Winterfest 2009 News

PEMBERTONS ANNUAL WINTERFEST AGAIN PACKS SPECTRUM CENTER


Now in its eleventh year, Pembertons' annual Winterfest trade show once again posted impressive attendance numbers and earned high marks from guests among the companies who packed the Spectrum Banquet Center for this end-of-January cleaning and restoration industry tradition.

According to Winterfest veterans, this Pembertons' exclusive event continually sets high expectations.

Mark Cermak, a Winterfest regular, agreed that it is a must-see event. "Once again... an absolutely fantastic Winterfest. Enjoyed once again the pleasure of seeing so many friends and making many more. It's already on our calendar for January 2010!"

Attendees began arriving at 7:30 a.m. to enjoy continental breakfast, get early looks at the new exhibits, and find friends to sit with during the presentations and catered lunch. These early birds helped consume dozens of doughnuts & Danish, gallons and gallons of coffee, as well as fresh orange and apple juices.

Lee Pemberton, as has been the tradition, kicked off Winterfest's program with a startling view of today's consumer and how the current "econoclast" coupled with the destruction of trust has shaped current and future consumer attitudes, reshaping the world for cleaners and restorers.

Lee spoked strongly about the need to focus on "Educational Marketing" to rebuild consumer trust in each individual market area. One guest summarized Lee's comments this way. "It never ceases to amaze me how progressive Lee is. Lee firmly stated "Turn off your television sets! Pay attention to the things you can control or change and don't be paralyzed by the media"!

The Winterfest programs always break at noon for a sumptuous catered lunch. This year it featured endless fried chicken, meatball entrees, vegetables, potatoes, salads, and beverages. A perennial favorite, the wine and cheese bar, opened at 2:00 and served wine, beer, cheese and hors d'oeuvres until 4:00.

By 3:30 p.m. the room was packed with cleaners and restorer's anxiously waiting to see if they would be the winner of one of the 3 Grand Prizes. All told, $11,000. worth of prizes were awarded at Winterfest 2009!

You will find Winterfest pictures located here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/cleanlee0522/Winterfest2009PrizeWinners#slideshow

Cleaning Products and Your Customers Concerns

There has never been as much concern (and confusion) about the best products to use to clean carpet as there is today. At one time, you simply chose a product that performed well at a fair price.

Then came restrictions for stain resistance, CRI approvals, and the various "green" certifications that exist. Now cleaners must attempt to balance performance, conflicting "certifications", and the consumer's ever increasing concerns about health and environmental issues.

How should you determine what to use?

The answer should be: What does my customer need?

If your customer has concerns about environmental issues, or as a part of that concern shows concerns about the contents of the product for their own health and safety, consider products that are considered "green" or "anti allergen" in nature. While most products that do not have these designations are equally safe, reassuring label content will put your customers' minds at ease.

If you have a business relationship with a carpet retailer, and that retailer would like the assurance that you're using product that has been tested and approved by the Carpet & Rug Institute, the association that most carpet manufacturers belong to. Such products are also useful if you've been referred to solve a cleaning related warranty claim by a carpet manufacturer.

In most cases, however, your customer wants their carpet to be as clean as possible, to feel soft to the touch, and to stay clean for a reasonable span of time before the next cleaning is necessary.

Your product choice then should be products that you have confidence in yourself, that have stood up to your own rigid standards, and that keep your customers happy and coming back to you for more service in the future.

Standards of Clean YOUR Customers Insist On!

Over the past 23 years, much has been written and taught about the chemistry, equipment and techniques required to clean carpet. Much of this information is valid, and by following it, professional cleaners will find they can get better results and keep customers calling them again for repeat or additional services.

However, the most important aspect of product and technique choice is not the guidelines of a manufacturer or association, but instead those results that please YOUR customer.

What does your customer want out of a carpet cleaning job?

1. Clean Carpet. That should be obvious, but no cleaner should overlook the obvious fact that the customer called because the carpet was dirty, and perhaps smelly as well!

2. Dry Carpet. Your customer doesn't want carpet that stays wet for days. Wet carpet is inconvenient, a potential slip hazard, attracts soil, and is a breeding ground for fungus and bacteria. And many customers are also afraid that wet carpet contains hazardous chemicals.

3. Carpet that STAYS Clean. Few things are as frustrating to the commercial or residential customer as paying to have carpet clean, and have it look just as bad or worse within days or weeks.

Meet THESE standards of performance, and you'll have loyal customers for life.

I'll discuss these issues in more depth in upcoming blog entries.

Unexpected Feedback on Color Repair Class

Our company has sponsored color repair classes every other year or so over the past several years. This particular class is hard to fill, as not many cleaners seem to want to perform this service, or do not believe that they can be successful in doing so.

While I hold the instructor that we used for this last course in high regard, I didn't expect that the responses from these students would be much different.

I was mistaken!!!!

Here are some comments from two of the students who attended the Color Repair Technician class that Jeff Cross taught here on December 2nd and 3rd, 2008:

"Jeff offered the most education and hands on color repair practice in any such workshop that I have ever been involved with. I learned more in two days about color repair than I have in the last fifteen years of attending such classes!"
Frank C

"I had no experience in color repair and wanted to add it as a service to my customers. Jeff Cross made it easy to understand and less intimidating than I thought it would be. It was hands on, which makes it easier for me to go to a customers house with confidence."
Jeff M

The first comment was from a fifteen year veteran of color repair, the other from someone who had never performed the service prior to the class. Both men left with confidence based on Jeff's approach of simplicity, and hours of well supervised, hands on practice.

We'll put some pictures from the class up here soon.

Oh, and we'll not be waiting two or three years to have this class put on here again. Look for Jeff to be back later in 2009.

Avoiding Upholstery Cleaning Problems

A call that I received just yesterday reminded me of how simple it is to avoid costly upholstery cleaning claims, and yet easily we can get into trouble by being careless.

The owner of a cleaning company called to ask how to remove browning from a white cotton sofa that his men cleaned incorrectly. It was his contention that the problem was caused because his technician used a carpet cleaning detergent instead of a more appropriate upholstery cleaning rinse agent.

I contend that what happened was a result of a deeper problem:

The cleaning technician failed to test the fabric.

Readers may object that testing fibers is a difficult and time consuming process with results that are challenging to interpret. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that a simple burn test that determines whether or not a textile is made of absorbent, easily damaged natural fibers, or easy to clean synthetic fibers that have low absorbency only takes a few moments, and can easily be interpreted by any cleaning technician.

Such a test only asks the technician to observe if the test sample melts (synthetic) or burns and crumbles (natural or blend of natural and synthetic).

If the technician had that information, which he could have gained in just a minute or so, he would have rightly decided to use a neutral detergent, an acidic rinsing agent, a low wetting tool, and fans to speed dry the fabric (all which were present on the truck.)

The tools and products available to safely clean delicate natural fiber furniture are surprisingly effective and not much more costly than carpet cleaning products. There is no reason not to test to determine which ones are the safest to use on any given fabric.

One last thought: Although browning is usually correctable, this cleaning company will likely pay an expensive claim for this problem, as the customer has become impatient with the repeated visits needed to completely correct a problem that should never have occured in the first place.

Rug Cleaning Class

Last week I attended a Rug Cleaning Technician certification class with eighteen other company owners and employees. Readers of this blog know that I have been enthusiastic about the subject of diversification for some time now, but after having attended the class, I am even more convinced that this is a service more cleaners should consider offering.

Many of your customers own handmade, true oriental area rugs worth thousands of dollars and that, frankly, they feel uncomfortable having just anyone clean. Conversely, there are machine made rugs that are only a fraction of the cost, but that the customer places a high value on. While it may take years of experience to learn the wide variety of imported, hand made rugs, the attendees at this class learned simple and reliable ways to identify high value rugs, as well as "problem rugs" of varying value.

For me, the highlight of the course was the "hands on" training section. We were able to obtain a hand knotted, chinese oriental rug that was made of a blend of wool and silk, and was also saturated in urine. We also had two small, machine tufted Chinese area rugs and a Wilton rug. The students were able to properly identify each rug, qualify the limitations and risks in cleaning the rugs, and then successfully clean the rugs, including complete urine odor removal from the Chinese wool/silk blend rug that was valued at over 5000.00.

Pictures of this class and the procedures used to clean these rugs follow.

Mold Remediation Standards

I was excited to be present when the latest edition of the IICRC S520 Mold Remediation Standards were introduced in Vancouver Washington on October 11th, 2008. Having had the privilege of contributing to the S100 Carpet Cleaning Standards, I had some small understanding of the work that was involved in compiling this vast amount of information from such a wide variety of brilliant and hard working experts in both the research and field work arenas.

The need to continue to update such standards was revealed to me just 45 minutes ago:

I was called by a representative of a restoration company who needed assistance with a job that did not pass final exit testing protocols. When I questioned the procedures that were followed, I found that the company violated very obvious rules as spelled out in the S520 Standards. The representative objected that they had been trained in mold remediation in 2004, but also confessed that they had not updated their training since.

This situation spoke to the need to keep ourselves updated in the fields in which we work, especially in such a high liability field such as mold and microbial remediation.

With guidance based on the current S520 Standards, the contractor is now confident that they will be able to correct the problems, and I don't doubt that the job will pass all needed clearances.

For the full story about the latest edition of the S520 Mold Remediation Standards, go to: http://www.iicrc.org/newsflash.shtml

Severe Animal Odors - When Salvage is No Longer an Option

When is it not worth saving carpet that has been extensively contaminated by urine or other animal discharges?

There are a few rules of thumb, including:

When over 20% of the carpet is contaminated

When contamination has caused severe color loss

When contamination has caused extensive delamination

When the floor underneath of the carpet is hardwood, and could be refinished to a good appearance and improve the room without carpet

When the cost of the products and labor involved begins to near the value of new carpet, pad, tack strip, and installation

That said, do not think carpet replacement will solve the problem! In cases where carpet has been contaminated so badly that it needs to be replaced, you must assume that the subfloor is also badly contaminated. Sanding and sealing will need to be done at a minimum, and in cases of extensive penetration of urine throughout the subfloor, entire sections of the floor may need to be replaced.

Sub Surface Urine Odor Treatment

With the understanding that the majority of urine residues penetrate through carpet into padding (at least) and through to subfloor (at worst), cleaners and property owners have the challenge of treating a problem that cannot be easily seen.

While the ultimate solution may include removing carpet and cushion, there are times where subsurface treatment can be attempted without disengaging the carpet.

To properly perform subsurface treatments, you must locate the odor source and be confident that the urine contamination is isolated to that area. The use of UV lights and moisture sensors will assist you in this task.

Individuals (whether cleaners or property owners) who are unwilling to use such tools will rarely be successful in subsurface treatment attempts.

For decades, the tool of choice for subsurface treatment has been an injection syringe. Such syringes have larger needles than are used for medical purposes, but still only allow relatively small amounts of odor treatment solutions to be applied. You must aim such needles at a variety of angles and you may only hope that sufficient treatment solution is reaching the affected areas.

More recently, special extraction attachments, such as the Water Claw Spot Lifter, have enable cleaners to flood the area with gallons of deodorizing solution and then extract the excess moisture from carpet and padding. Such a treatment process better assures a sufficient delivery of deodorizer to the source area.

However, just as with the injection syringe, there are concerns that must be addressed:

If you choose to flood a contaminated area over a wood subfloor, especially when on the second floor of a home, or over a furnished basement, you must pull back that portion of the carpet and place plastic under it. Otherwise you might end up flooding through the floor and through the ceiling below.

Such precautions are time consuming, but critical if you choose to use such an "invasive" method of odor treatment.

Surface Treatment of Urine Odors

If you've done a reasonably thorough inspection of most urine odor situations, you'll likely have found that most urine odor contamination problems require more than just a surface spray application or cleaning.

However, once your customer is made aware of the cost involved in either Subsurface Treatments or Total Restoration of urine contamination, some will ask you to "just spray something on the top, because I can't afford to do that."

You must be VERY careful before you give in to this seemingly reasonable request.

If urine contamination has penetrated into carpet backings and cushion, not only will a surface treatment rarely work, more often than not your cleaning will actually make the odor worse! If this happens, your customer will rapidly forget their "reasonable request" and they might actually insist that you now completely treat the carpet at no additional cost, because it "smells worse than ever now!"

This trap reminds me of what happens to cleaners who dry clean furniture because the customer is fearful of the "S" code that insists on dry cleaning. Only when the fabric doesn't clean up well (most often the case) do they THEN want it to be cleaned with water, but of course at no charge.

To avoid this trap, make certain that in your initial inspection that you show your customer the extent of the damage from urine. Remind them that surface treatment and cleaning will likely (not maybe) make the odor worse. Have the will power to refuse to do the job wrong for less money.

Because ultimately you'll be doing the job "right" for free later if you don't!