Try This Cool Science Experiment At Home With Your Kids

by Jeremy Strickland

From community service to outdoor adventures, the Cub Scout den that I lead builds character in our boys while they learn and have a ton of fun. Recently, my co-leader ran our boys through a science experiment that illustrates Chromatography as well as a process we experience in the carpet cleaning business. It was a simple experiment, so you can try it with your kids or grand-kids using materials you’re certain to have at home.

You’ll need:

• plastic cup
• scissors
• ruler
• white printer paper
• pencil, straw, or Popsicle stick
• binder clip
• different colored markers

Here’s what you do:

1. Fill the bottom of the cup with about 1 1/2 inches of water.
2. Cut several two inch wide strips of paper to be an inch shorter than the plastic cup is tall.
3. Draw a horizontal line with one of the markers an inch from the bottom of a paper strip.
4. Lay the pencil across the top of the cup.
5. Use the binder clip to attach the top of the paper strip to the center of the pencil, dangling the paper strip into the water. Make sure that bottom of the paper strip is submerged but the marker line is not.
6. Ask yourself: Is the marker color just one color or the combination of many? Observe for the next several minutes. What happens?  Note what you see.
7. Try it with another color marker and then another. What’s different from the last color? Any surprises? Compare with your previous notes. Be sure to try black and brown markers!

The takeaway:

As the water wicks up the strip of paper, dissolving the dyes used to create the marker’s color, the individual dyes used to create the color separate. You’ll notice that some dyes travel farther and/or faster up than others because some dyes have molecules which are heavier than others.

This process is called Chromatography, and it was invented by Mikhail Tsvet in 1910 in order to separate plant dyes. Chromatography is still used by modern chemists in fields as varied as police forensics and animal biology.

Wicking in carpet cleaning:

So, your beloved German Shepherd, Sir Licksalot, got sick and peed on the Family Room carpet. You take your fur-baby to the vet, and you call in your local Carpet Cleaning Professional to clean up the mess. By the end of the day, Sir Licksalot is on the road to recovery, and your carpet has been returned to its former pee-pee-free glory…

…But in the morning, the spot in the Family Room which had been cleaned yesterday has turned brown. What happened?!? Did the dog pee there again? Did the trusted Carpet Cleaner you had been so impressed with actually do a crummy job?

No no no. The brown spot is the result of wicking, a natural phenomenon caused by carpet fibers drying from the bottom up. If there’s any organic material under your carpet, the drying carpet may pull it up to the top of the fibers (just as the water pulled the dyes up the paper strips in the experiment), turning the carpet brown. This can happen to the best carpet cleaners, and it’s not their fault. Luckily, it doesn’t always happen, and there’s an easy fix if it does.

Randy’s Carpet Care has specialized in the science and art of Professional Carpet Cleaning since 1980. If you’re living in West Michigan with a naughty dog, call today to schedule your free estimate!

(616) 392-1400

DIY – How do I remove food spots from my carpet?

by Jeremy Strickland

“How do I clean a food spot out of my carpet?” I get this question a lot, so I’ll skip my normal approach and jump right in.

First, it’s crucial to know what food it is that you’re dealing with and whether or not a DIY solution is even a realistic one (you may make the problem worse or set the stain – as always, DIY at your own peril). For example, if you’ve spilled red wine or your carpet is wool, bite the bullet and call a professional.

If it’s a protein-based spot, you’ll need to break down the proteins in order to get it clean. Remove any of the solid bits. Scrape any excess off the top; careful not to fray the carpet fibers. Dilute a couple of drops of Dawn dish soap in a gallon bucket of hot water, mixed with a cap full of ammonia. The dish soap will help with the food and grease, and the ammonia will help break down the proteins. Clean with a towel which is damp with this solution. Scrub in a circular motion. Careful not to get things too wet. Next, dampen a towel and scrub with white vinegar and hot water mixed 50/50 to neutralize the PH so the spot doesn’t brown as it dries. (NOTE: This is also the process you’ll want to follow to clean dog poop.)

The next day, after the mess is clean and dry, the spot may have turned brown despite your efforts at prevention. No big deal. This is caused by over-wetting the carpet while cleaning. Put a spray nozzle on your brown hydrogen peroxide bottle and give the area a good misting (don’t saturate). Peroxide is great for organic stain removal (but not for wool), and it also helps remove browning. After you’ve misted, use your fingers to rake it in.

If your spot is not protein-based, skip the ammonia and go right to the vinegar and water solution with a couple of drops of dish liquid. Vinegar kills germs. It’s not quite as effective as chlorine bleach, but for household purposes, it does the job just fine and isn’t as harsh or disastrous to colors as bleach is.

Finally, as odd as it may be to hear this from me, I recommend that you’re wary of advice found on the internet when searching for answers such as this. I’m a professional carpet cleaner, and I oftentimes see terrible advice posted by lay folk with best intentions but no idea what they’re talking about. Your best bet is almost always to call in a professional, but if you absolutely must DIY, at least make sure your advice is coming from a credible source like a professional’s blog.

 

How do I get an ink spot out of my carpet?

by Jeremy Strickland

By the time she was five, you knew that your daughter Sophie was an artist. I don’t mean that she was like the other kids, drawing houses and cats and rainbows with their crayons, I mean she’s the real deal. She’s got talent.

At eight, Sophie was already experimenting with oil painting landscapes. At nine, she won an award for her watercolor portrait of her dad. At ten, her school gave her her first solo art exhibition in the library. At eleven, inspired by her new found love for Manga, she spilled a bottle of India Ink on her bedroom carpet.

Now, as a mother and a responsible adult, your first inclination is to let your prolific and gifted child know that it’s okay. Mom’s got this, kid. You’ll simply get down there and clean it up. Naturally, you want to make sure you do the job proper and thorough, so you journey down the rabbit hole of an internet search engine, finding a plethora of voices offering thoughtful advice on how to deal with the spill.

Bad advice. 

Ink spots on your carpet are wrought with peril. If you attempt to clean this yourself, you are likely to make it worse. Either you’ll spread the spot or you’ll set it. Maybe both. You’ll also make the job more difficult for the Professional Carpet Cleaner that you should have called in the first place.

Skip the chain cleaners, and look for a local company who’s well reviewed on Google or recommended by your friends. When you make the call, be sure to ask about a minimum service charge and what work you can add to the spot removal to ensure you’re getting your moneys worth on that minimum service charge.

Like Sophie or any other artist, a Professional Carpet Cleaner will have an eye for detail. Instead of oil paint or India Ink, they’ll be prepared with a palette of appropriate cleaning solutions and have the proper training to address the specific needs of a difficult spot like the one in Sophie’s room.

If you’re in West Michigan, you may already know that Randy’s Carpet Care also comes equipped with nearly 40 years in the business and an award winning reputation for customer service.

Call (616) 392-1400 today for your free estimate.

DIY – Amazing, Easy Way To Clean Coffee From Your Carpet

by Jeremy Strickland

Wednesday. 6:39am. Breakfast.

Your husband is holding his coffee cup with his left hand, pouring milk into your son’s cereal bowl with his right. There’s a high pitched feline squeal from the hall, followed by the unmistakable sounds of a chase. Your dog, Theodore Roosevelt, chases your cat, Dr. Frankenstein, between your husband’s legs, knocking him off balance, and while he manages to hold onto the milk jug, half the contents of his coffee cup spill onto the dining room carpet.

You spring into action. Reflexively, you reach for a store-bought carpet-cleaning soap like Resolve or Woolite.

Wait!

Here’s the thing. I’m not going to attempt to destroy the reputation of these fine products, but I am going to ask you this: Are you rinsing the product out of your carpet after you’ve worked on the spot(s)? While these products may remove some spots, they may also exacerbate the problem.

Browning and Soap Residues.

Your carpet dries from the bottom up, so after your cleaning attempt, organic material from the bottom of the carpet may travel up to the surface to wave an ugly “Hello” at you (we call this “wicking”), turning the carpet brown. Even when browning does not occur, the soaps and shampoos may create a tar pit, trapping every dinosaur (or particles of dirt) that happens by. Over an all too short period of time, these particles build up and give the appearance that the original stain has come back from the dead – it may even look worse than it did before!

Instead…

Sop up as much of the liquid as you can with a clean towel. Go to your medicine cabinet and grab that brown bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide from inside. You’ve probably been using this for cuts and scrapes all of your life, just like Mom did, but that’s a bad idea. Peroxide will kill good bacteria as well as bad. It can be put to better use as a cleaner and mild bleaching agent.

Take a spray nozzle (they’re mostly universal) and screw it right on the top of the brown bottle. Mist enough peroxide on top of the spot to get it moist, but avoid soaking it. Blot it with a clean towel. Use your fingers to brush it in. It will take about eight hours to get the full effect, so go on with your life and come back to the spot later. If it hasn’t worked well enough for you, try it again. You won’t hurt anything. A great reason for treating your carpet stains with Hydrogen Peroxide is that it won’t leave any residues behind. It comes in the brown bottle to keep it from turning into oxygen and water, and that’s exactly what it’ll do after being applied to your carpet. Well, that, and (hopefully; fingers crossed) fix your spot.

Bleaching?!?

Household hydrogen peroxide (or H2O2) is diluted about 98%, and the stuff we use professionally is much stronger and also quite safe for most carpets, which are essentially made of plastic (60% of residential carpets are nylon). Hydrogen Peroxide works through oxidation, by blasting the stain with oxygen. It won’t permanently remove colors like the chlorine bleach you use for your whites when doing laundry. The exception to this rule is natural fibers such as wool; don’t use it on natural fiber carpets.

While hydrogen peroxide is super handy to have around (it can be used to treat any organic spotting, including urine), it is not the be-all-end-all magical bullet of DIY carpet cleaning. Sometimes, you have to bite that proverbial bullet and call in a professional.

NOTE: A version of this article was originally published as “The Magic Bullet” on February 9, 2016.