Tried dry strokes today...

Cleanworks

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I was sharing a large commercial job with another cleaner a couple of years ago and noticed he wasn't dry stroking. When I mentioned it to him, he said, "why bother, it's got the whole weekend to dry" To me that's not the point. I always try to remove as much water as possible and get the carpet dry. Less of a chance of wicking, browning, mold or foul smells from the dirty water left behind. Some of the buildings I do, don't have good or sometimes any ventilation. Especially in the stairwells. It's like cleaning in a sauna and sometimes the steam even sets off the smoke detectors. You really want to dry stroke those stairs really well, especially the bullnoses, otherwise they will be brown by morning.
 

rick imby

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Jeremy, Put a sight tube on your wand and look at the water coming out in your dry stroke. The dirtiest water comes out in the dry stroke... from my view.
 
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Jim Pemberton

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This is a great thread.

As with any technical discussion, there are plenty of variables involved; it's possible that Jeremy and others who do not dry stroke leave carpet cleaner and dryer than some of their competitors that do.

But, as the latest posts attest to, the "dry stroke" is actually a "soil extraction stroke". Water left in the carpet is actually a muddy blend of dirty water and cleaning agent residue. Or, as I believe Greenie once said (in some fashion) "There isn't a cleaning machine made that extracts all the dirt and leaves just clean water in the carpet".

A cleaning window is a great educator, both in the amount of soil and residue we tend to leave in carpet. It will make you work harder, and Jeremy..you aren't the first person to "curse the dry stroke".

(Said by a man who did everything wrong at some stage of his 40+ years cleaning carpet)
 

Onfire_02_01

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I have wondered and perhaps it is time to ask. If we are leaving dirty water in the carpet, why should we do a dry stroke to remove this dirty water? Too me it would make more sense to do a second cleaning stroke to remove the dirty water? Is there physics involved that I am not understanding or are we doing the dry strokes simply as a marketing ploy for our customers instead of saying "I understand we are leaving the carpet wetter but with our process we are getting the carpet cleaner"
 

Blue Monarch

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I have wondered and perhaps it is time to ask. If we are leaving dirty water in the carpet, why should we do a dry stroke to remove this dirty water? Too me it would make more sense to do a second cleaning stroke to remove the dirty water? Is there physics involved that I am not understanding or are we doing the dry strokes simply as a marketing ploy for our customers instead of saying "I understand we are leaving the carpet wetter but with our process we are getting the carpet cleaner"

Because some of that leftover water is removed with the dry stroke. If carpet is really dirty, yes, a second cleaning pass may make sense. We're never going to remove ALL of the soiling.
 

rick imby

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I have wondered and perhaps it is time to ask. If we are leaving dirty water in the carpet, why should we do a dry stroke to remove this dirty water? Too me it would make more sense to do a second cleaning stroke to remove the dirty water? Is there physics involved that I am not understanding or are we doing the dry strokes simply as a marketing ploy for our customers instead of saying "I understand we are leaving the carpet wetter but with our process we are getting the carpet cleaner"

You could continue to clean the carpet with alternating wet/dry strokes for hours and still leave a lot of dirt. There are a couple of good reasons to get the carpet as dry as possible. Obviously smell.

Dirty Water left in the carpet through capillary action moves back up the thread of the carpet and most of the water actually evaporates off the tip of the carpet where it has the most surface area and the most natural air flow. This is accentuated by the breakdown of the water surface tension caused by the cleaning chemicals. The dirt is left where the water becomes a gas, usually near the top or the tip of the carpet fiber.

Even when you don't get big wick spots, the water in the carpet will pull dirt back up the fiber.

Resoiling, when the damp carpet is walked on (especially with low surface tension water) the wet carpet will do a great job of cleaning the bottom of shoes.

Overall goal for many Carpet CLEANERs is to get as much dirt out of the carpet as possible---and it will look better.
 

Old Coastie

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Something I have wondered, Rick; if after cleaning I apply protectant, am I sealing dirt onto the fibers? Is it a tradeoff between entrapped soil and future ease of cleaning?
 

rick imby

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Something I have wondered, Rick; if after cleaning I apply protectant, am I sealing dirt onto the fibers? Is it a tradeoff between entrapped soil and future ease of cleaning?

I'm not a chemist. I don't exactly know how protector works. My guess is it just makes the fibers really slippery so the dirt doesn't stick to it.
 

rick imby

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The wand time may double come close to doubling but the time with customer, setup, tear down, all still take the same time. Overstating the difference in time won't help.

I just cannot run my machine (steamin Demon) over the carpet and not run it over it again with the water off---

I have a sight window that shows what is coming up.
 
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steve_64

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I have a glide, it isn't the work that bothers me, it is the time, so fracked slow double the time to do a job. A simple double wide trailer that should have been an hour took me 2 hours.
Do you have a crb yet? It doubles the time too but like dry strokes,sometimes its worth it and you have to charge for it.
 
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BIG WOOD

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I don't know if anyone's mentioned this yet, but it's impossible to fully sanitize carpet.

With that in mind, since there's some form of bacteria somewhere on the carpet after you're done cleaning, you want it to dry as quickly as possible. And if you don't do dry passes, you're increasing the chance of the pad underneath getting damp. With trapped moisture that is warm and very little sunlight, that's the perfect combination of mold growth.

Yes, you need to do the best rinse possible, but it should always have a dry pass

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet. Has it been mentioned yet?
 
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Onfire_02_01

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If I did dry strokes on the carpet my 1 hour jobs would take 2 hours and my normal 2 hour jobs would take 4 hours and I would go out of business because of not getting enough jobs done in a day. And no increasing prices would not work here. It would put my basic clean to $60 a room and my gold clean to $110 a room.
Even the top guys in my market are not getting close to that.
 

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Jeremy, can you tell us what your setup is? Equipment, water pressure, what your hg's are set at on your vacuum, and do you prevac? And what's your average dry time on your current process before dry passes?
 

jcooper

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If I did dry strokes on the carpet my 1 hour jobs would take 2 hours and my normal 2 hour jobs would take 4 hours and I would go out of business because of not getting enough jobs done in a day.

He's gotta be screwing with us, right? Nobody said do hours of dry strokes. Trigger on back stroke, dry stroke up and pull back.

And no increasing prices would not work here. It would put my basic clean to $60 a room and my gold clean to $110 a room.

Figure out the wanding thing and you wont have to raise anything.
 
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Onfire_02_01

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Jeremy, can you tell us what your setup is? Equipment, water pressure, what your hg's are set at on your vacuum, and do you prevac? And what's your average dry time on your current process before dry passes?
I have a Masterblend el diablo, 15inch lift factory set. I use 300 psi roughly. 2 inch tube all the way to a 2 inch PMF titanium wand with Teflon glides. If they pay me to prevacuum I will do it but they have the option of doing it themselves to save some money, many do. Average dry times are 4-8 hours depending on carpet type and humidity levels. At their worst I have had reported that a basement carpet, Minnesota basements are very humid due to high water tables, has taken 24 hours to dry during a week of 80+% humidity levels. At their best, if a box fan is placed in the room as soon as I am done cleaning the carpet upstairs will be dry to the touch by the time I am done with the downstairs. This is with no dry strokes. I clean water on on the pull stroke, no water pushing up to the next stroke which is overlapped by 1/2 of the previous stroke.
 
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Onfire_02_01

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He's gotta be screwing with us, right? Nobody said do hours of dry strokes. Trigger on back stroke, dry stroke up and pull back.



Figure out the wanding thing and you wont have to raise anything.
Jeremey..
If you're at a home for one hour, less then half of the would be actually wanding.
Prep, break down and customer relations is 30 minutes easly.

No way a dry stroke will double your time.
I will try it on a bigger job but it would seem to reason that if on a small 1 hour job it took me an extra hour then with a larger 2 hour job it would take me an extra 2 hours, right?

Call me pig headed and stubborn if you wish, others have, but I have to understand exactly why I am doing something before I do it and "because I said so" is not a convincing argument with me. :) I am honestly trying to make sense of it all in my head.
 

Onfire_02_01

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Can I ask what your repeat rate is?
I have really only been trying to get repeats for about a year, so I am not sure what my rate is. Though I have been doing some customers for 8 years now. I usually have 1 redo a month for a spot or two. I have an A rating on Angies list broken down as 100 A votes, 13 B votes, 2 C votes, 2 D votes, and 1 F votes.
I also have a 4 star rating on thumbtack.
 
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Cleanworks

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Jeremy, you need to work with another carpet cleaner like Mikey or maybe Mark since you are in minnesota. You have good equipment, you just have to learn to use I properly. A 500 sqft. Mobile home, condo couple of rooms in a house will take me about an hour, drystroking all the way. That's working slowly. If it was only moderately soiled, I could knock it off in 1/2 an hour if I had to. All of have had to learn the hard way, working things out by ourselves mostly. See if you can pay Mark a visit, you'll come away with a wealth of experience and ideas and maybe a zipper or 2
 

Desk Jockey

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I have really only been trying to get repeats for about a year, so I am not sure what my rate is. Though I have been doing some customers for 8 years now. I usually have 1 redo a month for a spot or two. I have an A rating on Angies list broken down as 100 A votes, 13 B votes, 2 C votes, 2 D votes, and 1 F votes.
I also have a 4 star rating on thumbtack.
Sounds very good! :cool:
 

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