If you decide to buy a carpet washer do you still need to use a vacuum cleaner? It’s a good question the answer to which is – yes you do. Although they may appear very similar – at first glance at least – vacuum cleaners and carpet washers work in different ways.
Vacuum cleaners remove loose dirt and dust from the upper layers of the carpet using suction. Most modern cleaners also use spinning or rotating brushes to agitate the carpet fibres. This is intended to agitate and free as much of the dirt as possible so that it can be removed by suction. There are any number of different designs of vacuum cleaner these days, upright and cylinder, bagged, bagless, cordless – even robotic ones, but they all work more or less as described above.
In order to keep your carpet looking good and odour free, you need to vacuum on a regular basis. What you want to do is remove as much dirt and dust as possible before it has a chance to get ground into your carpet. However, it doesn’t matter how thorough you are – there’s no way to avoid some dirt being ground deep into your carpet and becoming trapped. That’s where carpet washers are useful.
Carpet washers use a mixture of detergent and water to liberate dirt and dust which is contained deep in your carpet’s fibres. The dirt and dust clings to the detergent which is then sucked out, together with the water. Many carpet washers make use of pre-treatment sprays for heavily stained areas. Most of them also use brushes to scrub the carpet so as to better release the trapped dirt.The good news is that you don’t need to – and in fact you shouldn’t – wash your carpet anything like as often as you need to vacuum it. There are a number of different factors which will determine the frequency required – but, for the typical family home, twice yearly should probably be sufficient.
Most carpet washers include a selection of tools so that they can be used for cleaning stairs and also upholstery, curtains – and even car seats. Over and above being useful for cleaning up any accidental spills before they get established and form stains, you’re sure to find plenty a variety of different uses for your carpet washer around your home in between “big cleans”.
So, in order to keep your carpets in tip-top condition and to maximise their lifespan, vacuuming alone isn’t enough and using a carpet washer alone isn’t enough either. You need a twin pronged attack using both types of carpet cleaners as laid out below:
- Use a conventional vacuum to clean your carpets twice a week in order to remove loose dirt and dust before it has the opportunity to become established. Heavy traffic areas – hallways, passages, the floor near doors, hallways etc. – may need to be cleaned even more often.
- Once every six months or so, you should deep clean your carpets using a carpet washer. It can also be used to treat any accidental spills – whether on upholstery or carpets – quickly before they turn into stains.
If it all sounds like too much effort then you can console yourself with the fact that apart from looking good and being odour free, even if you have pets, your carpets will last a lot longer – so you will save a lot of money and hassle in the long run.
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