Yellow pattern on 6 year old never cleaned commercial grade carpet

[Contemporary Carpet Clean]

I did an estimate today at a commercial office building. The carpet is 6 years old. Its never been cleaned. You know the rest....yellowed out down the middle of the traffic lanes...oh and the carpet color is purpleish blue of course. Just curious what would you use for hot water extraction. I have used olefin presprays, boosted with this and that...is there any magic formula you would try? I use Cobb's Dynachem prespray (it works awesome by the way). I have used Prochems Powerburst I love that product too. I have used an Rx-20 on yellowed areas before with no avail. I am sure its just wear, but just wondering what you fellas might try if anything else. We already told the custy that 6 years is way too long and made no promises.

 

[Contemporary Carpet Clean]

Anyone....? Anyone? No suggestions?

 

[Willy P]

try something on the acid side.

 

[PCCN]

Just taking a stab at it without seeing a photo of it, but...

Do a pH test first. We do work for one of the manufacturers and had this problem at 2 different locations. The lady cleaned hers herself but neglected to tell us until we found it was HIGH in alkaline. Had to do a thorough rinse only with acid rinse (basically any product such as an all fiber rinse with low ph should do or Rinse Acid Plus from CHemeisters). Went back a couple days later and misted Rinse Acid Plus solution on it and bonet scrubbed it in. Dried it fast with air movers and immediately all the yellowing was gone. Applying an acid rinse in a small area where it is worse should immediately give you results if it is due to heavy alkaline detergent but the pH test will be proof for you.

 

[Hoody]

If they have an asphalt parking lot that could cause some yellowing. To help with that you'll want a pre-spray with good solvency as the asphalt tends to make carpets yellow. Otherwise I agree with the above it could be a high pH issue.

 

[Desk Jockey]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record I wouldn't use HWE on commercial glue down. I'd use low moisture either via a 175 and pad, or an OP and pad or encap with Cimex and fiber plus pads. Pick your poison but any of those low moisture delivery systems will have a greater chance of looking better than HWE on glue down.

 

[Shane Deubell]

I would pre-scrub the hell out of it with grand slam and then acid rinse.
Run into this all the time.

 

[boazcan]

Clean like you are comfortable with via HWE. Bring some fans to dry fast. End with a good encap product mixed 1.5 - 2x normal dilution and scrub it in. Done it many times.

"Wash and wax".