Soil Filtration Lines

Found in many homes and some commercial settings - those mainly in colder areas - filtration soiling is tough to remove and takes time to do so properly.

Most carpet cleaning companies charge more for this type of service.

Filtration lines (soiling) are those dark lines or bands of soils that you find along walls, under doors that are kept closed for a length of time, under the skirting of furniture, and along the carpet edge where a poor fitter has pierced the underlay.

Its makeup is oily and the molecules of the soils are so small that cleaning them or removing them from fibres is difficult. In addition, they have an electrical "charge" that bonds them firmly to the fibre.

How they form

Filtration lines occur no matter what type of home, business or facility you are at

What matters: Indoor air quality and the construction.

As everyone knows, warm air moves up, and as it cools, drops back down. That's why hot air balloons defy gravity.

Something that not everyone knows is that warm air also likes cool surfaces.

This means that as air is warmed, typically while the central heating is on, the air - full of pollutants - goes up and then searches out cooler surfaces, such as an outside wall or another room.

As the air moves toward the cooler area, it will push its way through carpeted surfaces (under doors, etc) and "clean itself".

Just as carpet is a filter, it is much more so when air moves from one room to another, or when air moves under furniture, etc.

What is left behind is a build up of oily soils that are very difficult to remove.

As more time passes, more soils build up and soon you have a tremendous cleaning challenge.

What can you do? Call in the professionals who will know how to deal with such problems.

As with any cleaning challenge, they should attempt cleaning a dirty area with their normal cleaning protocol.

With filtration soils, it's the same thing. They will precondition a small area of filtration soils, work into the pile, and rinse.

Most likely, you will see little to moderate improvement.

This means they need to get aggressive with their cleaning procedure.

To prepare for successful cleaning of filtration soiling, they will need a moderate to stiff agitation brush or scraper (remembering that tamping is always the safest way to agitate fibres), a gel solvent, and a strong oxygen cleaner (either powdered or liquid).

Getting to work

A good cleaning procedure to begin with to remove filtration soils is vacuuming:

They should then follow this procedure:
Apply a preconditioner to the filtration soils
Agitate into the filtration soils (tamping or carefully scrubbing)
Rinse
Apply a gel solvent
Agitate
Rinse
Repeat if necessary (all steps)
The use of encapsulation chemistry is effective on filtration soiling. The chemistry encapsulates the smaller soils, making for easier removal.

That's one of the main challenges of filtration soiling - the tiny soils. Any chemical that will strip these from the fibre is a good choice.

Formulated soil filtration products from a cleaning supplier often have the ability to break the particle "charge" of the filtration soil and the fabric.

Challenges

Probably the biggest challenge to removing soil filtration lines is where they are on the carpet.

Although about one-third of soil filtration lines are under doors kept closed most of the time, the other two-thirds are in areas very difficult to work on.


Many filtration soils are along walls that go up or down a set of staircase, or along the skirting boards of walls.

Imagine the difficulty attempting proper agitation against walls that you do not want to harm.

Better scenarios

By now, you are wondering why they would want to attempt removing filtration soiling.

Here are some additional steps they can take, after regular extraction techniques fail.

With a flip-top bottle, they can apply a gel solvent to the filtration lines (the use of a gel solvent is safer as it doesn't have a high risk of creating delamination)
To protect the wall or baseboard, use a "shim" of some kind - this can be a piece of wood, plastic, or cardboard that will protect the wall or skirting board
They will then work the solution with as much agitation they can use with the particular fibre they are cleaning (a bone or plastic spatula or small brush works fine)
Before rinsing, they then apply a strong solution of hydrogen peroxide(do not attempt this yourself), always remembering that natural fibres need special care (for synthetic fibres, they will accelerate the peroxide solution with a few drops of ammonia)
They will then need to agitate the chemicals on the fibre and let them mix and dwell for several minutes
After a suitable dwell time they will have to rinse, but have to keep the shim close to the wall or baseboard, in order to avoid harming the wall or skirting board
They will repeat as necessary, allowing the peroxide solution more time for a better chemical reaction

How they begin
The best way to remove challenging spots or stains like this is to think of how they became a problem in the first place.

Filtration soiling is a heavy combination of soot, petroleum soils and other contaminants that find their way to concentrated areas of carpeting and, sometimes, furniture.

The challenge is to match up the cleaning agent and technique to the type of soil.

Filtration soils build up over a long period of time, which means that you need a strong cleaning protocol to remove these soils.

This often means: Solvent, strong oxidizer, and lots of agitation. Hard to do in confined areas, but still the best solution.

Remember, please do not try and remove soil filtration lines yourself. Give us a call and we will do whatever is needed to get rid of them. Cal 0121 311 1893