RANDY’S CARPET CARE STEPS UP TO THE PANDEMIC CHALLENGE

Randy’s Carpet Care has been dedicated to the health and safety of our customers for forty years. During this unprecedented moment, as a pandemic rapidly spreads around the globe and begins to affect West Michigan, Randy’s believes it is important to double down on our values as a responsible and compassionate community service-provider and open a dialogue with our valued customers and community, clarifying how our services may benefit the health of their families, employees, third-party vendors, and customers. As businesses are forced to temporarily close, this is an opportune time for business owners to completely clean and sanitize all surfaces. Randy’s will offer sanitization services at a reduced cost, by request, for the duration of this emergency situation. It has never been so important that we live up to our motto, “May our work be pleasing unto God as it is unto man.”

First and foremost, we are taking measures to ensure that our staff is healthy and our equipment is clean. Our preference at this time is to practice “social distancing,” maintaining a 6 to 10 foot distance from people, and clean while properties are vacant, wherever possible. Before working onsite with each of our clients, our technicians will have cleaned and sanitized their hands as well as their equipment. Your technician will be prepared with protective gear to wear both for your protection and their own, and they will use appropriate best practices to ensure your family’s health and safety. We have mandated that any employees exhibiting symptoms of respiratory illness shall not come to work.

Cleaning is crucial. The Center for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) says, “Current evidence suggests that novel coronavirus may remain viable for hours to days on surfaces made from a variety of materials. Cleaning of visibly dirty surfaces followed by disinfection is a best practice measure for prevention of COVID-19 and other viral respiratory illnesses in households and community settings.” Furthermore, they added, “For soft (porous) surfaces such as carpeted floor, rugs, and drapes, remove visible contamination if present and clean with appropriate cleaners”. 

According to Fox News’ reporting on research published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine, “The results provide key information about the stability of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 disease, and suggests that people may acquire the virus through the air and after touching contaminated objects.” NPR’s reporting on the same research led them to the conclusion that, “The new coronavirus can survive on hard surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel for up to 72 hours and on cardboard for up to 24 hours. To prevent transmission, keep surfaces clean.” More than 60% of household carpeting is made of nylon, a plastic, and plastics are the most common constituent of carpeting. There’s no doubt that cleaning and sanitizing is always a best practice when an illness is, or has been, present. The CDC recommends Mediclean products for the sanitization of these soft surfaces. Randy’s Carpet Care offers Mediclean products alongside our full lineup of professional cleaning products, which we pair with an industry-standard hot water extraction. 

Randy’s Carpet Care is proud to provide our vital services to West Michigan in this time of uncertainty. We are committed to doing our part for the community and pledge to work with individuals, community institutions, and business owners on long term billing as opposed to the standard 30 day expectation for payment, wherever possible and prudent. We know that we will get through this crisis as a community, a state, a country, and a world. 

We will pick up your area rugs for cleaning in our shop or you can bring your rugs directly to our office at 131 Coolidge Ave Ste #2 in Holland. Either way, arrangements can be made if you wish to avoid direct contact with our office or technicians. 

Our emergency services will remain available as staffing and supplies allow.

For more information, contact Randy’s Carpet Care at (616) 392-1400 or by emailing info@randyscarpetcare.com. 

 

SOURCES:

www.cdc.gov

www.foxnews.com

www.npr.org

www.nejm.org

How do professional carpet cleaners clean pet urine?

by Jeremy Strickland

For the average Joe, if their cat or dog pees in their house, this is a dreadful accident in need of immediate attention. It’s a disgusting problem and not their favorite topic of conversation. Not so for us. As Professional Carpet and Upholstery cleaners, we love to chat about dog and cat urine. For folks such as us, these accidents are a fascinating challenge and job security too!

As you can imagine, our office phones ring regularly with these smelly problems in need of a solution. The customer’s side of the conversation usually flows (ha ha ha) something like this: “Kitty Von Meowmeow peed by the couch, and I tried to clean it up a couple of days ago, but now it looks worse.” Or: “My prized French Poodle, Captain Picard, peed here last summer and now I’m smelling it again.”

So, why is urine so difficult to clean out of carpets?

Urine is acidic, but it becomes alkaline and ammonium salts form in the residue it creates. Typical cleaning solutions will not break down these salts, and they can not be rinsed away with hot water. Salts, as you’ll remember from science class, retain moisture, so urine can stay moist under the carpet – in the backing and pad – for up to seven years(!), even when it appears to be dry on the top. This is why, particularly in the humidity of summer months, the ghost of an old spot may come back to haunt your nose.

Gross.

Before we talk about how we get urine spots clean, note that even if it’s just one spot that needs to be cleaned from your carpet, if the pet heavily wet that area or had multiple “accidents” in that one spot, the problem will be down into the padding and maybe even to the floor underneath. To remain economical, we typically treat urine from the top of the carpet down, but in severe cases, the carpet may need be pulled up, both sides of the carpet treated and cleaned, padding replaced, and the floor underneath cleaned (maybe even sanded and sealed). Furthermore, if over a quarter of the carpet in a room has been affected, the cost of the cleaning may exceed the cost of replacement. Always schedule a free estimate or consultation with a professional carpet cleaner before making a final decision, though. They’ll assess the problem and let you know what your options are and what they may cost. An honest professional will always tell you if replacement or cleaning is the best option for you.

Extreme circumstances are one thing, but your average spot cleaning is another. The trick to successfully combating these spots is to use chemicals which break down the salts and use enzyme producing bacteria to battle the odor (Cool!). As an added bonus, the chemicals used by Randy’s Carpet Care technicians to perform this job are kid and pet friendly – plus Earth friendly too, for that matter!

For best results, we always use more chemical than there is urine in the carpet, and the bacterial odor fighting chemicals will continue waging war with the urine smell on top of and underneath your carpet for up to two weeks. You need not fret if odor lingers after your cleaning; this is normal, and it will probably go away.

However, in a small selection of cases, a second or third appointment may be needed to address remaining or returning spots, We do not guarantee our urine treatments/cleaning because of this possibility. Don’t let this scare you, though, as for most folks, one visit is sufficient.

Randy’s always recommends professional cleaning over doing-it-yourself (for practical reasons: you may make the spot worse or set the stain), but if you’re a stalwart DIY type, check out this article about using household hydrogen peroxide to clean small organic spots such as pet urine, and if a male cat is the source of your pungent carpet woes, check out this one.

If you now find the subject of pet urine fascinating and you want to chat about it, shoot us an email or call our office @ (616) 392-1400 to schedule your free estimate today!

Nomination time!

Randy’s Carpet Care has won “Best of the Best” in the category of “Carpet Cleaning,” as voted by the readers of the Holland Sentinel, for the last 16 consecutive years. This year, we also have nominations in the categories of “Customer Service” and “Cleaning Service.” Please help us lock in our 17th win by following this link and nominating us for our work in 2019.

Thank you for your support!

 

 

 

Tulip Time 2019

by Jeremy Strickland

Every Spring in Holland, MI, we celebrate the city’s Dutch heritage with the Tulip Time festival. In this moment, our quiet little Lake Michigan beach town is flooded with tourists, clomping wooden shoes, and exploding with color. There are millions of tulips blooming here! Next year, come see it for yourself. In the meantime, here are a few photos of the famous flowers that I took while downtown yesterday.