My carpet smells of dog wee

Odours in our carpets, rugs or sofa is not nice pleasant

Urine from animals or humans can smell. If any finds itself in fabrics, it can smell like crazy.

The chemical makeup can vary from the sex of its culprit to those on medication. One thing that will be contained is salts and ammonia.

Ammonia is a chemical used to kill germs and is yellow. Therefore, we sometimes see that yellow patch on the reverse side of a carpet or rug.

Some removal techniques are very simple to complete however, sometimes it is not cost-effective.

Urine needs to be identified and we do this by using a powerful UV light.

This process allows us to identify where urine is located. A Uv light will darken the fibres in colour.

We also use a very sensitive machine to find any smell. Our Nose.

Only experience will guarantee total removal and not everyone will be happy.

Let me explain.

We survey for contamination. The first thing which is carried out is a UV test.

A UV test highlights an area which is contaminated.

We also use litmus paper for areas which can also identify fibres which do not have a neutral fibre reading.

 

Not all removal is the same.

 

Pending the fibre involved, it could well be a simple application with a long dwelling time. What this does is destroy the odour, salts, and colouring.

On removal, steam extraction is the recommended system to use.

Steam will penetrate all the fibre and destroy any remnants of chemicals which have been unsuccessful in breaking down salts and odours. Certain carpets will change colour to yellow or orange, which means your fibres have been bleached. To reverse this, we would need to apply our dye application procedure.

Now not all removal is as simple as I have already discussed.

 

We have had during our years attended many pee-pee incidents.

In more severe cases, we have had to do such as

 

A gentleman contacts us advising after a drunken evening, going to bed, he wakes up confused and just urinates in his bedroom. He tried to dry as much as possible up with towels. However, no matter what he did, the smell would not go away.

Now, through experience, a carpet cleaner will know what procedure has to be followed.

The carpet was uplifted. Straight away, the evidence and severity of this incident were clear to see.

The underlay was saturated. This had to be removed.

The subfloor was wood. This was also wet from the urine.

The reverse side had yellowed.

This subfloor was treated with a specialist odour destroying and antibacterial chemical. The reverse was also treated with steam cleaning.

We then removed the carpet, placed in a garage spread out. Not laid down to allow the wood floor to breathe and evaporate all chemicals.

 

Next day the subfloor retreated with a mist of chemical, new underlay fitted, and the reverse checked for odour.

We refitted steam cleaned twice under pressure. A pressure of 400psi with a water temperature of 190c.

 

This was an expensive wee for this customer.

Our costing was our initial call-out fee being £40.00 plus work carried out on day 1.

The purchase of underlay, our cost for refitting, and then, of course, the clean.

How much this wee accident cost this customer was is total? £150.00

Ouch. I wonder if this customer will have learnt his lesson and also want a repeat ear-bashing of the wife.

 

Now this second procedure is extreme and is happening quite a bit.

 

Removing Urine from Rugs

 

When this issue happens our removal procedure is very different.

Loose Rugs are not fixed so these can be removed from the site.

Using a dedicated bath your rug undergoes our detailed procedure.

 

Specific chemicals dedicated to rugs will be applied. The rug is then placed into a dedicated bath.

We then hose this down with cold water. Normally around 90 litres for the first pass, then brushed vigorously until all water is running clear. This procedure happens to the front and back of a rug.

We then place the cleaned item into a centrifugal machine which spins removing any excess water.

The cleaning procedure is then repeated.

After the 2nd clean, we then clean either by hand or machine depending on the fibres.

Again the rug will be rinsed off, hung to dry, fibres combed into place then left to dry.

 

Removing Urine from upholstery

 

How do you get urine on a sofa I hear you ask?

Now, this can be a nightmare for an upholstery cleaner as fibres are so much different than that of carpets.

Most would walk away from a job like this unless they are trained, and understood the chemistry involved.

 

So what happens first? As with a carpet and rugs, a survey needs to be actioned. Fibre identification is very important. Some fibres may have changed colour .if this is the case the clean will be unsuccessful. Odour can be removed but the bleaching of the fibre will remain.

 

The area would be treated with chemical, then cleaned with either by steam, hot water, or relevant cleaning method.

More severe situations have had webbing removed from the underneath of upholstery. The structure of the upholstery would be treated, working our way up. Webbing replaced, then cleaned in the normal way. This is quite extreme but it does happen.