I hope Lisa comes in on this one. I want to know what it takes to clean area rugs. I mean I know you need the education. but do you need the rug badger? do you need a wash pit? I would not mind trying to clean some area rugs but not ready to buy all the equipment. so what all is needed to clean them?
John. Truth is you do not need a RugBadger to clean rugs, nor do you need much else. Now if you want to do some business volume then you certainly need some equipment. You struck the nail on the head with education.. there are some fantastic classes coming up in short order. You can see all the upcoming rug events coming up on the calander at the rughub. http://www.therughub.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl? btw, you many need to hit the rughubs home button to view these. OH YEAH, big stuff going on in Vegas for next month with rug,, all the top instructors will be there and you can see all our equipment in action. Who's coming?
Oh yeah,, Lisa is putting on a rugs and restoration seminar this week in Seattle. I'm gonna go to, anyone else registered for this? http://www.RugsandRestorationRoadshow.com
Dusty, you are the man! Your honesty in your reply speaks volumes of your character. John, I built a 12 x 18 wood deck on top of my garage floor to clean the rugs on. I use an old rotary machine with a carpet brush to scrub the rugs. I extract with my shop porty. I then dry them on a rack built with 4 x 4's, 2 x 4's, pulleys, and some rope. I then blow fans on them. I also use dehues on more humid days. Some day I will have the pit, as my business builds...
Hey John, Dusty is spot on ... when we started out cleaning rugs, we washed them in the back of our rug gallery on the sloped driveway with the following: hose, hand scrub brush, ivory dish soap, white vinegar, squeegee, and a wet vac. Equipment investment ... hmmm ... fifty bucks???? You can clean rugs with your existing equipment - you just need to understand the textiles more to be able to do a more thorough cleaning with what you have. If you can't afford a Badger - then use an upright vacuum cleaner to dust - it takes longer, but it's thorough. If you can't afford a "fancy" wash pit, then get some planks of wood (or PVC pipe) and get a clear plastic tarp at Home Depot. If you can't afford a wringer or revolution spinner, then get a medium water claw and use your wand for extraction. One of the biggest mistakes I see new rug cleaners make is they invest $100K on items and think the work will roll on in ... they dig a hole and then stress from day one, and when you are stressed you make mistakes. If you are doing 5 rugs a week ... then you need to improve what you are doing surface cleaning rugs - with a portable. As your volume increase, then you need to see which area you want to be able to boost your cleaning results and productivity. Is it dusting? Is is washing? Is it drying? What interesting about rug cleaning is that low-tech, with the right knowledgeable person behind it, can out clean the priciest rug plant. I can outclean a big automated plant on one rug - it will take me ALL day ... but I will be focused enough to do the best clean ever, that I'll do exactly that. But, you can't make a living on cleaning one rug a day. What the pieces of equipment do for you is boost your productivity. So you get more cleaned faster, better, and you make more money. So ... this is what I suggest to newbies who DO have experience in carpet cleaning and more importantly upholstery cleaning (you see more natural fibers and dye issues with upholstery, and you need a detailed eye and hand - so it's more applicable to rugs than carpet cleaning is). 1) Decide you want to be a rug cleaner. Begin marketing to your list that in 60 days your rug cleaning division will open. Start building the interest now, so that one day one you have a nice pile of rugs to clean. 2) In those 60 days begin absorbing all the content you can - at classes, on-line here and other sites, and of course there are a ton of rug articles at www.cleanfax.com I've written - and on www.therugchick.com 3) MOST IMPORTANT - go to swap meets and thrift stores and buy some cheap, filthy rugs, and begin cleaning them. No fear of ruining someone else's rug - and you will get some GREAT before/after photos to use in your marketing materials. With these rugs you can train on the areas you must master BEFORE rug cleaning: 1) fiber test, 2) dye test, 3) construction type/concerns, and 4) identifying pre-existing conditions. (If you'd like a copy of my pre-inspection form, send me an email at lisa@joepolish.com and I'll send you it.) And then the areas to master DURING rug cleaning: 1) dusting, 2) cleaning, 3) rinsing, 4) drying, 5) finishing. Your greatest skills in rug cleaning will be PRE-INSPECTION and then PEOPLE skills. you will find interestingly enough the actual "cleaning" itself (unless you screw up) disappears if you are great at communicating up front and bonding with clients, and then keeping in touch with them afterwards. I'm not saying the cleaning itself is not important - just saying that the other pieces, done really well, will outshine the actual cleaning itself. You'll also find the more you charge, the cleaner the rugs you will handle - so the actual cleaning labor required will be less. It's the same with in-home cleaning I'm sure you high-price cleaners out there already know. People who value clean, and will pay for it, do it more frequently ... they don't wait until the house - or rugs - "look" dirty. There are many ways to skin a cat here ... and there truly is no one-size-fits-all with rug cleaning. Some methods and pieces of equipment work better on different rugs in different situations. So get a wide variety of training so you are skilled to make the best decisions based on the rug, your budget, and the contamination level. Hope that helps... and Dusty - see you on Thursday! Bring a Badger if you have one in your luggage. Lisa www.TheRugChick.com
