encapulate cleaning-better or worse for the industry

[Ron Werner]

SO Larry, what you're saying is that thorough and proper HWE can be out performed in the long term by using an encap product?

What if an encap product is used as the rinse soln?

Doesn't it all depend on what the homeowner/custodian is using for a vacuum? For the most part its not worth crap.

 

[randy]

Great post Larry, now you will be in the Lier or full of shit category with John G. By the way a buddy of mine says your new juice beats the heck out of my current favorite so I will be trying yours again soon. What changes did you make from your original encap juice of a couple years ago ?

or is he pulling my leg to get me another encap juice to test ? So far I have tried out over 25 encap products.

 

[The Great Oz]

I'm VERY familiar with DuPont's program and why they developed encapsulation "cleaning." DuPont wanted to make carpet look clean for the lowest possible cost, because they got into trouble under-bidding maintenance on their now defunct carpet leasing program. The residue reflects light so the carpet looks clean (which is why they had such good results at Disney) and the product can be spread at a dead run.

Look good/cheap/five year carpet lifespan was the program. Encapsulation never had anything to do with soil removal in the DuPont program, and when their reps were asked where the dirt went, they said, "who cares?".

If it's part of your arsenal, great, it's part of ours. We just don't fool ourselves into thinking we're doing anything other than hiding soil when we use it.

 

[Rex Tyus]

I still say the the guys that are impressed with "encapping" and have "converted" from HWE misted on prespray, used no agitation and clear water rinsed. Imagine that.

Jimmy said it best

Interim method at best....appearance management.

Someone posted a problem on ICS after seven years of "encapping" can't figure out what is wrong :shock: OMFG.

 

[The Preacher]

it's appearance management at best, and customers pay for carpet that APPEARS to be clean. i've gone back and HEW'ed some homes i encapped and the results were revealing to say the least.

in a commercial setting that you can influence the vacuuming, its a good method.


PS the secret to where the dirt goes in in your vacuum bag (you professionals do vacuum, right???)

 

[Guest]

Isn't it all appearance management? Isn't it all interim cleaning?

Carpet starts resoling the moment you finish cleaning. It's continual. Within weeks everyday wear-and-tear has undone much of what you've accomplished. There's no stopping it, the best you can hope for is to manage it.

Besides, clean is something we measure with our eyes. Cleaning begins when the carpet looks dirty and ends when the carpet looks clean. There's no definitive yardstick. "Clean" is an opinion, subjective at best and not without bias.

Some of the first carpets I encapsulated were the hallways of a medical building. A respected, reputable, nationwide franchise HWE'd the carpets every couple of weeks because of wicking. The first encapsulation cleaning lasted 7 months.

Vacuumed everyday, I'd argue the "extraction" of encapsulated soils continued for some time after the cleaning. What encap residue remained helped retard resoiling. An added bonus for the customer was, in no small part, the $5000 or so in cleaning dollars they saved over that first first seven month period alone.

The carpet, no worse for the wear, died a natural death after many years of service.

There's more than one way to measure the worth of a cleaning system.

 

[Rex Tyus]

A respected, reputable, nationwide franchise

LMAO! Name one.

I don't have anything against encap. I think it is great in between real cleanings. It makes vacuuming more efficient. As i have said before the biggest problem in commercial is the lack off vacuuming to begin with. IT just kills me how it is portrayed as the do all end all to commercial carpet.

You can wax over a vinyl floor and make it shiny. I have seen many buildings where management was happy until they saw it stripped then waxed. If they don't know they don't know.

 

[Ron Werner]

"Clean" is an opinion

I would argue this. Clean CAN be measured, hense all this SOA BS.
However, for a client, Clean is something they are educated on. If they see a guy come in with a whatever equipment, the carpets LOOK clean and the "professional" tells her its clean, then she "believes" it to be clean.

What encap residue remained helped retard resoiling.

I thought the encap product needed moisture to encapsulate the soil, ie when in a shampoo. How is this product encapsulating when in a crystallized form??


Clean I would say is the "removal of the soil". We as "professionals" are to know WHERE the soil is and be able to REMOVE it.

I love the underwear analogies started by Piranha. How long would you go before washing your underwear? Gross but gets the point across.
Would you rather it cleaned by washing or by encapping??
One is CLEAN, the other, well......ewwwww :shock:

So does it all come down to the mighty $??

 

[Guest]

A respected, reputable, nationwide franchise, Rex?

How about STOP and ServiceMaster to begin with? Servpro had been servicing this medical building. At least in my experience, as organizations they all enjoy a good reputation.

Ron, okay, CRI developed a method to measure "clean" for the purposes of its SOA program. Dare I say Rug Doctor?

My point is, while you may insist there's a good way to measure clean, NOBODY does. Clean is an opinion. Even as "professionals," it's all in how it LOOKS.

Ever walk a customer from one side to another while explaining how the olefin carpet you just cleaned still "looks" dirty?

Until an empirical method exists that everyone can use, consumers buy an individual's opinion of clean. In the case of a concerned professional as yourself, that's good enough. When it comes to debating the true, long-term efficacy of competing methods I'd like something more substantial than biased, individual opinions.

Enapsulation isn't the end-all and be-all of cleaning. I don't think the majority of users represent it as such. But, one of it's lingering benefits is simply that it helps prevent resoiling.

Encapsulation products work by covering the yarns and drying, encapsulating both soils AND yarns. The dried residue shards, with the soils remaining inside. Vacuuming removes the dried shards along with the encapsulated residues. Any encapsulant that remains helps to form a protective cocoon around the fiber. Soils stick to the encapsulant, not the fiber. Wet soils liquefy the dried encapsulant. When it dries at least some of the wet soil has been encapsulated. Encapsulants have been referred to as a poor man's protectant.

I never heard the dirty underwear analogy before. Interesting. I'm curious what would happen if someone pulled some wall-to-wall, tossed it into a huge top loader and ran it through the wash cycle. I bet the results would be at least disastrous. Kinda like the comparison of stripping and waxing a carpet.

After all these years we still can't come up with a good analogy to explain why a technology that's proven to work fine really can't be.

Am I the only one who's a wee bit puzzled why so many folks are anxious to analogize away the success of encap, OP, bonnet and other low-moisture methods while ignoring those cute little grocery store extractors? LOL

 

[Greenie]

no dog in this fight, but I do have an observation or two.

the cute lil' grocery store extractor placed much better in the MikeyFest test than I would have thought, and It's been my experience that there isn't a whole lot of soil in the vacuum bag/cup on a post vac encap job, I dunno where it went but it wasn't in the bag.

and as a final observation, the Avg. franchise represented above is just doing avg. work, I've probably watched a dozen in action, was I supposed to be impressed? Cause I wasn't. And given all things considered, in Wayne's experience, they were probably just using old school HWE technology, leaving carpet wet, not taking advantage of new technology to actually getting the carpet as clean and dry as possible.

it can't wick if it's not wet for hours on end. And I'm willing to bet if you used the same agitation you used with the encap cleaning, as a prescrub before extracting, you would get even better long term results.

 

[Guest]

I don't have a pony in this race anymore, Greenie, it's all academic for me. As far as finding residue in vac bags, again, I'd want something a little more definitive than just looking at what was in the bag. What I've seen from the formulator's side are microscopic photographs of residue taken from a vac bag.

I'm curious, too, what exactly you should expect to find in a vac bag. How much of the encapsulant applied on any given area is solids? I don't know. I'd expect the residue in the bag to be proportional to the solids actually applied.

All I know for sure is in the right situation the stuff works.

 

[Jimmy L]

The eNcAP/SHAMPOO residue is NOW part of the soil load in the carpet.


And with over all poor vacuuming by in house staff that "RESIDUE" will remain in that carpet till a buildup demands to be HWE.

 

[Rex Tyus]

Thank you Jimmy, I was just trying to find the words.

A respected, reputable, nationwide franchise, Rex?

How about STOP and ServiceMaster to begin with? Servpro had been servicing this medical building. At least in my experience, as organizations they all enjoy a good reputation.

Wayne respectfully,

STILL, LMAO

 

[Larry Cobb]

Ron;

If a film-forming "encapsulate" product is used as a rinse, the carpet fibers will release soil easier.

That leads to more efficient vacuuming, which leaves the carpet cleaner.

Randy;

Who is your buddy ? He's correct.

Our new SR Encapsulate has better cleaning and additional SR properties.
It will resist coffee and drinks stains much better.

Formulation is a continuous process.

Larry Cobb

 

[Ron Werner]

Am I the only one who's a wee bit puzzled why so many folks are anxious to analogize away the success of encap, OP, bonnet and other low-moisture methods while ignoring those cute little grocery store extractors? LOL

I do recognise the success of this these methods. In some cases its the only practical way to get the carpet clean. What started all this was a guy who has a moving busn, decided to get into carpet cleaning to clean for all those moveouts. He's selling his TM in favour of encapping. And then the moveout pattern continues and these poor carpets never get "cleaned".

I am even more against these cute little store spreaders. There is no way the Rug Dr should ever have even been considered for SOA approval just because its a rental unit and no "professional" will ever use one, let alone the fact that it only removes, at best, 60% of the soil. The ACE with a Roots 59 is rated only bronze for crying out loud! LIke, HEllo!! are their any brains in the vicinity of SOA???

TO me its all about "cleaning" the carpet. It might "appear" soiled but it will be as clean as humanly possible by the time I'm done.