06/30/2021
"Why you should not shampoo your carpets. "
First of all, shampoos use chemicals that create a foam to lift and suspend dirt particles to be extracted by suction. Sodium lauryl Sulfate is the main sulfate used in all kinds of shampoos. Sulfates can be irritating to the skin, nose and eyes. There are various surfactants other than SLS and they have both a hydrophilic and hydrophobic portions of the molecule. The hydrophilic part of the molecule can be of many and varied functional groups and will determine the nature of the surfactant and a lot of its properties. These include sulphate, ethoxy sulphate, succinates, polyhydroxylates, quarternerised groups and many more. Surfactants can be divided into four groups, according to their ionic nature. These are:
Anionic – carries a negative charge when ionized
Cationic – carries a positive charge when ionized
Nonionic – has no charge to the molecule, unionizable
Amphoteric – carries both positive and negative charges when ionized.
Carpet shampoos use the Anionic variants due to their high foaming actions in water. Anionic variants are very difficult to remove from your carpet fibers. Unlike washing your hair, when you can run large amounts of water to rid your hair of these residues... carpet extractors do not under current operational procedures, get all of the SLS residues out. As a result, your carpet fibers are "glued" together once the water has evaporated. Two things happen now...1) When you walk on these glued fibers, they mat down and do not come back up. This wears your carpets down and you get goat paths. 2) The SLS residues attract more dirt. How is that you say? Well, SLS residue is anionic or neg. charged and dirt is cationic or positive charge and what do opposite charges do? They attract each other! Dirt makes a bee line to the SLS residues in your carpet and this just adds to discoloration and the matting down of your carpets pile or twist.
When we encounter shampooed carpets with our business, we have to run pure water in our extractor to get residues out of your carpets...we then apply our natural plant enzymes solution to clean and encapsulate dirt in a natural polymer that will not interact with carpet fibers. One last thing...shampoos do not get all organic stains out...period. Ask any pet owner. Most...98% of carpet stains are organic and our enzymes break down 100% of organic stains. Man- made stains require a different formulation of bio-degradable products to remove these stains...so far we have done around 38,000 Sq/ft of carpet cleaning and have not met a stain we cannot get out. That's why we say..."We wont leave "till it's clean."
