I Want My Own Section Like Doug

DISPELLING SOME POPULAR OPINIONS Why the weird title? Over time, people hear the same things over and over so often, they begin to believe them without further thought. Next thing you know, they start repeating it to others, who take their words as authority. Without any hard proof, I can only call such ideas - opinions. Folks who fail to take a look at REAL LIFE, REAL WORLD results, and alternative ways of achieving the same or better result, will always try to discourage you.

They will always put down others in order to make themselves look and feel better. No one wants to be told that he's been sold a bill of goods. No one wants to be told his limitations. So don’t bother with them.

You will soon meet and get to know the REAL professionals out there. Likewise you will meet charlatans, as in any business. And you will get to meet the ignorant. Thank the latter two, because they are where you will get your best long-term clients.

A true professional will take the time to learn and try new and different innovations. Once you've read what I had to say, you may do some of your own research and discover that there are a limited number of truly professional carpet cleaners out there. You may be surprised at that number.

With the solution I’ve packaged, though we may not offer as much heat as a truck-mounted unit (maybe, maybe not, it depends - read on) , we increase the AGITATION factor beyond what most folks out there are now using - truck mount or not. This process lifts and separates carpet yarns so that the vacuum can do it’s job of extracting deep-down dirt. A regular wand just doesn’t have the capability of doing this in as efficient a manner. Attempts to do so with one can seriously degrade the carpet.

HOW DOES THIS SYSTEM COMPARE WITH WHAT'S OUT THERE ALREADY?

TRUCKMOUNT :

TIME - Variable, usually as short (fast) as possible to get out to the next job. In itself, not a bad thing.

AGITATION - Variable, usually a couple of wet strokes and a dry stroke or two. Most often with a hand wand (like an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner handle.).

CHEMICALS - Variable. usually use as little as possible yet still see some results. One carpet professional was overheard saying he could show how to decrease chemical usage down to about 1 to 5% of what manufacturers recommend.
This is like using a single drop of shampoo to wash your hair with...Try it sometime.
His bottom line was literally his bottom line. He wasn’t really interested in long-term customers.
Another company reportedly used 2 teaspoons of laundry detergent - the powder kind, since it’s cheaper, to make up 5 gallons of solution “concentrate”. Using only that solution “concentrate” to feed their solution line, and no other chemicals, they were the oldest and one of the busiest companies in their town. By saving the $5.00-$15.00 in chemicals that would normally be used on each job, it’s easy to see how they could charge less and still be making the same profit as other companies. But you know what? They actually charge MORE!!!

HEAT - Variable, depends upon type of system, length of hoses run, outside air temperature, water input temperature. If you combine a long hose run,  low outside air temperature, low water input temperature, older equipment,  you can be looking at some pretty UN-hot solution...and that is with a truck-mounted unit.

Results? Poor to pretty good.

MOST PORTABLES :

TIME - Usually as fast as possible - because they aren't charging as much. Sometimes because they don’t know what they are really doing.

AGITATION - Same as most truck mounts above...An extraction wand. If the wand is of the wrong type, it won’t be as effective as it should be, or it may overwet the carpet. A wand designed for truck-mounts may not work well with a portable.

CHEMICALS - Same as most truck mounts above...May or may not be used properly. Be careful of old or unmarked chemicals. Check hazard warnings carefully.

HEAT - None to some.

Results? Ugly to Fair.

Our Package: THE ROTARY HOT WATER EXTRACTION PORTABLE   PACKAGE AND PROCEDURES

TIME - As much as it takes to get clean. No more, no less.

AGITATION - Superior. Nothing more can be said. It would take at least 4-6 times more work to approach the same results with a wand. Truck-mounted or not.

CHEMICALS - The “NEW GENERATION” of chemicals at the proper time, in the proper amount, with the proper application. Using "mix your own", laundry detergent, dishwashing detergents, other household chemicals, older-type (toxic) chemicals, etc. frequently accounts for the poor results some people get with a portable. Rather than blame it on their own ignorance and carelessness, the problem is blamed on the machine.

HEAT - 140 to 200 degrees. Depending upon options you order.

RESULTS? Very Nice. The kind of results that get you repeat business and referrals from quality customers.

DRYING, AIR MOVEMENT, AIRFLOW AND PRESSURE

Now that carpets are clean, how do you prevent other problems?

Truckmounts HAVE to be more powerful to make up for long hose runs (100-200 feet, compared to 15-25 feet with portables), clogging filters, more solution being put down (150-300 psi from 3 jets, compared to 100-200 psi from 2 jets with most portables) , and the fact that most companies are still using the 20-plus year-old hand wand design to clean with. Keep reading.

I've talked to at least one worker who cleaned a building with a 450-foot hose run on a truck mount.

This means, each time he lifted the wand off the carpet partial hose vacuum was lost. Each time he put it back down, the vacuum blower could begin evacuating the 2" diameter flexible hose along it's 450 feet until there was finally enough vacuum to continue extracting. This means a lag of 1-2 seconds each time it’s put back down before it does any real extraction.

By then, unfortunately, the wand is already drawn back and lifted off the floor.

There are more factors related to airflow resistance. With each bend and turn hose makes getting to the work area, the air in the hose has to change direction, causing friction and speed reduction. In addition, as the air simply moves through the hose itself, it scrapes along inside the walls of the hose. The more hose there is, the more friction.

So, with this parasitic friction, PLUS that caused by twists and turns, the vacuum blower has to work harder simply to get the air from one end of the hose to the other. That is wasted energy.

(Remember that vacuum specs are USUALLY taken right at the intake of the machine, without a length of hose attached.)

To prove it to yourself, get a vacuum - any vacuum and attach a long hose to it.

Turn it on and let it run up to constant speed. Without moving the open end of the hose, pull the machine end of the hose off the intake and notice the change in pitch of the engine or motor. Even with nothing on the end of the hose, the hose itself causes the motor to work harder.

As more proof, put your hand over the intake and feel the vacuum pressure. Now replace the hose and put your hand on the end of the hose, leaving your hand over it long enough to build up vacuum again. Now remove your hand. Much easier? Try adding additional sections of hose and repeat.

To make matters worse, hose couplings are not always of the highest quality. There is leakage both where the coupling is screwed onto the hose, as well as between adjoining couplings themselves.

That carpet I mentioned at the beginning of this discussion must either have been left pretty wet, or pretty dirty, or that person spent a LOOOONG time trying to dry stroke it. Seeing as how the solution was also run in a 450-foot length, it couldn't have been much more than very warm, either. Just as with the vacuum hose, the long solution line will also lose some pressure, but more importantly, along the hose itself and especially at the metal couplings, it is losing heat the whole time.

What is a radiator, but really a long, rigid hose, wrapped closer together, which loses heat to the air around it? That long solution line was nothing more than a heat exchanger. The halls must have been nice and cozy.

The solution coming out of the wand certainly wasn’t.

I've worked with up to 200 feet of solution hose (vacuum was totally ridiculous - I sincerely think a Shop Vac would have done better). We usually judge the solution temperature by what we feel and see. If I pick up a solution line by the brass fittings and don't have to play hot potato with it...it's not as hot as I want it to be - if I'm using a wand anyway.

Each length of hose removed noticeably increases both solution temperature and vacuum power. Each length added costs heat and vacuum.

TEMPERATURE LOSSES

There is probably at least a 25-30 degree difference between a 100 foot and 200 foot solution hose. That's considerable. After all, if you told your customer your machine gets up to 210 degrees (at the outlet on the machine), with such a run, you may actually be cleaning at 180-185 degrees, but probably much less . If your machine was putting out 190 degrees, the working end may see only 160 degrees of heat AT THE NOZZLES.

Now consider: When solution is sprayed, it loses another 10 to 30 degrees in that few inches of air before it hits the floor. Since the solution is sprayed so fine, the droplets can’t retain heat for long. As when you take a shower on a cold morning, though the water is HOT at the showerhead, you feel WARM and EVEN COOL droplets hitting your feet or calves.

What’s happened here? The air stole the heat from your shower. That’s why the bathroom and halls get so warm afterward.

This is why, even though a truck mount may be producing 210 - even 220 degrees at the output, you may be trying to clean a carpet with solution of only 150-160 degrees - WITH A TRUCK MOUNT and 100 feet of hose!

Add another 50-100 feet or add some cooler outside air temperature and guess what? The bathroom hot water faucet may very well be hotter than the solution from a truck mount!

Remember that, because this discussion will come up again once you are working.

On a cold or rainy day, truck mounts may have little or no advantage over you here.

VACUUM AND CFM

What about vacuum? Most NEW truck mounts can achieve vacuum pressure of 12-14" of mercury lift (163 - 190.4" of Water Lift) at the intake. MOST, not all.

The last unit I ran was only putting out 10" of mercury (136" of Water Lift) , 12" (163" Water Lift) on a very good day. It had throttle problems and would not sustain the desired RPM. It also overheated if run too long at too high a speed.

I won't tell you that a portable can compete with those raw specs - because you also need to consider CFM - Cubic Feet Per Minute.

While truck mounts come in at between 199-299 CFM at say, 162" Water Lift, depending on the unit, condition, etc., practical portables are doing well if they get 105 CFM and reach 155".

Contrary to popular opinion, as lift pressure increases, CFM decreases. Horsepower requirements increase. While a unit moves 160 CFM at 14" (Hi vacuum), it will move 186 CFM at 6" (low vacuum).

You may hear figures bandied about like "Our unit moves 400 CFM. Blower rated at 14" HG." Yes, it may move 400 CFM but at 2" (two) of HG. And it may achieve 14" of vacuum, but will be moving 325 CFM at that pressure.

The figures you are given are all part of marketing. At 10" HG (136" Water Lift), as a comparison to the portables, the most often heard truck-mount blower models move between 150-250 CFM at about 3,000 rpm.

At 12" HG (163" Water Lift), they move between 130-240 CFM.

I have no published figures from portable blower manufacturers themselves - only distributor descriptions, which I won't rely upon here.

What exactly does this all mean?

Alright.

In plain english, truck mounts can move some where between 1.5 to 4.5 times MORE air than portables at about the same working pressure. BUT as discussed, the longer the hose, the less of an advantage they have. They lose some advantage of higher vacuum lift as well as airflow capacity.

So, in some cases, PORTABLES with nothing more than a wand do clean better than truck mounts. In some instances they may be the same, in others, truck mounts will do a better job - IF they have all the proper equipment and chemicals. Continue reading...

Truck mounts put down more water, so they HAVE to move more air to get it all out again. Because of usually longer hose runs, truck mounts HAVE to move more air per minute at a higher vacuum to re-pressurize hoses between cleaning strokes and still give good performance.

A lot of that high vacuum power is ALSO spent moving the greater amount of solution water a longer way back to the machine.

POLLUTION AND AIR QUALITY FACTORS

A feature of truck mounts that is touted often is that they move the pollutants out of doors so all you are left with is clean air. Right? Not always.

There is a case of two technicians who began cleaning a house, only to be found deceased at the scene later - having succumbed to exhaust gasses from their own truck-mounted equipment. Truck mounts put out a lot of pollutants of their own, unless they are electrically-powered.

Ideally, with the most modern equipment a truck mount engine SHOULD only put out carbon dioxide and water as the main exhaust components. The world is not perfect and neither is technology. They still put out considerable hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide as well as sulfur dioxide.

Once shut down and the van doors closed, the engine also continues to "out-gas" - meaning leftover pollutants, especially those that are the most harmful - the PARTIALLY-BURNT ones, accumulate within the van itself. If you feel nauseous, headachey, dizzy, etc., you may well be feeling the effects of these VERY concentrated pollutants.

One technician I rode with would always roll up the windows and turn the air conditioner to the MAX setting after a job. The MAX setting on most vehicles means the air is not moved out of the vehicle, but simply recirculated to help the A/C cool down quicker. Lack of common sense and education prevented him from realizing he was poisoning BOTH of us. Eventually, I simply rolled the window down and let him grumble about hot air all he wanted. I tried to inform him of the facts several times, but he apparently had gotten too many fumes in the past to retain this.

Back to work. Replacement air has to come from someplace and unless it's very windy outside, a good portion of that humid air, now polluted with exhaust fumes, is going to end up right back in the house through open doors or windows or vent intakes.

So much for the truck mount argument of moving pollutants out of the house. As has happened, there are “technicians” out there who will literally kill themselves or make their customers very sick because they simply don’t know what they are doing.

PORTABLES

If humidity starts to get uncomfortable or customers begin to complain, a portable extractor can easily be placed outside a door and have sufficient hose to reach the work without seriously degrading vacuum. While some portion of exhaust air will still make it back inside, it won't contain machine combustion exhaust gasses.

Also, most homes today have a venting/fan setting on their central air systems. Have the homeowner use it. That’s what it’s there for.

So, is a truck-mount STILL the “only way to go”?

If you say yes, you are fooling yourself - your truck mount sales man has done a good job of brainwashing you. Ask for a field demonstration on the 10th floor of an apartment or office building with weather or security doors. I'd like to hear their solution.

The most common I've heard is to duct-tape several lengths of hose together, run them up to the 10th floor, then open a window and lower one end down to the truck. That would probably be about 40 pounds of hose, tape, wastewater, etc., all dangling from 120 feet up. You need a gorrilla at the window to keep the weight of the hose from pulling your wand or other equipment out the window to the ground below. Whose name should the passersby below use for the lawsuit??? As ridiculous as it sounds, that's the solution I keep hearing over and over again. People swear that it worked for them and no lawsuits were filed.

I've turned down at least hundreds of dollars in work because a truck mount just wouldn't fill the bill.

Can you start to see now why "More is Better" doesn't always apply?

OTHER EXTRACTION FACTORS:

With our package, the rotary cup design of the machine heads tends to keep both solution and vacuum under the cups and out of the open air. One thing this accomplishes is that the air the solution mist travels through before hitting the carpet retains more heat than an open wand design. This helps you to compete with the truck mounts.

When you are using our rotary extractor package, the pressure peaks and valleys of lifting and lowering the wand are eliminated, and a more constant vacuum is maintained. The specially designed "cups" that actually do the cleaning are not lowered and raised constantly. This means less CFM is wasted.

Instead, they seal themselves against the carpet so that ALL the vacuum is used to extract dirt and solution from fibers. With a wand, besides the constant change in vacuum, losses occur simply sliding it across the open tops of carpeting. With our extractor, this takes place UNDER the cups.

With the cupped method, each fiber is under the cup during the process and is exposed to agitation and a constant vacuum at the rate of 750 passes per minute.

This means moisture that is coaxed from the yarn by the agitators has a better chance of being extracted by the ever-present vacuum.

That sounds good....but in reality, no one keeps such a device over each piece of carpet for a full minute.

In practical use, each fiber gets about 12.5 strokes per pass. Compare that to one stroke per pass with a regular wand - like most are using - some without benefit of prespotting, prespraying - even chemicals period.

When used as we recommend, in addition to pre-spotting, prespraying with emulsifiers and detergents, each fiber gets no less than 2 wet passes and 3-4 dry passes. That's a total of between 62-75 cleaning strokes when using our methods and equipment.

How can you compare wand-only companies doing 2 wet passes/strokes and 1 dry pass/stroke to such action? (Many only do 1 wet pass/stroke and 1 dry pass/stroke).

You don't....they can't

Further, wanding only attacks dirt from the forward and backward motion.

With the Rotovac's counter-rotating heads, dirt is hit from 360 degrees, first in one direction then in the other, encouraging much more of it to come out and be extracted.

An Important Point: Heat does not dry carpets. The person who tells you so is being ignorant. Air is what dries carpet. You will run into clients who will have cranked the heat up in the house and closed all the windows to “help you along”.

Turn off the heat, it’s just being wasted until you are done. Air only holds so much moisture, then becomes saturated. That’s called fog. I’ve seen fog in houses. The technician I was with suggested turning the heat up higher. That would have been called a sauna. I simply told him to open the doors and windows. Moving moist air out of the house and getting drier air in is the key to drying carpet quicker. Customer education is important. Low to moderate heat is all that is required, ifdesired, BUT air movement is crucial. Technicians who do not tell customers this will only get callbacks and complaints about wet carpet and mold/mildew.

Given all of these factors in total...do you begin to see the CLEANING POWER of this combination?

You CAN do as good a job and better than MOST companies out there.

*

It's Lee's two day CCT school-----exam to follow.as soon as you send in the $$$$$$$$.

Lee does Shaw know about this, they may want to discard their Steamin Demon's and go to this method.