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What goes in first comes out last:
Ink from a newspaper left on a white sofa remains on a surface.
The most thorough cleaning technique for this problem would be
poulticizing, in which a cleaner wets a surface and puts weight on it to
draw out anything suspended in the water. The ink went into the sofa
first but came out last.
Soap is harder to remove than dirt:
Half of soap is oil, and you can only take soap out of a surface one layer
at a time. This is where cleaners must remember the boundary layer
principle, which says that when any chemical or gas flows over a surface,
there is a layer of gas or liquid that has zero velocity at the surface.
You can flood a lot of chemical and think you're
cleaning, when you're really not: Of the four basics of
soil removal — chemical, temperatures, agitation and time — agitation
is the most essential and will take off the last layer of soil.
For a vessel to be useful, it first must be empty:
Concentrate on filling and removing instead of pouring tons of water over
the top of the carpet. This means if a cleaner puts pre-spray on
carpet, the best thing to do is extract, agitate then rinse.
If eight ounces of detergent does a good job, try
four: One of the biggest mistakes carpet cleaners make is
using too much detergent when it isn't necessary. Instead of adding
more chemicals than can't be removed, cleaners should reduce their use of
detergent to remover dirt more effectively.
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