Our "Clean Carpet/Wool/Green/Chem Sensitive" option

[Tom Forsythe]

The beauty of the soap free products is that they activate surfactant residues and they get used to clean the carpet and are removed during extraction. The soap-free products produce no foam and should be a go to pre-spray when there are alot of residues. If you add some water to various areas of a carpet, agitate with a bone scraper, you will produce foam when there are excessive residues. The downside of soap free cleaners is that over time the residues are removed and you miss the cleaning that they provide.

Three primary type of ingredients in a cleaning formulation are builders, surfactants and solvents. Soap Free products generally only have builders and surfactant residues in the carpet. Once you have cleaned the same carpet several times you will have diminishing returns when only the alkaline builders are available for cleaning as the surfactant residues decrease. Solvents evaporate over time if they do not stick to the carpet. Our Citrus Solv II added to a soap free product adds solvency and some surfactancy to provide better cleaning.

The following is theoretical and Scott and I have been in many discussions about these principles. The surface tension of soap free products and water is around 70 dynes/cm. Most fibers have a surface energy of around 40 dynes/cm. Oils are at around 25 dynes/cm explaining why soap free cleaners and water does not work very well. Surfactant residues when activated by soap free ingredients reduce the surface tension to around 15 dynes/cm. The reduction of the surface tension allows the fibers to be properly cleaned (wetted). One benefit of not properly wetting the fiber is a limitation of wicking as it is more of a surface cleaning. This is the theory and I would love to hear from experienced cleaners if this makes sense of your experience with soap free cleaners.

 

[Cleanworks]

The beauty of the soap free products is that they activate surfactant residues and they get used to clean the carpet and are removed during extraction. The soap-free products produce no foam and should be a go to pre-spray when there are alot of residues. If you add some water to various areas of a carpet, agitate with a bone scraper, you will produce foam when there are excessive residues. The downside of soap free cleaners is that over time the residues are removed and you miss the cleaning that they provide.

Three primary type of ingredients in a cleaning formulation are builders, surfactants and solvents. Soap Free products generally only have builders and surfactant residues in the carpet. Once you have cleaned the same carpet several times you will have diminishing returns when only the alkaline builders are available for cleaning as the surfactant residues decrease. Solvents evaporate over time if they do not stick to the carpet. Our Citrus Solv II added to a soap free product adds solvency and some surfactancy to provide better cleaning.

The following is theoretical and Scott and I have been in many discussions about these principles. The surface tension of soap free products and water is around 70 dynes/cm. Most fibers have a surface energy of around 40 dynes/cm. Oils are at around 25 dynes/cm explaining why soap free cleaners and water does not work very well. Surfactant residues when activated by soap free ingredients reduce the surface tension to around 15 dynes/cm. The reduction of the surface tension allows the fibers to be properly cleaned (wetted). One benefit of not properly wetting the fiber is a limitation of wicking as it is more of a surface cleaning. This is the theory and I would love to hear from experienced cleaners if this makes sense of your experience with soap free cleaners.

Although you may have diminishing returns on repeat cleanings, I have found that these jobs don't get as heavily soiled, 1- because of the repeat cleanings and 2-not leaving any sticky residues behind. I add Prochem citrus pro to my Procyon extreme when dealing with oily situations. I recently cleaned a marine showroom that had a lot of grease and oil tracked in and it worked great. I have noticed on first time cleanings with portable machines using Procyon, I often have a lot of foam in the waste tank from previous residues. I have tried your one earth product but probably didn't give as much effort as I have with the Procyon. Can you tell us what the difference/similarity is without having to kill us?

 

[Tom Forsythe]

My product is Clean Free not One Earth. We have never looked at One Earth. Clean Free is similar to Procyon circa 2010. We only look at a couple of competitive products a year. Early on we used to look at more. Our focus is now on looking at new raw materials to keep our formulas on the cutting edge. We generally improve about 10 formulas a year. Clean Free was improved a couple of years ago by replacing the primary ingredient with a better dissolving version of that ingredient.

Thanks for your excellent feedback.

 

[Cleanworks]

My product is Clean Free not One Earth. We have never looked at One Earth. Clean Free is similar to Procyon circa 2010. We only look at a couple of competitive products a year. Early on we used to look at more. Our focus is now on looking at new raw materials to keep our formulas on the cutting edge. We generally improve about 10 formulas a year. Clean Free was improved a couple of years ago by replacing the primary ingredient with a better dissolving version of that ingredient.

Thanks for your excellent feedback.

Thanks Tom. Is that a Bridgepoint product. Sorry, I lose track of who sells what.

 

[Tom Forsythe]

Bridgepoint is the brand and it is our major brand. No apologies necessary as I sometimes forget as we sell more brands than I can remember on demand.

 

[ruff]

I want to take a minute and express how happy I am that Tom Forsythe posts on this site.

He's always patient with us. Explains things very clearly. Never badmouth the competition, yet never just pushes their specific product. And I trust his word 100%

In my opinion, his presence here helps Interlink (and so does Scott W who's great on his own.)

I can personally attest that I bought quite a few Interlink products just because I could get honest, straight forward, fluff free answers from Tom here.
He's a great asset.

 

[ruff]

Good answer Tom, though in most cases the lack of "residue" (and we thought residue was a four letter word) is not an issue, as most of us pre-spray the carpet, therefore provide the detergent. And rinse with the "soap free" product.

Though in my experience, many carpets (not trashed) due to modern truck mount heat and recovery, do quite well with just the rinse and light spotting.

 

[Tom Forsythe]

Thank you for the kinds words! Your expression is a succinct description of how Scott and I view our role on this board. See Scott and I at Nexus. We will be at the Ronald McDonald House helping to clean the area rugs.

Also , thanks for teaching me how to do paragraphs.

 

[Steve Lawrence]

Have been Chemspec's One Earth powder for years in Scruz

I'm using Procyon in NV which is nearly identical in pH level, purpose and theory but not so in actual ingredients. No real reason for the switch, just the product fell into my lap lets say..


Both are excellent.


https://soapfreeprocyon.com/pdf/5b.pdf


http://www.jondon.com/media/pdf/msds_docs/MS-CS-DFF210OE.pdf


Kinda interesting is that a jug of One Earth weighs 8# and a jug or Procyon comes in at 6# yet the physical volume is identical, so you'll be running out at the same time...

i like Procyon a lot, too. Dissapointed that we can't use our CRB's with it.