Acidic Prespray and Alkaline rinse

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Swani
On rare occasions I have a home that has urine contamination and the owner or renter does not want to pay the costs associated with doing a correct urine decontamination with a water claw ect. After a long prequalifing talk and setting expectations low, I will take around 22-24 ounces of UPS or even Fab Set, fill the rest with water and add it to my injection sprayer without yellow tip and soak down the room and let it dwell as long as I can. I know this is not the correct way to handle these situations but this method actually has pretty good success for minimal cost and time. But the problem is, is that some of these homes also have a organic or other greasy stains that the acid cleaner doesn't cut, resulting in another treatment of alkaline prespray making this method not so profitable. All that said my question is, if I spray down with an acid prespray could I use an alkaline rinse for the grease and hopefully leave the carpets at a near neutral ph? And again this is not how I handle 99% of my urine jobs, just that rare occasion. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
 
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Why not just clean the F out of it (lots of pre spray, lots of wand or RE passes and use a basic cheap Deo in your prespray?
I've tried that using an alkaline with an enzyme but it just didn't seem to kill the urine smell the way acid does.
 
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Hack Attack

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Im acid with hydrogen peroxide in a pump up applied on trouble spots 1st with 10 min dwell time, then my standard alkaline prespray in HF with some deo and dry stroke it to death

the acid definitely seems to knock the funk faster, then mist HP over any trouble spots again
 

BIG WOOD

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On rare occasions I have a home that has urine contamination and the owner or renter does not want to pay the costs associated with doing a correct urine decontamination with a water claw ect. After a long prequalifing talk and setting expectations low, I will take around 22-24 ounces of UPS or even Fab Set, fill the rest with water and add it to my injection sprayer without yellow tip and soak down the room and let it dwell as long as I can. I know this is not the correct way to handle these situations but this method actually has pretty good success for minimal cost and time. But the problem is, is that some of these homes also have a organic or other greasy stains that the acid cleaner doesn't cut, resulting in another treatment of alkaline prespray making this method not so profitable. All that said my question is, if I spray down with an acid prespray could I use an alkaline rinse for the grease and hopefully leave the carpets at a near neutral ph? And again this is not how I handle 99% of my urine jobs, just that rare occasion. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
That's why I carry 2 different HF sprayers with me. One has acid in it, and the other has alkaline in it. Just spray the affected areas with the acid and the normal areas with the alkaline. No time lost, and you use about the same amount of chemicals that you normally would use. I can't remember the last time I did the enzyme method or the OSR bucket method. And I rarely get callbacks. So I think your method with the acid spray/alkaline rinse is right on.
 

Mark Saiger

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Maybe an option for you... And if need another prespray later still not very expensive... But we would suggest charging an extra $35 or so for your pet prespray to at least cover the cost.

Most homeowners ok with that if you explain and also keep it in a reasonable range to at least cover your product expense

 

Jim Pemberton

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I've tried that using an alkaline with an enzyme but it just didn't seem to kill the urine smell the way acid does.

Acid alone is a very effective odor neutralizer for urine. Not just its ability to break down the built up residue, but acid treatments in of themselves act as urine odor neutralizers.

I'm not sure if you do in plant rug cleaning, but just the application of acetic acid rapidly knocks down urine odor, and ultimately helps to rinse it out of rugs.

So what you are doing is sound Steve, especially on nylon and wool carpet/rugs. Urine doesn't tend to bond as much to the "polys", and often a thorough cleaning breaks the oily fraction of the urine that clings to the yarns, and flushes it away, as was mentioned by Mikey.
 

Old Coastie

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Acid alone is a very effective odor neutralizer for urine. Not just its ability to break down the built up residue, but acid treatments in of themselves act as urine odor neutralizers.

I'm not sure if you do in plant rug cleaning, but just the application of acetic acid rapidly knocks down urine odor, and ultimately helps to rinse it out of rugs.

So what you are doing is sound Steve, especially on nylon and wool carpet/rugs. Urine doesn't tend to bond as much to the "polys", and often a thorough cleaning breaks the oily fraction of the urine that clings to the yarns, and flushes it away, as was mentioned by Mikey.

Jim, a few questions, please. Should I use vinegar or pure (perhaps diluted) acetic acid? How does on get rid of that pungency? Or is there a better acidic product to use? For example, I have a mostly unused jar of Haitian cotton detergent, which is acidic. Would that be appropriate?
 
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Jim Pemberton

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Acetic acid is used by area rug cleaners who have a high volume of rugs, and whose immersion process works thoroughly enough for acetic acid alone to be effective.

You're better to use a product formulated with surfactants to aid in the penetration of the product. Haitian Cotton detergents rely on reducing agents to "work their magic", but they can damage dyes on natural fiber rugs and aren't really good urine residue removers.

If you are talking wool area rugs specifically, I like Wool Medic. For general carpet cleaning applications, there are a number of urine neutralizing treatments out there with self descriptive names like "Urine Neutralizer" from Bridgepoint, "UPT (Urine Pretreatment)" from Pros Choice, and I'm sure similar products from whomever else you may buy from down your way.
 

Tom Forsythe

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One fact that I missed for years is that one of the alkaline salts from urine deposits is ammonia based. Ammonia has a pH around 12. If you reduce the pH below 9 then the ammonia odor dissipates. This is the reason why acids are so effective in reducing urine odors.

We recently reformulated Urine Neutralizer with our Hydrocide to remove non ammonia odors while the acid removes the ammonia odors. There are other ingredients to break down lipids and to improve the flushing of contaminants. Personally I like to flush with acids, then add a bacteria to continue working after you leave. Bio Modifier Xtreme also uses the same pleasant fragrance as the Urine Neutralizer.
 

ruff

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Tom,
For neutralizing and removing urine from wool carpeting (not rugs) do you recommend TCU or wool medic?


.......and why?
 

Tom Forsythe

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I recommend Wool Medic over TCU primarily because we do not sell TCU anymore. 😀 Both do the job. We discontinued TCU because we prefer the safety of citric acid and glycolic acid over acetic acid. I cringe when I hear rug cleaners buy drums of 99% acetic acid. We bought 56% for safety concerns in our chemical plant. For professional cleaners it is good to use products that customers do not believe they have in their cabinet. Customers smell acetic acid and think vinegar. For rug shops, the smell of vinegar is not a good look as the uninformed think that we are only using the vinegar they have in their cabinets. Maybe the prodigious use of acetic acid has spread the belief among consumers that vinegar is this wonderful cleaner. Not!! I think when I retire I may make it a goal to dispel the myth of cleaning powers possessed by vinegar.
 

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