i notice that the Challenger sometimes picks up loose fibers while it's cleaning a carpet and flings them around the floor. when this happens, i have to go back after cleaning a room to pick up the piles of loose carpet fibers. is anyone else experiencing this?

Are you talking about the little lint balls in the cut pile carpets? That almost always happens on those. The amount of the linties seems to be exacerbated by the holy glider. So if a carpet seems to be fuzzing up rather easily I use the solid glider. No way to avoid it completely. I tell customers that the linties are normal and common in nicer carpet, newer carpet, as well as older carpet in the areas that haven't been vacuumed much. In order to not leave a job with linties everywhere I post-vac on those jobs especially.

This seems to occur most frequently with inexpensive carpeting, especially if it's being cleaned for the first time. Tell the customer that everytime she/he vacuums, some fibers are removed from the carpet: since they end up in the bag or cup, mixed with genuine soil particles, they just aren't as noticeable. Manu upright vacs tend to get plugged up when damp fibers are vacuumed up. My little Dirt Devil hand-vac ( the model with the BELT-DRIVEN brush, not the air-driven brush) snaps these fluffies right up, in only a minute or 2 more per room than it would take with an upright vac. I recall someone posting that Powr-Flite vacs do well sucking up damp carpet fiber without clogging.

The loose fibers are from "staple" (non-continuous filament) yarn construction. The fuzzing is common. The older the carpet and frequency of vacuuming, the less fiber that is removed by the aggressiveness of the padding process. Post vacuuming is often needed in this situation.

Yarn with continuous filament fiber construction is not affected by padding. Fuzzing or pilling does not occur when this yarn is padded.

what Roger said...staple fibers. this is normal. i tell my client that it is what they see in their vac bag. i also have told them when i used to HWE that these are what sat in the bottom of my recovery tank after every job.

post-vacuuming should be a REGULAR, NORMAL procedure for all OP'ers. not to do this is not finishing the job in my opinion. oh and it looks like crap.

thanx --- Derek