I have two good carpets I need to clean so my little one can play on them. I doubt Dgte has any steam cleaning companies and not sure I would trust them so I plan on hand washing. Does anyone have experience hand washing quality carpets, what to use in terms of soap or cleaner and brushes or sponges? One is wool and one is silk. Thanks
I cleaned quite a few carpets in my working days, but I used professional tools and detergents, if you can not find any specialized shampoos, you could probably use Dog Shampoo. The bigger problem is how to get the shampoo out of the carpet, I used a wet/dry vaccum cleaner with a spray nozzle at the end of the pipe that holds the piece that sucks the water out of the carpet, I would first spray the shampoo mixed with water onto the carpet and then after about 10 min, would suck the carpet dry and spray plain water onto the carpet and suck dry again, repeat once more, I wold then suck the carpet crosswise and make sure to get it as dry as possible... Good luck
Good tips, thanks. I like the notion of dog shampoo over dish detergent and one of the internet sites suggested.
Home made "dry" shampoo recipe: Mix all ingredients in a large bucket then lightly stir to mix. Add the water first to cut down on all the bubbles. 3 quarts water 3 Tbs dish soap 1 Tbs white vinegar 1/2 tsp ammonia Test on a small area 1st
"Fish" mentions "Bubbles" and yes that is a problem with the Vaccum Cleaner, I thought some more and now I would say that "Ariel" the laundry detergent, totally dissolved in warm water would be better because it's made for the washing machine, also I am not sure if you can just wash a silk carpet, silk being quite delicate...
The process I tried to explain would allow for using it on upholstered furniture/Car seats, the trick is really to suck the dissolved dirt out of the fabric, theoretically one can use any wet vaccum cleaner and use a sprayer bottle to wet the fabric, first with detergent/water mix and after that water, one rinses with more water and suck dry again with the vaccum cleaner, don't allow the furniture to get soaked, see to it that only the fabric gets good wet and suck dry right away...
