Wool trouble

ruff

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Ofer Kolton
A good friend that has techs working for him ran into a problem. I have not personally seen it, but received his description. It is an area next to an intake vent. Urine from pets.
Technician misdiagnosed carpet and did not realize it was wool.
  • Used Matrix urine treatment that has peroxide and is 10 ph.
  • Rinsed (one earth).
  • Carpet got brown/yellowish (not a jute backing! so it ain't celulosic browning. Again I have not been there.)
  • Stain Magic- for wool
  • Later they tried Chemspec browning treatment and followed with acid rinse.
So now the wool has been exposed to peroxide, 10 PH, strong acid and an acid rinse. As of now it may be salvage or replacement. He could not tell me if the browning was just at tips of fiber or all the way down. At this stage I am not sure how much of a chemical load of different chemicals are there.

I was wondering if.
  1. Rinse to remove chemicals.
  2. A mild reducing agent may help. With buffing. And if yes, which one. The acid residue may boost it so it may need to be rinsed. or:
  3. Buffing with an encap with a mild peroxide.

Any ideas?
 
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ruff

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No.
It is about 3 feet in diameter now. I don't know if there's wicking involved coming from sub floor, as they did the urine flooding with a claw. IT could also be damage to the wool from the peroxide in Matrix and the high PH. Also I have no idea if the wool is starting to become brittle.

Inserting a piece of plastic between pad and carpet may help if it is.
 

T Monahan

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Rinse with water only through a water claw to get out all the residue. Start over and use a U-Turn dilution as described for rug and urine issues: Mix 1-2 ounces of concentrate per one gallon of water. Saturate area and allow a dwell time of 30 minutes. Rinse and extract using a water claw if you have one. We like to use this SOS tool offered by Centrum Force: https://www.centrumforce.com/products/sos-sub-surface-extraction-tool
 

roro

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Start over and use a U-Turn dilution as described for rug and urine issues/QUOTE]
Hi Tom
From your comment I was interested in this product as currently we are doing a problem one on a rug that has been very time consuming. But in your handbook on the product it indicates that using U-Turn is for odour only and in fact that it may exacerbate a dye problem.

roro
 

Cleanworks

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I have a similar issue. I do warranty work for a rental machine company. A lady rented a machine to clean her thin, wall to wall wool carpet from her ensuite to her bedroom door. Aprox 30 sqft. Since she had the machine for 4 hours, she wanted to get her moneys worth and did it 3 times. The carpets browned and the rental company rep came out and used traffic lane cleaner and urine treatment and made it worse. My usual treatment is a fresh water rinse, blow dry followed by an acidic rinse and a light browning treatment sprayed topically and allowed to dry. Usually, even on my worst jobs, I get an immediate 50% improvement and the rest fades out as it dries. I may have to return just to do a repeat spray of browning treatment. In this case when I rinsed with my acidic product, I could see I was making it worse. I dried it up as much as I could, vacuuming until no more water was being removed. I let the customer to let me know how it turned out. I just went there today and not much difference. Although, it is not recommended on wool, I treated with Esteam Eliminate as a last resort. (peroxide/ammonia solution) I got about a 25% improvement and am waiting for the customer to call me tomorrow to see how it works. This is a very delicate wool nap, not really suited to rotary or cylindrical agitation. I think it would distort the pile. The entire carpet, including the backing is about 1/4 inch thick. Any other bright ideas?
 
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Goomer

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I recently got a tufted wool area rug that had a small area that got wet during storage and stayed wet for too long and had those dark rot stains.

With a green light to try whatever means I could to at the least improve it, and having the rare opportunity to play with strong peroxide on wool, I went to town on it with a sprayer of 30V and a Microfiber towel.

I was surprised at how much it lightened them up and deliberately did not speed dry it hoping the peroxide would continue to do it's thing.

Next day.......whole area completely brown.

Not sure of the backing, but as far as browning goes, I don't think I got it too wet only using a hand sprayer, but browning/wicking may still have been a factor.

Is there an equivalent to celluosic browning related to animal hair, where on of it's components will break down and turn brown when exposed to a particular product or heavily oxidized?

I was able to correct it with the same sprayer and damp Microfiber towel, but this time spraying the 30V on the bonnet and buffing the area, as opposed to directly hitting the area heavy with the sprayer, and then speed-drying the area with a fan.

I am not sure what role oxidation played in the correction, because I was getting decent brown transfer to the towel, and even rinsed the towel out a couple of times.

Not sure if this applies to your situation, but it makes me think that doing a damp white towel test on it first would be a good idea, and go with the encap/H20 buff if you get any transfer, and then get a fan on it.
 
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Rick J

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I recently got a tufted wool area rug that had a small area that got wet during storage and stayed wet for too long and had those dark rot stains.

With a green light to try whatever means I could to at the least improve it, and having the rare opportunity to play with strong peroxide on wool, I went to town on it with a sprayer of 30V and a Microfiber towel.

I was surprised at how much it lightened them up and deliberately did not speed dry it hoping the peroxide would continue to do it's thing.

Next day.......whole area completely brown.

Not sure of the backing, but as far as browning goes, I don't think I got it too wet only using a hand sprayer, but browning/wicking may still have been a factor.

Is there an equivalent to celluosic browning related to animal hair, where on of it's components will break down and turn brown when exposed to a particular product or heavily oxidized?

I was able to correct it with the same sprayer and damp Microfiber towel, but this time spraying the 30V on the bonnet and buffing the area, as opposed to directly hitting the area heavy with the sprayer, and then speed-drying the area with a fan.

I am not sure what role oxidation played in the correction, because I was getting decent brown transfer to the towel, and even rinsed the towel out a couple of times.

Not sure if this applies to your situation, but it makes me think that doing a damp white towel test on it first would be a good idea, and go with the encap/H20 buff if you get any transfer, and then get a fan on it.
Since yours is tufted, and not knotted, and has that water damage, is it latexed, and could that be the culprit? The latex breaking down from the long term moisture.
 
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Papa John

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Try Tom's suggestions 1st. Might have to paint with an airbrush as a last resort.. I thinks it's browning caused by the latex..
 
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Jimmy L

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I wonder if that rental cleaning solution contained optical brightners?
Compounding the problem?
 
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Ray Burnfield

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Ofer's friend is a friend of mine as well.
Here are the pictures:
 

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Papa John

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I'm wondering if it might be rust from tack strip or failed flashing under sliding door. Or pigment run off from deck stain? Try rust remove on a small portion for the rust.

The shape looks like a half round door mat. Maybe it's bht browning from trapped glue fumes which were also heated by heater vent.. I don't that's an intake vent.
 
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Goomer

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Since yours is tufted, and not knotted, and has that water damage, is it latexed, and could that be the culprit? The latex breaking down from the long term moisture.

The original issue was actually the wool itself damaged.

I have seen it before on wool that was wet for a long period of time, it actually gets black spots on it, almost as if it actually rots over time.

http://mikeysboard.com/threads/wool-water-damage.266895/

IMG_20130519_103128_zps8dd49378.jpg
 
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Bob Pruitt

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This wasn't pre-existing? It's interesting that the stains seems to match the deck color.
It also seems that the tack strip has been wet in the past. likely from water running under the slider? Carpet looks brittle like it has been through wet and dry in a cycles... believe first board on deck is allowing water to come in below and through pad.
Re-calk exterior slider to prevent future water running past it.
I guess I would grab a corner and pull carpet up enough to see the backing, pad and sub-floor if the carpet isn't too brittle along the wall.
 
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Goomer

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This wasn't pre-existing? It's interesting that the stains seems to match the deck color.
It also seems that the tack strip has been wet in the past. likely from water running under the slider? Carpet looks brittle like it has been through wet and dry in a cycles... believe first board on deck is allowing water to come in below and through pad.
Re-calk exterior slider to prevent future water running past it.
I guess I would grab a corner and pull carpet up enough to see the backing, pad and sub-floor.

That pick was from some wool WtoW I came across years ago that had similar black rot.

Didn't try investigating any further as it had trouble written all over it, especially when likely being brittle like you mentioned.

The radiator on top of it and the pipe coming through only increased the likelihood of it becoming one big clusterfook if I tried to detach it to get a looky underneath.
 
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Bob Pruitt

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Didn't try investigating any further as it had trouble written all over it, especially when likely being brittle like you mentioned.
You made the right call. Thinking Ofer's friend is dealing with water running under the Slider/Window based on a couple of small pictures provided. Pre existing but the damage was happening below and to the backing of the carpet...over time.
 

Cleanworks

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Since you do not mean cellulosic browning, what do you mean when you use the term browning when discussing wool?
You can still have cellulosic browning on some wool carpets and rugs. There can be cellulose in the backing, or the glues or as fillers. You will sometimes see powder under tufted rugs as the glue breaks down. This powder wick up when it is wet.
 
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Goomer

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True, I was aware of the backings possibly containing cellulose, but never considered glues.

Forgot latex is plant based.
 

Onfire_02_01

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Other possibilities are the tannins or floor finish on the subfloor are breaking down and wicking to the surface. I have a finished wood floor under my carpets and of a large volume of water is dumped on my carpet, like a fish tank leak last month, the carpet will turn brown and sticky from the tannins and finish wicking to the surface.
 
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ruff

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Part of the issue is that he's already been there a bunch of times and even though the client is taking it in stride, he feels that he can't push it too much and keep coming back. It's a good client with more properties.

My suggestion was to test a small area, see if there's wicking into towel and how fabric looks afterwards when dry and proceed accordingly.
However, if it has to be done in one visit- Insert a plastic sheet between pad and carpet. Rinse preferably with distilled water. Spray a wool safe reducer and buff thoroughly yet carefully to make sure it does not fluff wool too much.
 
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Doug Rice

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That sure looks like it had one of those cheap rubber backed mats sitting there trapping moisture and getting heated from the vent. It might be a petroleum based mat and from what I've experienced they only come out with a knife. I had a customer with a similar stain where a mats had been sitting for years and I could only get it to lighten, ended up doing an insert.
 
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