DIY VS PROFESSIONAL CLEANING
Thinking of renting a steam cleaner? Make sure you read this before you do!
Ok, so you’ve been looking around the house and have realised that some of your soft furnishings and carpets may need a little tidy up. The first thing you may have thought of was to hire a carpet and upholstery cleaning machine from a local DIY store. Although, this may seem like a great idea at first, there are many things that you must consider before doing so. Of course, hiring a carpet cleaning machine will mean that you will be able to do all the cleaning yourself whenever it suits you without brining any strangers into your home. If you’re a business owner you may also believe that your staff could do just as good of a job with hired cleaning equipment as professional cleaners. But is this necessary true?
There are many factors you should consider before hiring a DIY carpet and upholstery cleaning machine. You may be easily swayed to believe that those machines deliver the excellent results as advertised by their manufacturers, however as soon as you get to use it you may quickly realise that you have fallen into their great marketing trick. Unfortunately, those machines will often not meet your expectations and leave your carpets and upholstery wet for as much as few days!
How do we know this? As part of our customer survey, we always ask whether the carpet or upholstery have been previously cleaned by another company or by the customers themselves. Over the years, we have gathered more than enough feedback from our past customers, who have tried to do the cleaning themselves with hired machines and guess what? They wouldn’t do it again… The truth is that most of them were disappointed with the poor machine performance, long drying times and a lot hidden extras they weren’t aware of!
Part of our job is yes, cleaning carpets and upholstery. Nevertheless, we do more than that. We believe that educating our customers is essential part of our service, hence the need for this article. This article will highlight the main reasons as to why it may be beneficial for you to use professional carpet and upholstery cleaners in your local area rather than attempting the DIY approach.
1. It is not as cost effective as it seems.
To hire a carpet cleaning machine in Northamptonshire you would have to spend at least £24.99 for the machine rental alone. Bare in mind the machine alone is not sufficient to carry out the cleaning. In addition to this price, depending on your situation, you are required to pay for various detergents such as carpet high foot traffic cleaner, pet-stain detergent, upholstery cleaner, spot and stain remover, as well as anti foaming solution and deodoriser. There is also a small fee to pay if you would like to hire an upholstery attachment for cleaning fabrics. Lastly, you then have to think about how you’re going to collect the cleaning machine you’re planning on to hire. You can either spend time and fuel money picking it from the store and dropping it back up again after you’re done or you can arrange a delivery and collection service, which will cost you another £15-£25. Now, after adding all of these up, a very attractive price of £24.99 for using the machine easily doubles, if not triples its value, so be aware of all the costs that you must consider hiring.
2. Hired domestic machines are not professional cleaning machines
Domestic machines don’t deliver the same results as professional carpet and upholstery cleaning machines. They simply don’t have the same vacuum suction and water pressure, which will provide the deepest cleaning results. Those machines are fitted with small water pumps, which are unable to flush the dirt out of the carpet effectively. Commercial carpet cleaning machines like the ones we operate have fully adjustable high-pressure pumps, which enable the users to control how much water needs to be injected into your carpets, depending on the level of soiling. In addition to that, those machines are fitted with powerful multistage vacuums, which lift the water out of your carpets leaving them completely dry in as little as few hours and not days! Professional steam cleaning service should be carried out with hot water. In the domestic machines, the water you put into the machine is the water that you’re going to use for cleaning. Professional cleaning machines go beyond that and have heating elements built into them, which heat up the water to as much as 210 degrees, which in turn helps to provide even better cleaning results and quicker drying times! At Phoenix Restore, we like always aim to provide the best possible carpet and upholstery cleaning service and that’s why always use commercial drying equipment on our jobs to provide additional value to our service.
3. Think of the hassle
Before you hire a carpet cleaning machine, you will have to leave a deposit and proof of address in the store for security purposes. Then, you have to allow yourself some time the pick up and drop of the machine, as well as go through the hassle of visiting a busy supermarket, if you didn’t go for the home delivery option. Now that you have the machine, you actually have to spend time using it at home and making the most out if it. Bare in mind, using those machines is quite time consuming and will take hours as they are not as powerful as commercial grade cleaning machines. Even then, you are not guaranteed any decent results and that’s a last think you want to see after spending hours doing ‘deep cleaning’ around the house. What a day to spend a day off work huh?
At Phoenix Restore we can help you avoid all of that! You can make booking with us over the phone, via text message, Facebook or email… Hassle Free! You can make the bookings within couple of minutes by providing us with just a few simple booking details such as name, address and contact number… done! We offer flexible booking times in order to work around your busy schedule. Our industrial grade cleaning equipment helps us to carry out cleaning effectively and quickly around your house. We only ask you to move the small items out of the room for us and we take care of the rest! Most importantly we manage your expectations from the very start. We will let you know what sort of results you can expect in the end of our deep cleaning process. For us, customer satisfaction is most important and that’s why we will never make any promises we cannot make!
4. Knowledge and experience is the key
Before you hire a steam cleaning machine you may firstly ask yourself how much do you actually know about carpet and upholstery cleaning. What if you damage the machine you’ve hired? What if you damage your favourite armchair or sofa because you have been too aggressive with the detergents and/or water whilst cleaning? What should be done to completely remove wine or odour from my carpet? Is it safe to use the detergents of your choice around your children and pets?
Carpet and upholstery cleaning may sound like a simple thing to do as first, however there is much more than you think to it. Before starting any cleaning, a professional carpet and upholstery cleaner should evaluate the type of fibre and carry out safety tests which will help to determine which cleaning method and chemical will be best suitable for the job. At Phoenix Restore, we are fully insured and trained, so that you can feel safe in our hands. We attend regular training courses, which help us to refresh our knowledge and learn new skills and methods that would benefit our service and our customers. We take the responsibility for those tough jobs, so that you don’t have to worry about anything. We believe in attention to detail and having everything done the ‘right’ way. If you are looking for your local, professional carpet and upholstery cleaning service in Northamptonshire, call someone you can trust, call Phoenix Restore.