How confident are you in your carpet protector?

Mikey P

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What brand do you use?
How and when do you apply it?
How long have you been using this product?
Any complaints?
Do clients insist you reapply with every cleaning because they see the benefit?
What promises are made to the client?
Any guarantee?
Have you tested it in your own home?
Would you sell it to your mother or pastor?
 

Cleanworks

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I use DuPont Teflon. I don't sell as much residentially anymore but sell a lot to my commercial customers. Since they are mainly repeat customers, I get to see the difference it makes. In my own home, I once had some nephews visiting from LA. My sister in-law had bought some grape pop for them. I had cleaned and Scotchgarded the carpets before they arrived. As luck would have it, the first can of grape pop that was opened got knocked off the table onto my freshly cleaned beige carpets. As a professional carpet cleaner I am thinking to myself, that'll never come out. I jumped up and grabbed a roll of paper towels and started blotting. To my surprise, everything came out with just the paper towels. Applied properly, it does work.
 

Jim Pemberton

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I had cleaned and Scotchgarded the carpets before they arrived.

You are confident because you used the product yourself and have personal experience with it. I think that everyone offering protector, and especially those who don't believe in it but sometimes just "give into pressure" and apply it, should do this.
 
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The problem we encounter is most customers don't act quickly when a spill occurs.. It's less chance of it doing more damage..

We sell it as it gives you a few more seconds to get a towel to blot it up.. I agree it does work, but drying time with water-based is a hard sell when you arrive at 2pm to clean and finish around 4pm to apply protection.. A lot don't want they're carpet real wet when kids and spouses get off work..

DuPont, 3m, Maxim, Cobbs... I guess you can say I'm a sh!tty salesman as I only offer it if I see a benefit for the customer.. A good salesman work sell it to anyone anytime..
 

Tom Forsythe

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Jim Pemberton and I discussed this many months ago that our industry is filled with cleaners of integrity. They just do not sell protector to make money, but they will only sell it if they believe in it. I would let my employees protect key furnishings in their home for free so that they can see that it works. If they are convinced it works then they will sell more of it resulting in a win for everybody. The content of carpet and upholstery have changed over the years. I would use a protector with acid dye resistors for wool and nylon, an oil repellent protector for synthetic upholstery and the polyester carpet types, and I would use a specialized upholstery protector for natural fibers. Using the right protector for the carpet and upholstery improves the experiences of those who purchase it. Protectors provide stain resistance, soil resistance, oil repellency and water repellency. We sell 8 protectors and each one of them has different strengths and are not all the same. Furnishings have gotten more diverse and complex where one protector for all will result in different consumer experiences.
 

Dolly Llama

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I would let my employees protect key furnishings in their home for free so that they can see that it works


there's a world of difference in performance on fabric compared to carpet

It's great for fabric and a genuine benefit
on carpet, it's greatest benefit is to our profit margins :winky:


water based I've used over the years;
Prochem Fourguard (or whatever Prochem called their juice in the stone age)
Scotchguard
Maxim and Maxim Woopty-DooMore

can't recall who's solvent based I've used .
I'm reasonably sure it was from a "major" player

..L.T.A.
 
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Tom Forsythe

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One key performance benefit we often do not notice is soil resistance. Every water based protector that I have ever tested on nylon carpet slows down re-soiling when compared to an untreated control. In short, the carpet stays cleaner longer.
 
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Dolly Llama

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. Every water based protector that I have ever tested on nylon carpet slows down re-soiling when compared to an untreated control

Thanks Tom
But that's not been my observation in real world testing in homes of repeat custys and my own home over the years

.L.T.A.
 

Jimmy L

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Mutha-inlaw's POOP would eat a hole thru the carpet and burn right thru the floor.
 
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ruff

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Regarding carpet:
If money was not an issue protector for carpets would be OK. Short of introducing another chemical to their home environment (not a big fan.)
However, with most people money is an issue. Therefore in my experience applying the "teflon" money towards cleaning more frequently would be more advantageous to the carpet.

And I agree with Larry regarding how well it works. Not that much more protection.

It does help with natural fibers on upholstery. Unfortunately, we usually get there once the piece has already soiled, has quite a few stains and the "Teflon" was either not applied properly or is completely gone, as it does not seem to provide much protection any longer. I'd be interested in how the protection is applied wherever they buy it. I suspect it is not done properly.
 

DAT

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Pro block fiber protector
I apply it after i flush carpet real well.
I apply it when it is moist so i dont waste to much protectors, the i rake it in all direction and align the carpet for fast drying.

I dont garantee anything as i tell my client that it will protect carpet if they protect it too. Clean up after themselve and all that. Ive only done it 3 time since ive started. It seems to work well. It does prevent absorbtion of liquids as i also house clean the home that i also carpet clean and applied protectors. It is staying cleaner as well.

I notice that they landlords that i cleaned for will insist on it. That was only the 2 times tho.

I have tested it before but not in my home. Just on the practice carpet that i have. If you like, i can attempt to document it with video.

I am still learning tho and this is still my first exposure to protectors. Would i give apply it on my momma carpet? Why not? She gets it for free any ways..
 
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Tom Forsythe

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One problem of testing is to isolate variables. Lab testing enables you to test protectors with only one variable: untreated vs. treated carpet. Real world testing increases the number of variables like surfactant (interferes with the performance) residues, fiber wear and tear, application rates, dry times, control of traffic while drying, soil residues at base of the fiber, etc. Scott Warrington may be able to upload a photo on a lab resoil test showing the impact of different protectors on re-soiling. One protector did cause re-soiling which was our solvent based Maxim Fine Fabric which I have never recommended for any application on carpet. We have had no issues with our water-based formulas causing re-soiling in any lab testing we have done over the years. None of the competitive water based protectors we have tested have been re-soilers either. By the way this is true of encapsulated products as well in terms of not causing re-soiling.
 
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J Scott W

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Tom and I did a presentation two weeks ago for the IICRC Technical Conference. The topics Protectors for the 21st century. It focuses on the improvements to soil resistance in protectors over the last couple of years and how well protector adheres and performs on the newly popular triexta, Smartstrand, polyester carpet fibers.

We had an outside lab test a number of protectors for resoiling on both nylon and polyester. We also did our own in house testing using Maxim Advanced. I will post a few photos. The outside lab divided the carpet in strips with an untreated section between each of different protected sections. You can see that one product (a solvent that worked well on upholstery and did provide oil resistance) actually attracted more soil.

Most carpet cleaners know that while the customer may worry about beverage spills, what really wears out a carpet and shortens the life are abrasive dry soils.

POLYESTER
Product A Control Product B Control ADV Teflon Control Maxim Adv
upload_2017-8-25_10-17-49.png


NYLON
Product A Control Product B Control ADV Teflon Control Maxim Adv
upload_2017-8-25_10-20-8.png
 

Tom Forsythe

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7 areas - product A - control- product B - control - Advanced Protector with Teflon-control-Maxim Advanced Total - 4 product areas and 3 control areas
 
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Bob Pruitt

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How did the Maxim Advanced do? It's unclear looking at this with my phone. Maxim Advanced is solvent based so did it attract soil? @scottw
 
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Dolly Llama

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One problem of testing is to isolate variables. Lab testing enables you to test protectors with only one variable: untreated vs. treated carpet. Real world testing increases the number of variables like surfactant (interferes with the performance) residues, fiber wear and tear, application rates, dry times, control of traffic while drying, soil residues at base of the fiber, etc. g.


Understood, Tom

But people and cleaners live and work in the "real world"
Not a lab where all variables are controlled under ideal conditions


To quote movie line,

"There's the way it ought to be, and the way it is"

Lta
 

J Scott W

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For whatever reason, the captions I typed in did not line up with the photo. It looked good on my screen before I clicked "Post Reply."

One each one the first column is a product with no fluoroprotector but different type of protector, followed by control with no protection, solvent based protector, control, Teflon, control, Maxim.

The red dotted lines divide the sections.
 

Tom Forsythe

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We have 5 Maxim Bridgepoint protectors: Advanced, Advanced for Wool, Advanced for Upholstery, Fine Fabric (solvent based and product B), and SOS (no fluorochemical developed for Australia initially and Product A). The better control you have of the variables listed in my previous post the better results you will have in the real world. The other variable that I did not mention is the level of protection in the carpet before cleaning. We give generic application rates. If a carpet has little protection left or was never protected then more protector should be applied. It is also better to apply more protector in the areas of traffic and use than in the corners and other places with little traffic.
 
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J Scott W

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How did the Maxim Advanced do? It's unclear looking at this with my phone. Maxim Advanced is solvent based so did it attract soil? @scottw

Maxim Advanced is a water Based product. There is a Maxim Advanced for Upholstery that is solvent based.

The solvent based Maxim meant for upholstery is the third column from the left. It did attract soil.

The fifth column is Advanced with Teflon. The 7th column, the last full width column is the water based Maxim Advanced for carpet.

The Teflon product offered the best protection against resoiling on the polyester. The Maxim for carpet did the best against dry soil on the nylon carpet.
 
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Andy

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I think your testing is flawed. Shouldn't all of your control pieces look the same after the testing?
 

Tom Forsythe

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There is a percent of error in every lab test ( every photo as well) which is why we sent to a third party so we would not be accused of jerryrigging the results in our favor. I have done this test a few hundred times over the years internally for my understanding, but have only reported publically tests done by a third party as it is hard to do precisely. You have to be precise in application of protector, in applying the soil, in removing loose soil after the test, and in determining the result. You can also measure light reflections in several areas of the samples which can give you a quantitative result as well. The color of the carpet also impacts the results as we had a white nylon and the lightest beige polyester we could find. Mikey, I apologize for taking over your thread. You may want to start a few more with less questions so that it does not appear as open ended as it became.
 
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Dolly Llama

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I apologize for taking over your thread


it's germane to the subject .
and you don't come off as a "well formulated" carnival barker hawking wares out of a wagon... like some here

216d369b64c2f3feae8810869d34a186.jpg


and dare I say, we all like, respect and trust Scott


so tell Mikey to pi55off if he doesn't like it ...I would :icon_twisted:

..L.T.A.
 

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