Still waiting on my classes and doing a hands on project at my aunt's house. She has a bedroom that has the absolute worst staining and odor from cat urine. Using a TMed machine Black Label, Liquid Alive, Browning Treatment, Matrix All Fiber Rinse, and Matrix Oxidizer. Stain still wont budge. Have read about using the HP40 volume to help. Where do I go next? My boss wants me to be the pet stain and odor removal tech...I want to do my best. I need quick results. No trial and error things. What really works?
So far, you've hit it with enzymes, oxidizers, and acids, which are the three leading products to tackle urine.
If there's still a problem, it's for one (or more) of these reasons:
1. Did you use them on top of each other, so that they "cancel each other out"?
2. Did you dilute them properly, give them enough dwell time, and rinse them thoroughly?
3. Did you recreate the penetration - in other words, did you hit the spots where the urine is actually hiding, or did you just graze the surface?
4. Are there more urine deposits that you haven't seen that are contributing to the odor? Check walls, baseboards, tack strips, door jambs, etc.
5. Did your aunt already try to treat the spots before you came with Resolve, vinegar, baking soda, Windex, etc?
6. Cat urine, for reasons discussed at great length elsewhere in the forum, is insidious and difficult stuff to remove. Even the most experienced pro will sometimes come across a cat urine deposit that he simply cannot eradicate without the cost being prohibitive.
Virtually anything can be cleaned... it's a question of whether the cost of cleaning will be feasible versus the cost of replacing.
Rather than throwing everything at the spot and seeing if that fixed it, spend some time researching and educating yourself on how enzymes, oxidizers, and acids actually work on urine - and practice. Find carpet remnants on the roadside waiting for garbage day and grab a hunk. Take cushions from frat sofas on the sidewalk waiting for the Got Junk guys.
Anything you can do to get hands-on experience without a customer hovering over your shoulder will give you confidence and flexibility to "think outside the box".
There is NO ONE WAY TO ALWAYS TREAT URINE SUCCESSFULLY. It simply doesn't exist - if it did, distributors would only carry that product and nothing else, lol. Hence, anything that claims to "always work" or "guarantee success" is suspect. A Ferrari does no good in the hands of a kid with no driving experience.
Your best tool when dealing with urine is
knowledge. Understanding what urine is made of, the changes it goes through with time and treatment, how it alters the actual carpet fibers themselves, how heat and humidity alter its impact... it's actually quite fascinating stuff if you're into understanding (to paraphrase M. Violand) not just what time it is, but how a watch is made.
