Carpet offers certain benefits in commercial buildings, including reduced noise, improved indoor air quality, and reduced slip-and-fall accidents. On the other hand, there is arguably nothing more difficult to keep clean and maintain, while ensuring a good visual appearance, than carpet. Proper carpet care can extend the life of carpet by decades. However, putting off carpet care for too long—allowing soils and stains to become permanent and wearing down or tearing fibers—can cut carpet lifespan down significantly. Property managers who adhere to best practices can better protect their investment while upholding the aesthetic of their buildings.
Investment Considerations
One of the most important factors to consider when selecting carpet is the lifecycle cost. This is your cost to purchase, install, and maintain your carpet. Often, the cost of installing carpet is disassociated from the cost to maintain it because of separate department budgets. What is often overlooked is that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, were invested so maintenance of that flooring is not just about cleaning, but managing an expensive asset. When it comes to carpet, lifecycle cost and life expectancy is based on use and care over the first several years.
When selecting carpet, consider the following:
- Placement - In what areas of the building will carpet be installed? If placed near entrances and exits, it is best to opt for a durable carpet and supplement it with matting that can capture soils and moisture. In areas where food or drinks is served or prepared, stain-resistant carpet is recommended.
- Durability - Carpet tiles have become increasingly popular, as they are incredibly durable and easy to install and even replace as needed. That said, the quality will determine whether it can withstand decades of use, so it is important to discuss the durability of a product with the manufacturer.
- Construction - Today’s carpet is manufactured with fibers designed to hide soil. If your plan is to clean the carpets when they look soiled, you are cleaning too late and will cause damage to the fibers due to the abrasive nature of the soils that accumulate in the carpet. As a result, fibers will not reflect light evenly, the carpet develops traffic lanes that cannot be cleaned, and eventually, the carpet must be replaced to improve the appearance—an expensive consequence.
- Sustainability - Thanks to a growing movement toward healthy buildings, there are a variety of ways to reduce a building’s environmental footprint. For carpet, it is important to consider whether the manufacturer uses sustainable materials and processes. You can also select carpet made with recycled materials.
Cornerstones of Commercial Carpet Care
The next step after selecting the right carpet for your facility, is to develop a maintenance plan. You can expect a quality commercial carpet to have a life expectancy of 10 to 30 years. To reach the maximum life expectancy, it requires proper care on a regular basis. The four cornerstones of an effective carpet care program include preventative maintenance, routine cleaning, interim maintenance, and restorative maintenance.
- Preventative maintenance - The best way to protect your carpet is to prevent soil from entering the building in the first place.?Soils, like salt and sand, are abrasive and can cut carpet fibers, dulling carpet appearance and creating lasting damage. Entry matting is cheaper, more easily replaceable than commercial carpet. Entry matting is used to trap soil, preventing it from being tracked beyond the entrance of your building. A visitor should be able to take about 8 to 10 steps on the entry matting before reaching your carpeted floor. This typically calls for 15 feet of matting outside and an additional 15 feet inside your building.??Proper entry matting will remove and contain 95% of soils from guest's shoes. Entry mats have a limit to the amount of dirt that they can trap. Mats which have too much dirt buildup are not effective at removing additional dirt from guest’s shoes and allow the soil to be tracked beyond the entrance of your facility.?To prevent buildup, mats should be vacuumed every day. Sometimes entry mats in extremely high traffic areas will need to be vacuumed more than once a day.
- Routine cleaning - Vacuuming is the most important component of carpet maintenance. Nearly 85% of soil is tracked into facilities from guests’ shoes. Depending on the location and season, this can include everything from sand, salt, dirt, and more. Routine vacuuming removes the soils that make it past entry matting. When soil remains on carpet, it sinks down into the fibers and accumulates, making it more difficult to remove. To effectively remove soils from carpet, it is essential to vacuum every day. Carpets are also affected by spills (unwanted liquid soils) and spots (localized discolorations from recently dried spills). It is critical to the life and appearance of your facility’s carpet to identify and remove spills and spots from your carpet as soon as possible. Spills and spots that are not removed in a timely manner will result in more permanent carpet stains which will require deep cleaning.?
- Interim maintenance - Low-moisture carpet care at regular intervals helps protect carpet appearance at a low cost, while also extending the life of the carpet. Depending on the amount of soil and traffic, interim cleaning should be performed monthly or quarterly. Excessive moisture is a quick way to impact carpet lifespan, leading to mold and mildew growth. By using low-moisture carpet cleaning systems consisting of machines and chemistry, carpet will stay clean. It is also a very sustainable cleaning method, as it requires little water and energy.
- Restorative maintenance - Carpet extraction will remove the most heavily embedded soils, but it is also the most time and labor intensive. Carpet extraction is performed to restore the appearance of your carpet and remove deeply embedded stains that carpet spotting and interim maintenance could not.?In high traffic areas, this procedure should be performed at least four times a year (or quarterly). In moderate traffic areas, this should be performed one to two times a year. It is recommended to use a reputable company for hot water extractions to ensure it is done properly and does not damage the carpet.
Invest in your carpet’s future
Each component of a complete commercial carpet care program is essential to keeping your carpet looking great, extending its life, and safeguarding your facility’s investment. The state of your facility’s carpet impacts the satisfaction of your guests and occupants. Carpet care also contributes to your triple bottom line and future success.
