After more than 55 years in the carpet cleaning business, I have learned that sometimes the hardest part of solving a carpet problem is finding exactly where the problem is.
We run into a tremendous number of jobs involving pet urine, particularly from dogs. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of the dog urine problems we encounter come from smaller dogs. Larger dogs certainly have accidents, but small dogs seem much more likely to repeatedly use carpeting as a bathroom.
Cats are a different story.
Cats are generally very clean animals when it comes to their normal behavior. I have cleaned many homes with cats where the carpeting was used for sleeping, playing and lounging, but there was no urine problem at all. There are exceptions, of course. An improperly maintained litter box can sometimes lead to accidents, and cats can also mark territory.
I learned just how powerful that territorial instinct can be in my own home.
At the time, I had two cats. One was an outdoor cat who came and went throughout the day but was always home for dinner and stayed inside at night. My other cat was strictly an indoor cat. She was, to put it mildly, not particularly adventurous. She was practically afraid of the wind, and if a leaf blew past her, she wanted nothing to do with it.
Then one day my son came home with his girlfriend and her baby male kitten.
My house was fairly large and had multiple levels, so naturally the kitten wanted to explore everything. He ran all over the house.
My two cats didn’t seem particularly interested. They pretty much ignored him.
The next day, however, I went downstairs into my finished basement and immediately noticed a very strong ammonia-like odor.
I knew what that probably meant.
Cat urine.
The problem was that I couldn’t find it.
I looked around the basement and couldn’t see a single obvious stain. There was no wet spot, no discoloration and nothing that appeared to explain the extremely strong odor.
But this is where experience in the carpet cleaning business comes in.
One of the most important things we learn in this industry is that before you can properly correct a problem, you have to locate the source of the problem.
I decided to use one of the tools we use professionally to locate hidden urine contamination: a black light.
First, I closed all the blinds and shades in the room to make it as dark as possible. Then I slowly worked my way around the basement, holding the black light approximately two feet above the carpet.
And then I saw it.
One small area of the carpet began to fluoresce.
Then I found another.
And another.
By the time I had finished searching the room, I had located approximately six small areas that I would never have found by simply looking at the carpet under normal lighting.
I placed small squares of aluminum foil over each location so I could identify the contaminated areas once I brought my cleaning equipment into the room.
The spots were surprisingly small.
But the odor certainly wasn’t.
My best explanation was that the kitten, being in an unfamiliar house and surrounded by the scents of two other cats, had been marking small areas of the basement. Whether that was exactly what was going through the kitten’s mind, I obviously couldn’t say. But the evidence certainly pointed in that direction.
Fortunately, because the kitten was so small, the individual areas were very small as well.
That didn’t make the urine any less difficult to remove.
Cat urine can be particularly troublesome because the odor can remain even after the visible evidence has disappeared. Urine leaves behind residues that can continue producing odor, especially when they are not completely removed from the carpet and backing.
Once I had located all of the contaminated areas, I opened the shades, brought in my equipment and began the cleaning process.
I treated and extracted the affected areas several times. I also used a textile rinse that was on the acidic side of the pH scale. This type of rinse can be helpful in dealing with alkaline urine residues and assisting in the removal of the remaining contamination.
The key was not simply to make the spots look clean.
The goal was to actually remove the contamination that was causing the odor.
Using professional extraction equipment, I was able to remove the remaining residues from the carpet.
And the ammonia odor disappeared.
This experience was a good reminder of something I have learned repeatedly throughout my career: when a carpet has a mysterious odor, finding the source is often half the battle.
You can clean an entire room and still leave the problem behind if you don’t know exactly where the contamination is.
That is why professional carpet cleaning is not always just about putting cleaning solution on a carpet and extracting it. Experience, observation and knowing how to diagnose a problem are just as important as the equipment itself.
And sometimes, as I learned in my own basement, the problem is sitting right in front of you — you just can’t see it.
Ask Alec.
If you have questions about carpet cleaning, pet stains, or other carpet problems, you can Ask Alec or contact Alec’s Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning LLC.