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Tips About Cleaning COST
from Professional Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning Companies is the subject of this IICRC publication [Copy of Pp 7,8 of the IICRC Carpet Cleaning S001 Standard]. It details what carpet cleaners should be expected to do when they come to your home to clean for you. It is good reading, and short, if you have never read it. |
Some Words of Wisdom About Cost
You will always get what you pay for in the long run. Carpet Cleaning
goes deep, and takes power, and thoroughness, and time to be done right.
New carpet cleaners may start off charging cut rate prices, but you will not see them in business long if they continue. (They will not have enough finances to pay taxes when the time of reckoning comes. They will then go bankrupt through IRS proceedings, or they will simply disappear and rename their own business in some other unknown name and/or location.)
Here are some Questions We'll Ask if we have the time to ask when you call expecting an 'estimate' of the probable cost to clean your carpet. Upholstery questions will be added later here.
Carpet
1. Which rooms will you be cleaning?
2. Approximately how many square feet of carpet are you having cleaned? Carpet is usually installed by the square yard. If you have this figure, simply divide it by 9, since most carpets are priced and cleaned by the square foot.
3. Is the carpet color light? all tans, cream, light browns, and white. Count on additional costs to clean these because the light color reflects and magnifies all variations, scratches, and damage done and it is difficult to discern soiling from the damaged fibers which requires us to be highly detailed to get it back to the original as much as is humanly possible. The benefit to purchasing light carpets is that they required you to clean them when you should normally clean carpets, each 6 to 9 months for traffic lanes and open heavily used areas.
4. What style is your carpet? Carpets most frequently come in three or four common styles:
| a. Berber (sculptured loops or a combination
of loops and cut fibers) |
| b. Saxony Cut, Level Cut or Level Loop or Velvet
Plush (all fibers are cut the same level, and in addition are frayed at the top to spread out the soft look and cushiony feel)    |
| c. Commercial low pile (low pile fibers that
are either loop or cut pile construction)  |
| d. Combination/ Sculptured Pile (Multilevel
cuts or cut and loop combinations of the pile)  |
5. How thick is the carpet, low medium or long? (Unnecessary if you are specifying commercial as in c) above.
6. How soiled is the carpet?
Specify whether light, medium, or heavy (sometimes "abused").
7. When/How did you last clean your carpet?
Specify: 6 months, 9 months, year, year and a half, two. Charges for carpets
cleaned more than 2 years may get 1.5 to 2 times or more of the actual cost for
cleaning it properly the first time. Sometimes the cleaning contractor may even
have to schedule two separate cleanings to get lasting results for abused
carpet. Some olefin fibers wick back easily also. (See below.)
8. What type of carpet do you want cleaned?
Common carpet types are nylon, and olefin in the synthetic
(man-made) category.You can expect to pay slightly more for olefin carpets
because of their complexity factors: low dimensional stability -matting- we have
to 'clean through a screen', and hydrophobic (water resistant) -water does not
absorb and loosen dirt as well.
The most Common carpet type is wool in the natural
category. You can expect to pay more for these because wool is more sensitive to
detergents than synthetic carpets are, and there is more of the risk of color
loss and/or movement if cleaned with improper alkaline cleaning agents.
We would also like to know if the carpet is area, or wall-to-wall. You can
usually expect to pay a little more for area carpets because of the following:
a) they usually need cleaning on both sides,
b) they are more difficult to hold down, unless furniture that will not be
moved is included
c) they sometimes have tassels that require special hand tooling to correctly
clean.
9. Will you expect us to do all the vacuuming, or part of the vacuuming, or none at all? Our experience usually calls for us to use a commercial vacuum with two motors for floor brushing as included since many home-owned vacuums are not working properly, and the soil more easily removed must be vacuumed by us. Many clients ordering regular cleaning sufficiently vacuum for us -- a step which usually allows them to get the lowest actual cost for carpet cleaning.
10. Will your request for a price include fabric
protection?
Many clients automatically have their carpets protected due to the sizable
investment they have made in carpet floor coverings.
Costs for protection can vary widely depending on the type of protection and the
season in which it is applied. However, our standard charges do not assume
fabric protection is included. This can cost an additional $0.14 to $0.16 per
square foot to the usual cleaning cost.
We hope these 10 questions will help you when you call to give us enough of an idea what you are asking us to clean. We are not unwilling to give you an honest idea of the costs involved, but we do know that many variables are involved, even including things not mentioned above such as pad type, under flooring issues and
Looking for "price-only"? (Links About Advise on Carpet Care)
What the IICRC says about carpet cleaning scams copied on our web site.