Best Cleaner for Wool...

The safest - based on pH, total alkalinity, buffering and so forth will not be the one that is best at removing soil. There ar trade offs.

In our product line, we have tested Hydro Break on literally hundreds of wool area rugs. We think it is among the safest cleaners available. Hopefully, owners of nice wool rugs don't allow them to become too trashed. But that may not always be the case. Hydro Break delivers good cleaning ability, but may not complete cleaned an abused rug.

Zone Perfect has somewhat more cleaning power and alkalinity. Test first to be sure it is safe for the rug you are cleaning. Rinse with a lower pH rinse such as End Zone for effective cleaning results. This company is very good on prventing resoiling.

A long time standard of the rug cleaning industry, Orvus, is a good cleaner but has resoiling issues.

Whatever cleaner you choose, always inspect and clean pbefore proceeding.

Are you cleaning rugs in the home, or in a plant with a full immersion process?

Different cleaning methods have different recommendations - obviously Orvus in a home environment would be horrible, it is VERY tough to rinse. You need a good rinse of Acetic Acid to get that all out - and this cannot be done in the home.

Let me know HOW you are cleaning and I can let you know what I've found works well. The Bridgepoint line though is good. Most rug plants use different solutions, not necessarily the products from the carpet cleaning wall-to-wall synthetic industry.

Lisa

I use Preaction from Chemeisters on wool rugs and carpets as well as most upholstery fabric. Very safe acid side cleaner that works well and rinses well with just fresh water rinse. Dilute 1-10 to 1-40 depending on soiling. It's available from JonDon or the manufacturer. From their website:

"The original acid side pre-spray PreAction™ was first designed for those doing a clear water rinse so that the carpet was automatically left in
an acid rinsed condition. Then it became popular as an all
around pre-spray where carpet or upholstery safety was
especially important.

PreAction™ really is new technology because it
has a buffered (reinforced) pH-5. Yet it cleans to a dazzle
and it does not threaten the stain resistance of the new
nylons and it leaves all carpets brighter and softer.
PreAction is perfect for cleaning berbers, stain resistants
and wools where the ultimate in safety is desired.

. PreAction™ contains no 2-Butoxyethanol (butyl),
d-Limonene, NTA or any other solvents.

Call us today at 800 523-3430 "

Lisa,

What are the advantages to Orvus especially since it is harder to rinse. How do you buy, dilute and rinse with acetic acid?

David - we stopped using Orvus about 2 decades ago, when the textile museum found that Orvus residue in stored rugs were affecting the colors ... it is very difficult to rinse out. We don't use it. Our main shampoo in plant is Carolyn X-tol Solution, we mix it with water or with acid depending on the pH we would like (alkaline cleans soil out better - but with wool rugs with acid dyes, there are dangers staying high pH).

This last point Juan was why I was asking HOW you would be cleaning. In-home (which I don't recommend ever... but I know you guys do it anyway so I'm not going to pretend you don't) - anyway, in-home cleaning leaves sizeable residue behind. Why? Because quite frankly, you cannot rinse thoroughly with your machines in the home without danger to the floor, or taking a long dry time, so cleaners in-home tend to under-rinse.

This means residue is left behind, and if it is on the alkaline side and especially buffered, then you have those wool fibers (with acid dyes) potentially adversely affecting those dyes to where they may "bleed" on you in the future. I've had too many cases to count of cleaners who have cleaned the same rug once or twice before in the home with no problems, and then it suddenly bleeds on them.

The best rinsing I've seen of rugs by a portable has been with the Steamin' Demon - but that is usually not a unit you are dragging into the home to clean rugs ... but maybe in your shop.

If you are wet washing in a pit or concrete wash floor - then, if you are knowledgeable about what you are working on, you can use alkaline cleaners on rugs because you can give a thorough acid rinse to bring the pH down. Acid also helps remove more residue and helps the rinse process.

There are good solutions for surface cleaning produced by the carpet cleaning industry for rugs - Bridgepoint, Chemspec, Masterblend. All also have solutions for stabilizing dyes, which you do need to be aware of when cleaning every rug.

In plants, usually we are choosing more old-school products and bulk chemicals to craft our own solutions - but again, Carolyn is one I like. But when it's heavy soil, then you mix up some enzyme additives to boost cleaning.

Here's the big difference though ... when you are a plant that has handled millions of square feet of cleaning rugs from brand new pieces to ones that are centuries old ... you know which ones you can play around with solutions with, and which ones you do not want to tempt fate with.

The steps to cleaning are simple - but this does not mean it is always easy. So with wool, it is easy enough to grab a few solutions, see which ones work best for you, and then look a little deeper into the main ingredients in them and possibly (if your volume increases substantially) start getting some solutions you can mix and match on your own.

Don't know if that helps. Again - I've tried some of the name brands in various workshops, and none have been bad (though I have seen Stain Magic pull dye completely out of a rug during a workshop ... which I knew would happen but a student swore to me it would get a pet stain out of a Chinese rug - LOL - and it was one of my pieces so I let him prove me wrong ... well I guess prove me right).

Lisa

www.TheRugChick.com