Want to remove a suborn stain?

Sometimes you don’t need all of your carpets cleaned, you just have that one stain that you need to clean up. Don’t make it worse by trying to clean it with the wrong type cleaner, you could end up setting the stain, spreading it, or damaging the carpet.

Our spot and stain removal guide covers many common household stains and guides you step by step through the cleaning process using cleaners you most likely already have around the house.

Join our e-mail list below and download a guide on how to remove stains safely and effectively from your carpets. No more wondering what product to use, or how to do it.

A repeat client calls us back to clean again because they have our number handy. The last time we cleaned the job was fine, the price and service to them was acceptable. They will call us back because they know what they are going to get, and calling someone else might be better but it’s a crap shoot and might be worse too.

A loyal client will find our number if they don’t have it handy so they can use us again. the job was great, the value of service was memorable. they are pretty sure if they have to use someone else it will not be as good as if they used us again.

We’re not just working to make our clients happy, we’re working hard on developing a relationship of trust and building loyal customers.

I found a cliff notes guide for you to read and be an expert when you go shopping.

http://www.home-style-choices.com/carpeting.html

I went with a dense, cut pile, nylon 6,6 carpet.  you can find this type of carpet at many retailers here in Bellingham. One of my favorite nylon 6,6 carpets would be Tigressá, found at Walkers Carpet One.

Read the buying guide, do your own research, then let the pros at Walkers Carpet One answer any remaining questions, they are really top notch at what they do. You’ll buy knowing that you made an informed purchase.

Does it really matter if the company you hire is licensed and insured?

It sure does.

Although a company that isn’t licensed and doesn’t have insurance will be able to offer you a cheaper price, it’s because they may not be paying taxes, their employees might be working under the table without l&i coverage. What happens if there is an accident? what if there is damage to you, your house or what if one of the employees got hurt while on your property?

It’s very important that the job gets done right, but also that when something does go wrong, that you are protected.

Carpet Care Cleaners is licensed with the state of Washington as G Green inc. and fully insured with American Family Insurance.

I have been keeping track of traffic to my carpet cleaning webpage using statcounter from  late 2005 until now. I usually look at info about what search terms are being used to get to my site, and what pages people spend more time on. These statistics can be great for helping improve the webpage.  I have always looked at this info from a pretty close up view, zooming in to see all the details, I never even noticed that I could zoom out, and take a view of long term trends. What I found didn’t necessarily surprise me, but more of confirmed what I already knew, thatWordpress has made my site way better.

2006-2007 I was getting about 1,500 people visiting my webpage in a year. In 2009 and 2010 I was over 2000. in 2011 I was on the same pace to get another 2000 potential customers to visit my site when I made a fundamental change to my webpage. I went from having a static page that I changed the look of every now and then, to using WordPress. WordPress is blogging software so it is easy to add new content and for me it made it easy to add coupons and really customize everything. in 2012 it looks like I doubled the amount of people visiting my site, and the business from the site increased too.

Because we don’t really use the phone book to advertise anymore, our webpage has become more important to us.  Using WordPress isn’t the only factor that has changed on our webpage, but because it was such a major change it was easy to see the before and after effects.

We were scheduled to clean just as the work day was ending so that there would be a full evening to let the carpets dry, but with the great weather the carpets were almost dry by the time we finished cleaning.

Carpet 1:

Vacant house, carpet was vacuumed before I got there, and there were no visible stains.
The carpets took almost no time to clean.

Carpet 2

After moving the furniture, I found carpets with dirt, grime, grease and food spots, it was a uniform shade dark brown underneath all of the litter of what should have been a white carpet. Spent almost as much time just doing a good pre-vacuum and equipment setup as I did on job #1. The carpets needed a pre-spray, before and after spot cleaning, a pre-scrub with a rotary buffer, several passes of steam cleaning, and another round of scrubbing and drying with a bonnet. I used almost every tool in the van to get the carpet looking like new again.

Both carpets were the same size, and because of they way I have been pricing my services, cost the same to clean.

Having these 2 jobs that were so very different in labor be the same in price didn’t seem right.

After debating pricing and thinking about my experience with these two jobs I have changed my pricing into 3 levels of service. Economy, Full Service, and Premium. Although the average job we clean needs a full service cleaning, there are some jobs that would save money by getting an economy cleaning. And some that need more attention and extra processes to really get clean.

We still base our pricing per room so it’s easy to figure out exactly how much the cleaning will be. If you have any questions on our new teared pricing, give me a call, I would be happy to answer any questions.

Why is everyone so happy in Bellingham in spring time? Yes there is the whole sun reappearance thing, but it’s also when the Bellingham economy starts to pick back up again.

Economic seasonality in Whatcom County is very apparent when I pulled up a simple sales graph spanning a little more then 5 years. I can’t say that every business looks this way, but other owners and managers I have been talking to also are happy for spring to be here.  Looking for trends in sales can really help prepare a company both for when to start gearing up for increased business, and when to start saving some money for a slow season.  So happy spring, I’m looking forward to the sun, and business.

Green: The most generic term of the bunch, and probably why it is the most often used. Going green can mean anything from a company that plants native trees by hand while restoring natural salmon habitat, to a bio-hazard chemical processing facility company (sorry no offense to the industry, just the least green sounding thing I could think of) that finally put a recycle bin in the office. In the cleaning industry it most commonly refers to the chemicals being used, or denotes an overall effort throughout the business.

All Natural: This term is not just vague, it has no legal definition for labeling in the US, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_foods#No_definition Companies that use this term usually mean they use common ingredients in their cleaning solutions, such as baking soda, vinegar and essential oils.

Organic: Although quite vague this term does have a legal meaning in the food industry where the items that are claiming to be organic must be free of artificial food additives, and are often processed with fewer artificial methods, materials and conditions. Often cleaners use this term the same way as the term natural.

Safe: Here is the big one. Safe refers usually to the health rating of the chemicals being used. Often termed “kid and pet safe” or “kid and pet friendly” Not only is it a benefit to the home owner, and other humans and pets but when safe chemicals are being used, the cleaning technician who is in repeat contact with the chemicals is much better off as well. To determine how “safe” chemicals are you can always ask to see the material safety data sheets (msds) of anything the cleaning company is using. it’s required by law that they carry this information on them in case of spills or emergencies.

Environmentally Friendly: All of the above terms may or may not have anything to do with protecting the environment.  So when being applied to a carpet cleaning company, environmentally friendly can mean several things all related to actually protecting nature, including making sure waste water is dumped in a drain that leads to a treatment facility and not just to the nearest open body of water, or that the equipment is run off of electricity so a van in the parking lot doesn’t have to run a gas engine during the whole cleaning.

Not everything is as it seems: Phosphates are a good example of why it’s hard tell  what “green” term might mean. Phosphates are amphipathic. That means that they have both a polar end and a nonpolar end. That allows the nonpolar end to stick to the oily greasy stuff, and the polar end to stick to the water which washes it away. Water won’t clean oil, but use phosphates and the oil seems vanish when you rinse it with water, in short it cleans really really good.  depending on how terms are defined it fits in to each category of green. So what’s the big problem? It’s too green, by that I mean it really is not environmentally friendly, sure it helps plants grow, but when used it ends up in large water sources causing rapid plant growth in the form of algae, too much algae sucks the oxygen out of the water killing off the fish.

What’s important to you: Knowing more about what green means, will help you find a cleaning company that meets your expectations. Don’t stop at asking if they are green! ask a few follow up questions dealing with what’s important to you and your family to make sure that the products and services that you buy, are what you think they are.