One of my favorite things about it here in the TMF, is going back and reading old threads that are relevant as hell to today's threads. Some boards discourage the practice and some members scowl at the thought of bumping an old topic. I've learned a bunch about using and maintaining my crb reading these old threads. What ever happened to the van? It sounds similar to the direction I went.
I do mostly residential and have no plans of using my CRB as a standalone on most jobs. I do like the idea of using it as a standalone in certain situations. I'm running my setup from a Transit Connect so space and utility is a premium. I use an Airhog and water otter for HWE. I ran the CRB in a couple of small areas from a spot dye job. The tenant moving out and my buddy who cleaned the carpet the day before with a Truckmount and 360i. My buddy had never seen a crb up close before. I let him play with it and listened to the commentary while mixing the dyes downstairs. I prefaced the use by stating this machine will make us all look bad if used as a post inspection for worn carpets with hair embedded in the fibers. It didn't disappoint. The carpet just looked cleaner and newer from just the pile lifting alone. I just used one tray and nothing but my dye stuff. I felt like I could have bumped the customer for pile lifting but not at my friends expense. We talked about it later...He has now put a new CRB on his priority list
It won't be long before Bissell and Hoover have their encap machines mass produced for residential retail. They have taken note of the VLM being used by cleaners and are developing their versions of CRB. Don't put away the truckmounts just yet.
Hope you showed the customer in the middle of that job. Makes them happier to write your check. They had dogs?
As a premium cleaner MY customers laugh at the thought of a rug doctor ... my competition are other good cleaners and myself