Wicking

A question I sometimes get goes something like this. “It looked great when (insert tech’s name here) cleaned it but now there is a spot. What the heck??”.  I’m not happy unless you are happy and around here the saying goes, “If Heather isn’t happy, then ain’t no one happy!”  Such frustration is usually the result of a phenomenon known as wicking.

Wicking is the result of a spill that has gone to the carpet backing and/or the carpet padding. While the previous treatment removes the substance from the visible carpet fibers, a portion of the stain seeped below the visible surface into the carpet backing and pad. In most cases you and our technician are oblivious to this situation. When your technician uses our powerful truck mounted steam extraction equipment to clean the area, the embedded stain is extracted out of your home with our cleaning solutions and rinse water.

Of course, there are times when Murphy makes a visit. This is when there is too much of the hidden stain substance for our normal process to handle. In these cases our truck mount cleans the surface area so your carpet looks new. Then as the carpet fibers dry, the stain is wicked up to where it is visible. You may even run into the situation where a small spill pooled as it went through the carpet and the reappearing stain is much larger than the original stain. By all means call us! We will gladly come back out and take care of it for you. If however it is a really small spot you may choose to self-treat it with the bottle of our spotter we left you in your complimentary pink A Step Above Carpet and Flooring Care, LLC goody bag. Just be sure to let the technician know about it when we return for your next clean!

This brings us to the absolute best scenario where you know there was a previous spill and you let your technician know during your pre-job walkthrough. If you can tell the technician where it happened and what was spilt we can spend a little extra time flushing out the substance and making sure we leave you with the best possible clean.

While we try to avoid such situations (both spots and an unhappy Heather), they are sometimes unforeseen. And this, my friends, is why we say “If a spot comes back so do we!”