We are just starting out. In fact, we did our first job last night - my house . We were pretty slow as we were trying to figure everything out...took all night to finish two rooms. We came up with a few questions:

High Traffic Areas - Our really high-traffic areas didn't come completely clean. I understand that the fibers are matted and will never look like the rest of the carpet, but I believe there is still some soil. We used Orbit Natural with regular terry pads. How long should we let the pre-spray settle for? What process would you suggest to handle heavy soiled areas?

Berber - when cleaning berber, is there a different process that should be followed? If so, can you share?

Encap - I've seen this term in several of the other postings. Does this term mean encapsulation? Is it referring to simply using an encapsulating solution but cleaning in the same manner? Is this something that is normally used in all situations?

Sorry for the ignorance - we appreciate any feedback that can help.

Thanks, Kevin

Kevin, I am still a rookie my self but I will try to help you I am sure Mark will give you good advice when he gets a chance to read and post a response.

First yes encap does mean encapsulating, it is not cleaning in the same manner as what you are doing with the orbit natural, with orbit natural you are loosing up dirt and actually removing it with the terry cloth pad, you can do this with encap and a terry cloth pad but a encap product is ment to be scrubbed in to the fibbers and then it encapsulates the dirt into fine white powder that is invisable and will be vacumed out, either method can be used in al sittuations, in very heavy soiled areas I like to use orbit natural let it sit for about 10 to 15 minutes then ensure the carpet is still damp then I scrub the carpets with the terry cloth pad to remove all the soil I can and if I am not completly satisfied with the results I will then apply a encap product to the carpets let it dwell for about ten to 15 min again ensure carpet is still damp and then scrubb the carpet with a synthetic pad like the white and green stripped pad that you got if you bought the package from mark. As I have read from one of marks old postings carpet fibers reflect light so once they become worn they may not reflect light the same which shows a differance.

In my opinion this method works great and I have not yet had a unsatisfied customer I think about 80% of my customers actualy tip me because they are so impressed with the results.

When I first started it took me a while as well just keep doing it and you will get a lot faster, I actually looked for people to let me clean there carpets for free when I first started so that when I started charging and going into homes I had experience and did not feel so lost, I had a little experience under my belt.

Once I got going I found cleaning the carpets and getting good results is the easy part, for me advertizing and getting jobs is the hard part, but every buissness takes time so good luck.

Excellent informatin Jon. I appreciate the encouragement!

Very dirty whiter berber is perhaps the biggest challenge for the challenger.

You can either brute-force it with a lot of time and a lot of pads. An encap product will speed things up a bit.

To stay all natural I would recommend the H2Orange Carpet complete as your product. It is an encap product with a Green Seal Certification. I don't recommend it for all carpets, but it will really speed up yor lighter berber jobs. It's not "all natural" but green seal is close enough and your custies won't complain about that. Or you can pre-spray with a sodium percarbonate product such as Bi-o-Kleen's oxygen bleach, then pad, then move on to your regular product, then more pads. The advantage of these is that the the peroxide vaporizes some of the dirt and has a lot of whitening power without damaging the colors.

Hope this helps. Beyond that

I like Releasit's Encap PUNCH as a product to use when I am not doing all-natural. It breaks down soil very well, and absorbs very well into cotton pads, which some encap products do not do. And whatever residue remains, you don't have to worry about it causing rapid resoiling, since it will just fragment away with vacuuming, walking, etc.

Thank you for the information. Sounds like there are several ideas to consider. We've also been using an all natural sodium precarbonate cleaner for organic spots and tough to remove stains (including tile grout) and it seems to work well.

Mark, do you suggest using the Releasit encap over the one sent in our kit?

I'm most familiar with Vacaway for its stain removers: rust; red stain; & general spotter. I have not tried their products intended for general carpet cleaning. Try 'em and then let us know.

my new best friend for encap'ing any carpet (works wonders on lighter colors) is sodium percarbonate. it is color safe and relatively cheap. i buy it in 2lb. containers from: http://chemistrystore.com/sodium_percarbonate.htm

i boost my Encap with it. 1-2 oz. per gallon of RTU encap. mix it in the HOTTEST water you can. the only caution is when shaking it up (it is a powder) in an enclosed bottle with HOT water, it DOES expand and will blow the bottle your mixing it in up so relieve the pressure every once in awhile. and don't leave it unattended...

hope this helps --- Derek.

Ka - BOOM!!

Thanks Derek. When you mix the sodium percarbonate with the encap, do you use the green brush pad and then just leave or do you just soak it up with a regular terry cloth...or something else?

i generally use it with the encap in my Cimex. and i use Brown-striped pads. there are like the green striped, only brown lol. they are much courser / aggressive.

they are called Tuway BBC's.

if you use it with your Challenger, i'd reckon you can experiment to see what it works best with,,,,might be a Fiber Plus pad.

hope this helps --- Derek.

those that have yet to use vacaway products... DO IT...

http://www.vacaway.com/ they will send you out a nice sample pack for the cost of shipping...

includes some very good encap products as well as some bits of their spotter products...

they also now offer a new bio based product (haven't used it myself)...

if you are going to encap resi I highly recomend the vacaway lineup...