Simple Chemical Question

mr slide;

so, when to use carpet rinse and when to use water? does using just water affect the cleaning process?

 

An extraction rinse product has two or three situations where they have an advantage.

1. Heavily soiled traffic area. This may need several passes with the wand to scrub the soil out. With an rinse only product, after the first pass of the wand you have rinsed away the prespray. Now you are trying to clean this heavily soiled area with no cleaning agnet. But if you are using an extraction formula, you still have some cleaning juice coming throuhg the wand.

2. There is funriture that you need to clean under but you did not prespray under it. You did not want to move it twice. But most of the dirt under the funriture is not heavy soil because no one walks there. The extraction rinse cleaner is enough to clean this area with just fine.

As to cleaning out soapy water with more soap, the key to understanding this is surfactancy or the ability to make water wetter. Plain water has surface tension because the water molecules have an attraction for each other. They form relatively large drops. Add even a little detergent and the water no longer sticks together. It will form very small drops that can penetrate to rinse soils and prespray from between individual filaments of fibers and into tiny abrasions and irregularities on the surface of the fiber. Regualr water won't reach those areas.

Extraction products generally get diluted around 400:1. It takes very little to be effective at rinsing. You will actually leave less detergent behind than if you used tap water.