I received a call today from a future customer that told me they had a urine smell on the carpet and wanted me to remove it. The caller stated that she was referred by one of the companies that refers me a lot and so, my mistake, didn’t educate her as well as I should on the principles of odor removal.
I scheduled the appointment with her. She was pre-sold on us because our referring company says nice things about us.
Then I got the call….
Her husband calls me back and says that he decided to go with another company and didn’t want to use us because our $125 minimum charge was too much. I thanked him for the call.
We hung up….
I decided to call back 5 minutes later…
When he picked up, I informed him of who I was and since the company that referred them to me was important to Perfect Pear I would like to give him some free tools. You see, we have two reports we attach to our receipts when we e-mail them to our customers after the job is finished. One of them is “how to get out urine and odor from carpets and fabrics yourself.”
In this report I talk about the principles of odor removal and what you can and CAN’T do to remove odor. He told me how the gentleman said he was going to remove the odor:
#1. Spray an enzyme #2. Steam Clean #3. Spray an enzyme again
At first glance you might think “wow, that is pretty thorough”. Here is my take on it. If you walk into a “crime scene” and there is a dead body on the floor and you have to clean the place up, guess what you should do first?
YOU SHOULD REMOVE THE DEAD BODY!
You don’t just spray stuff on it. Also, steam cleaning doesn’t affect the pad. Steam cleaning is not meant to go beyond the carpet fibers. The urine stream from the animal penetrated the fibers, the primary backing, the glue, the secondary backing and most likely the pad. And worst case scenarios the cement.
So when the other cleaner sprays the enzyme will it penetrate where the urine went?
Let me quickly explain the principle behind odor removal. If there is a house fire, for example, you can clean the house up but there will still be a smoke smell from the fire. The way our industry has taught us to remove that smoke smell is to use a fogging machine. The fogging machine with a special cleaner will go where the smoke went. The fog mimics the smoke and DE-natures that smell.
With urine it is not different except we mimic the urine stream from the animal. A jet of urine sprays onto the carpet and fills up the carpet fibers. If enough urine comes out the fibers get filled up and the primary and secondary backing of the carpet does as well. If the primary and secondary backing get filled up it could start to fill up the padding under the carpet. This is where the Urine smell is coming from.
So we do the same thing. This is what we do:
#1. GUARANTEE the odor to be gone. If the odor comes back then so do we.
#2. CLEAN the carpet (surface)
#3. Flush the area with fresh water. (Mimicking the urine)
#4. Flush the same area with fresh water again. (Mimicking the urine and cleaning the area. IE. REMOVING THE DEAD BODY)
#5. The we put down our special Enzymes and “herbs and spices” to get rid of and kill the smell. (if there are any left.)
That is thorough and that is the way to clean urine out of carpet.
So what happened on the phone when I told him all of that? He said:
“Well, I don’t want to change services again but I will need my tile and grout cleaned. Can I call you to come and do that for us?”
This was all my fault on not educating the client on odor removal. It was a good reminder that apparently I needed.
*If anyone would like a copy of anyone of our two free reports feel free to e-mail me at: deland@orlandosperfectpear.com
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