Outsmarting Your Carpet Stains
Maintaining a stain-free carpet is important. When a spill causes a nasty stain in between visits from your Tulsa carpet cleaners, you put great effort into removing it. Unfortunately, some carpets like to play dirty tricks on their owners. The fruit punch stain that took you more than an hour to conquer might mysteriously reappear overnight, leaving you wondering if you need new glasses or if Rod Serling is hiding somewhere in your home.
How Can Carpet Stains Reappear?
Don’t worry; your carpet isn’t haunted. In many cases, a phenomenon called wicking is to blame. A liquid spill can soak through the carpet surface and into its backing and under pad. When you clean the spot, you’re only removing the stain from the surface; part of the spilled fluid is still lurking below the clean fibers where you can’t see it. In a few hours or days, the colored fluid trapped in the pad and backing is pulled back up into the surface fibers in the same way that the wick of an oil lamp becomes saturated.
Managing Mysterious Reappearing Stains
Here are a few tips to help you prevent and manage those infuriating reappearing stains.
- Whenever a spill occurs, treat it as quickly as possible to prevent fluid from soaking into the carpet.
- Use as little water as possible to clean the spot.
- After cleaning the stain, place an old towel over the spot, and weigh it down with a heavy object for several hours; this helps to draw the moisture into the towel instead of allowing it to rest on the carpet surface.
- If you have a large stain or one that keeps coming back, call your Tulsa carpet cleaners to handle the problem. Professional carpet experts have powerful extracting equipment that can remove deep stains and put an end to their encores.
