carpet gets dirty quicker. If you have dirty carpet, that will repel customers and build bad reputation around your business. For that reason, many business owners hire professional carpet cleaners. Another option for these business owners is to buy commercial carpet cleaning machine and clean carpet yourself.
In both cases, your carpet must be cleaned with powerful cleaning machines, such as portable extractors or truck mounts.
As we discussed earlier, vacuum cleaners are not the option for commercial jobs because of their lack of power. It will take you hours and hours to clean your carpet. Vacuum cleaners will not provide you with deep cleaning.
Commercial carpet cleaning machines, on the other hand, are specially designed for big jobs. They are capable of cleaning large areas in short period of time providing superior performance and deep cleaning. Most of commercial carpet cleaning equipment use steam cleaning technology. That means that machine sprays hot water mixed with cleaning chemicals onto the carpet and then suck it back when dirt is dissolved. Using steam cleaning technology dramatically improves cleaning performance of the equipment. As we all know, water is a great solvent by itself. Adding to that powerful carpet cleaning chemicals makes it even better solvent. And adding to that heat leaves no chance for dirt to stay. That is why commercial cleaners do such a great job and so popular in carpet cleaning industry.
However, not all the commercial carpet cleaning machines can guarantee you this superior performance. There are few things you should pay attention to when choosing commercial cleaning machine. Let us give you some tips on how to select the best cleaning machine for your business.
1. Heat is important! Pay close attention to heat. The more heat you can get from your machine, the better it performs. Truck Mounts provide more heat than portable machines. It is preferred that heat for truck mount equipment is 190°F and up. When purchasing portable carpet cleaning equipment, make sure it has a heater (internal is preferred, however, you can have external heater as well)
2. Power! Power! This comes intuitively. The more power you can get from your machine, the better it is. And again, truck mounts are more powerful than portable extractors. Power of truck mount equipment usually starts from 14HP and up, whereas portables have a wide variety of different powers. When purchasing portable, check their wattage rating that reflects its power.
3. Bigger tank! Commercial carpet cleaning machines usually have 2 tanks: solution and recovery tanks. Solution tank is where you keep water mixed with chemicals (solution), and recovery tank is where the dirty water goes after the cleaning process. It makes logic sense, that the bigger these tanks are, the more area you can clean. This is a crucial fact for big businesses such as movie theaters, universities, and etc.
4. High Pressure Pump! What this pump does is it sprays the chemical solution onto the carpet. The rating for high pressure pump is in PSI (per square inch). The higher PSI rating, the deeper chemicals can go into the carpet and the more dirt can be dissolved. Off course, if you have high PSI rating, you also have to have good vacuum suction. Otherwise, your carpet will be wet for quite a while.
5. Dry time! Your business must operate every day, and that would be inappropriate to close it for a day because of your carpet is still wet. For that reason, dry time is very important. Dry time is the time required for a carpet to dry. This factor depends on heat and power. To reduce dry time, you have to have high temperature and powerful suction.
Of course there are many more factors you have to take into consideration when purchasing commercial carpet cleaning machine. We listed only few, but one of the most important ones. For more information, please call us at713-668-1212 and we will do our best to help you to choose the right carpet cleaning equipment.