CLEANING YOUR CARPET FILTER!
My carpet doesn’t have a filter, does it? Well not really, but it does function like one. For reasons I’ll explain later this filtering is very beneficial. Have you ever thought about what is really being collected, tracked through and spilled into your carpet?
The most common household pollutants are; dirt, dust, pollens, stearic acid, hair, pet dander, asphalt, sand, smoke residues, hydrocarbons, mites, fleas, dead skin, dead mites & fleas, tar, bacteria, foods, drinks, fungus, and sometimes viruses. Quite a few eh! The hydrocarbons come from outdoor pollution and your gas appliances, the stearic acids come from cooking food. How many of these common, everyday pollutants would you say are not in your carpets and upholstery this very minute? Not a pleasant thought is it.
You might say…not my carpets, they look clean. Perhaps, but carpets are designed to hide soil from your eyes, keeping it trapped below the surface, where it does the most harm. Not convinced? Do a little test. Place a new bag inside your vacuum, thoroughly vacuum all of your carpets. When done remove the bag and cut it open and take a look at what was inside your visually clean carpet Now considering that all of this disgusting stuff is in your carpet, and more is being brought in everyday, eventually the carpet will become full. As you walk across your full carpet you re-distribute the dust and pollutants back into the air that you and your family breathe. As a result of being full, your carpets will also begin appear visibly dirty. This visual soil may take upwards of 1 to 2 years before it finally shows itself, by then it has done a lot of damage to your carpet, and has contributed greatly to having poor Indoor Air Quality (IAQ).
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Well for starters you really should clean your carpets more often. Shaw Industries, the world’s largest carpet manufacturer, recommends that you professionally steam clean your carpets every 6 to 12 months, just to maintain the warranty. Comprehensive scientific studies have proven that by simply cleaning your carpets, you will drastically improve the indoor air quality (IAQ) of your home, making it a healthier place to be for you and your family.
Consider this…most of us wear our clothing once and then place it into the laundry for washing, yet our carpets and upholstery go unwashed for as much as 1 to 3 years or more. Can you imagine wearing the same pair of socks for a week, let alone 1 to 3 years? Your carpets subjected to far more pollutants on a daily basis than a pair of socks, yet most of us do not clean their carpet regularly.
View your carpets for what they are, a soft, warm, cozy comfortable pollution filters, that requires regular maintenance and cleaning. Ideally, in addition to frequent vacuuming and spot cleaning, your carpets should be cleaned at least every 12 months. As mentioned at the beginning, the benefits of having a carpet filter in your home will result with less airborne dust and pollutants in your home; thus improving (IAQ).
A simple comparison two identical homes, with the same number of family members and traffic patterns, one has carpet throughout and the other has tile and wood floors only. With or without the furnace running, which house would you say has better indoor air quality (IAQ)? If you said the house with tile floors, you’d be incorrect. Why? Without the benefit of a carpet to trap the indoor dust and pollutants, they would re-circulate constantly throughout the house. More so if the furnace was operating. All of these circulating pollutants contaminate the breathable air mass. Sure the tiled house does not have the expense of professional carpet cleaning, but they do have to sweep, vacuum, dust and swiffer every daily to keep up with the dust and pollutants constantly circulating through the house.
Keep up on the dry particulate soil by investing in an efficient vacuum cleaner. Those new Dyson vacuums are very good machines and are affordably priced. They also come with a HEPA filter to capture the very small particles that normally go right through most vacuums and back into the room. By frequently and thoroughly vacuuming your carpets you can remove as much as 70% of the soils and pollutants that exist inside your carpets. The remaining 30% is usually trapped within the fibers or has been bonded to the sticky wet soils; thus the need for steam cleaning.
The KEY to carpet longevity is through maintenance.