Part-Timer Looking to go Bigtime!

Well Ted and Superglide,

I wish I had a drimaster because then I honestly would not be looking into the glides because I would abandon my wand.  Tried out the dry master a few times and was amazed that it could clean in any direction (forward, back, side, to side, diagonal) with the pressure constantly on and still dry in less than an hour.  The amazing thing about that tool is that is does such an efficient job of picking up the water that a dry pass picks up nothing but a few drops.  And no I am not a spokesperson for the company; just appreciate its backsaving ease of operation and efficiency. 

Thanks for the welcome Allen.  I basically plan to focus on a few markets such as residential (immediate money) and small commercial properties (slow month and winter income). 

 My marketing strategy right now is to work my warm market and get referrals from friends and friends of friends; do good work and expand from their.  I have also had some success over the past few months with flyers and small community newspaper ads.  I offer a money back guarantee and a slight percentage discount; this seems to draw them in.  I will admit you get your fair share of bargain hunters but I stick firm with my price and tell them what exceptional work I do.

There is a lot more I have in the works but I have to run to go make some MONEY!

Well Superglide I have to differ with you.  It seems like we are going to have a friendly jousting match here.  In my opinion, nothing gets out dirt from a carpet better than a pile lifter.  And I will be investing in one in about 2 weeks to use before I extract or bonnet clean or both.

I can't comment on your glides until I see them but I have used the drimaster at 500 psi with the pump always on (cleaning in any direction I please) and achieving drying times in less than one hour.  Very impressive.  There is no way 500 psi is not cleaning deep unless of course the uplift is not there and most of the water remains in the carpet (which is not the case with the drimaster).

In my opinion the drimaster is so efficient at picking up the water because of the amazingly tight seal it forms with the carpet.  The head is also designed in such a way as to cause a vacuum (cyclone effect) and draw water up into the vacuum slots.

Until they make a wand that is self powered and cleans in all directions you will not convince me that a glide makes a wand as easy and effortless to operate as a drimaster.

Well Gmoney, it looks like I will have to educate you on how the RDM really works. Before I do that point by point however, let me commend you on your decision to use a pile lifter as part of your cleaning program. You will deffinatly be way ahead of the 10% or so that use a vacuum and the other 89% that use none.

First off I want you to know what I tell you about equipment is done from a high degree of understanding about how things work.If I do not understand how something works, I take it apart until I do understand how it works. I studied engineering long before I got into cleaning carpet or selling stuff to carpet cleaners.I do not make self serving statements about products I make working better unless that is a fact. I have studied the RDM extensivly and do know how it works and what it can and can not do.

First off the RDM does not clean deep. It directs it's water horizontally without the use of jets in a sheet-like pattern along the bottom of the tool. This is called cleaning by side shear.No water is directed down into the carpet like an RX20 or a Rotovac or even a wand does. Because of that, only the tips of the carpet are cleaned, not the carpet base or backing. As mentioned earlier, that is where most of the soiling is. It is not possible to get it out of there without the flushing action of the water to act as a carrier and emulsifing agent.

You might wonder how the carpet can still look so clean if this machine does not deep clean it? That is easy to explain if you know how carpet is constructed. The mills design the fibers to hide dirt! Isn't that amazing? They do this by shaping the fibers in such a way that a carpet can have pounds of soil in it and not even show it. Remove soil from the surface or the tips of it, and you cannot see what you are leaving behind. To the eyes it still looks clean.

The main reason that there is so little watter left in the carpet is because of it only contacting the tips. Extracting water from the carpet tips is easy to do because the filiment used to construct the face fibers holds on to very little water.The water is drawn across the bottom of the machine on its way to the 3 vacuum ports that are placed there. The tips of the carpet fibers that go into the horizontal water stream get washed by the water then extracted by the vacuum slot that follows. Very little water is retained by the part of the fiber that was washed. Hence, the fast drying.

Conventional tools clean down to the carpet back, and take longer to dry because at least 80% of the water is held there. Because the vacuum from a machine is only effective extracting water when the vacuum is within a 1/4" of the lips of the machine, a fair amount gets left behind in the deep cleaning process and has to exit the carpet through evaporation.Evaporation then takes hours to do because the carpet has to wick the water out and evaporate it through the fiber tips. that is, the back dries first.

The RDM does NOT form a tight seal with the carpet, just like my glides do NOT form a tight seal with the carpet either to reach fast dry times. To do so would be self defeating. When too tight a seal is formed with the carpet, cfm goes down. Since it is air that carries away the water and soil from a carpet, you want more of it, not less. By forming a less than a tight seal, airflow is increased and more water is carried away, leaving the carpet drier.Increased lift helps, but not if it reduces airflow.

And lastly about your statement about the head designed to cause a cyclone effect; this is simply not true. The RDM is designed to pull the air across the carpet fibers in a laminar flow pattern. This has been shown to produce the greatest drying effect on the carpet tips and move the greatest volume of airflow. To do it any other way would not have produced the rapid drying results they were looking for.

Bottom line here is the machine does what they wanted it to do, which is dry carpet fast and produce a good appearance of the carpet to the residential customer. It was just done with some compromise on the degree of cleaning acheived is all. Some people will be happy accepting that compromise for the delivered results. I happen to be not one of them. The RX20 machine cleans much better(residential and commercial carpeting), and can deliver 1 hour dry times with the ZXR2 skids I developed for it. That is only about 15 minutes longer than the RDM takes on average. More importantly though, if you have an RX20 with my skids on it, you will be able to add the Power-Dri system to it next year when I bring it out. For those of you that don't know what that is, it will allow you to dry the carpet to meter dry in 5 to 10 minutes by attaching it to your Cleanco Truckmount. I currently get $1.00/sq ft for carpet that I clean this way here in Calgary. It will be coming to Toronto soon.

Superglide Ken

no I typed Teflon.... doug is a dirty little man

Well, well, well,

Ken it is time for me to be more direct.  I will give you credit as a resourceful salesman that always has an axe to grind and embellishes to the 'nth' degree.  I have been doing a little research myself and it is a known fact that you use posts and carpet cleaners' forums to market your current or up and coming 'inventions'.  A word of advice, be careful what you claim is your 'invention'.  There is no shame in taking a concept and trying to improve on it; Microsoft did it with the Windows Explorer browser. 

You have a fairly good understanding of the technology in the industry but lose the power of your arguement with your outrageous claims.  Cut the bull.  Honesty is the best way to go (most of the time).  I have been in many sales jobs myself and we all have stretched the truth a bit; the customer expects that. 

You know as well as I do that nothing will remove more dry dirt from the base of the carpet than a pile lifter.  If this step is performed, blasting the carpet backing at 500 psi and trying to now pull up more of the dry dirt is a exercise in futility.  At this stage extraction of dissolved soils (with the help of a pre spray and dwell time) in the carpet is the main goal of a carpet cleaning technician.  This can be achieved by a variety of methods; not only steam.  Steam gives the  best rinse but not necessarily the best appearance.  That is why many of us like Mr. Steamer when doing restaurants for instance will bonnet and steam.  I have tried and I'm really amazed and impressed by OP cleaning in a variety of situations.  But that is another discussion altogether.

Drimaster does shoot out the water in a sheet but this does not imply that it is not pentrating the surface.  Try throwing a sheet of water on the carpet at 500 psi with 360 passes per minute and feel for yourself if only the "tips" of the carpet are wet.  Do you know how close the solution slots are to the carpet?  They are almost touching the carpet.  500 psi from that close is not just wetting the 'tips'; impossible.

When trying to dry carpet there is a delicate balance between forming a tight seal and allowing space for air flow which in turn aids in suction.  The Drimaster DOES form a tight seal (not to the point of restricting air flow). We all know what happens you angle your wand wrong and do not get a tight seal; you get less suction.  Maybe we should all angle our wands 45 degrees when cleaning carpets to allow air and thus sacrificing a tight seal. 

My whole point about liking the drimaster was that it is easier on the body and is CONSTANTLY CLEANING.  I also like it because it hits the carpet fibre from all directions due to its rotation.   A wand cannot achieve this.  At no point did I want to get into a head to head which would allow you to find another way to plug your glides and their amazing drying time (supposedly).  If the material you use is slippery enough and durable then the ease of moving the wand back and forth will be a welcome benefit to some.  I will not argue with you on that issue. 

My understanding was that you sold your 'thriving' carpet cleaning business.  Now I read in one post that you are getting 50cents/square foot and now in this post it has doubled to $1.00/square foot; which is it?  Enquiring minds want to know!

Ken, I know you are trying to make a buck just like the rest of us and I admire your perseverance.  The best form of advertising for you and your products would be for many of your customers to come forth and say they have achieved 1 hr drying times using steam with your glide.  Have not seen it happen on any of the forums.  Another word of advice,  why don't you focus on the reduced labour needed to operate the glide and that improved drying over a regular wand is achieved.

Waiting to hear your next infomercial response.

Ken I have to say I admire your spunk.  Thanks for your latest infomercial by the way!  Before I get all hot headed let  me say that my only goal in continuing this dialogue with you is to bring out the FACTS and make this board as productive and educational as possible.  And a little debating never hurt anyone; much safer than weapons of mass destruction! An expert I am not and that is why I am on this board; to learn as much as I can. 

The one that has to do the proving is YOU not me.  I told you to have your current clients speak up in your defense regarding the drying times of all your innovations.  This I have not seen still.  Toot your own horn as much as you want but SHOW me and I'll be satisfied.  Why don't you send a glide down to Ted this week and I'll invite those from the board in the GTA and local media to witness it going head to head with a drimaster.  That would make me a believer since you already said it can achieve faster drying times.  

You should also be a millionaire already if you can dry a carpet in 10 minutes and and a water logged underpadding in 1 hr.  And if you are not, then we should talk about your marketing strategy and funding structure.  Their should be feature stories on you and your 'innovations' in the local newspaper, industry publications and the like.  I could go on and on, but I digress. Sorry, that is the salesman talking again.  

Now lets clarify my identity.  You know what they say   Their are a couple of people that you might thnk I am because of your interaction with them on other boards but I assure you are wrong.  I live in Toronto and buy chemicals off of Ted at Kleen Kuip and talk with him often.  In fact, if you read one of my previoius posts refering to an ancient Clarke machine, it was purchased from Ted about 15 years ago. 

This brings me to my next point.  I am a newbie on the board (the first I became part of) but not in this industry.  My IICRC certications have been acquired through Ted and Chemspec. 

And stop ignoring what I saying.  I was the one that said their is no shame in attempting to improve on an innovation because Microsoft did it with their Internet Explorer.

And I was the one that said I was going to be using a pile lifter to remove the dry dirt and then a pre spray to loosen the soils that are adhering to the carpet fibre prior to extraction, bonneting or padding.  This is my method, I do not care if most carpet cleaners don't do it.  So don't try and reword what I just said claim it as your own.  I'm starting to see a pattern here Ken!

Now lets get technical.  You cannot be over technical with me Ken so give me your best shot.  Since you are vocal about your mechanical egineering background I will tell you mine. I have a degree in the sciences from university and I'm well schooled in physics (one of my favourite subjects).

Let me school you on water consumption and PSI.  Doubling the PSI does NOT double your flow rate.  There is a slight increase but it is not directly proportional.  Enough said. 

I'll contact hydramaster and see if your claims of built in pressure reduction are valid.  So you are telling me that if I was to dial up 500 psi on the drimaster it automatically cuts my psi half!  Like I said I will call the manufacturer and get back to you on that one.

Now I think I need to explain to you a little bit about seal and lbs/square inch.  Two of the main variables that seal is dependent upon is the amount of surface area in contact with surface in question and the amount of force (lbs/square inch) exerted upon that surface.  The weight of the drimaster coupled with the amount of surface area (validated by you I might say) in contact with the carpet ensures a tight seal.  Like I said before you need a delicate balance of seal and lift.  You also support my argument because despite all of the drimaster's shortcomings (seal, airflow etc)  it still outperforms a wand and wand plus glide.  And I repeat again, this is with the trigger being pressed constantly.  Which proves your theory on cfm:lbs/sq inch ratio incorrect.  Time to go back to the drawing board Ken.  When you get it right I will be the first one to applaud you.

You need to pick your battles more selectively.  Once you heard me mention drimaster in my previous post you were all over that like flies to -----!  Why?  Oh yeah, informercial time. 

Then you thought your technical talk would impress me and the others on this board.  Like I said before, you are knowldgeable and your knowledge is an asset to our industry.  But I will speak up when I feel you are not giving the other board members 'the straight goods'.   

Looking forward to hearing from you.