Carpet Cleaning and Vinegar Bob

 

There’s not much I haven't tried in the way of carpet cleaning, upholstery cleaning, and wool rug cleaning. I've tried high-end solutions and simple stuff likes soda and vinegar to change ph levels. Cleaning my own carpets with vinegar saves time and removes heavy soiling. Besides, my carpet’s ph level goes neutral and remains’ cleaner longer. There’s nothing else I would use on my own carpet and furniture than vinegar. Sure the odor remains two or three days, but who cares? After about 20 minutes indoors, my nose gets used to it, anyway.

 

I knew a carpet cleaner with a Fox Truckmount, a big one. There’s not much he wouldn't tackle with his Fox, including crime scene cleanup. Of course, this was many years ago, long before crime scene cleanup became a coroner’s game.

 

“Bob,” I'll call him, loved to saturate a bloody carpet with white vinegar, agitate, and then suck it through his Fox.  Because the Fox discharges its waste through a garden hose, he dumped his waste water directly into sanitary sewers, but after thoroughly agitating blood soiled areas and beyond.

 

Bob used to joke as he worked. A deep red wine-like froth bubbled up around his Power Flite scrubber, soiling its brush and rubber shields.  Steam from his Fox first mixed with blood to rise in a terrible odor, unmatched by either alone and somehow synergistically greater than either’s offensiveness.  Bob swore by this concoction of vinegar mixed into blood. “My momma sprayed vinegar on my back at the beach. Used to be early in summer, I'd burn redder than a pepper. Out came the vinegar to take the burn out.”

 

Before long Bob learned to use vinegar for as a tonic with raw eggs. He boiled meat in water and added a pinch of vinegar.  Bob once related,  “When I come to one of these bloody cleanup jobs, I pre-spray with vinegar just like I would any other carpet cleaning solution, only I use it to start cleaning and decontaminating walls and ceilings too.””

 

Bob also showed me what he did to clean his Fox, wand, and hoses when done. He ran a gallon of vinegar through his cleaning system after thoroughly flushing it with a cleaning solution, then his Fox’s hot water, and finally fresh vinegar. “Yep, me, the Fox, and vinegar get it done quick enough.” “Sometimes,” Bob added, “I like to pour rubbing alcohol on the carpet when I'm done, long as there’s an open window and no flames near.”

 

Bob finished off his carpet blood cleanup the way he finished so many other carpet cleaning jobs with heavy soiling. Out came his oscillating, random orbiter and he pad cleaned with his favorite Afghanistan towels. They came up with quite a bit of blood. Once soiled, he tossed each one in a strong solution of vinegar, water, and Organic Compound's better carpet cleaning solution. As the carpet gave up its residual blood, he continued with his towels, re-soaking once bloody areas and recleaning. I couldn't see how Bob would get these blood stained towels user-friendly again, but maybe the vinegar helped.

 

Then Bob dropped an interesting piece of information I had not given much thought in my carpet cleaning training, “I use it [vinegar] to wipe fingerprints off nonporous surfaces