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Tennant Company Commercial Carpet Care Tip of the Month
The Dangers of Bonnet Cleaning
If you read most carpet warranties, you’ll see that bonnet cleaning is the kiss of death — both to your warranty and to your carpet. In fact, many carpet mills have conducted their own research and determined that bonnet cleaning can cause excessive carpet damage. As these articles are designed to provide you with information that will guide you in implementing a thoughtful carpet care program that offers positive results, this particular article will walk you through the most common dangers of bonnet cleaning and provide some clarification on how to proceed with bonnet cleaning if you must.
Beware the Bonnet
In general, bonnet cleaning is a process of moving dirt, not removing it. So while it may provide the appearance of a clean carpet, its use rarely actually results in a clean carpet. This isn’t “bonnet-bashing.” Rather it is a statement of the effectiveness, or lack there of, of trying to wipe dirt from your carpet by using rotary bonnets that offer no mechanism for cleaning the dirt from those bonnets.
Rotary bonnet cleaning involves the use of chemical that is pre-sprayed onto the carpet and bonnets that are designed to wipe away the dirt and re-absorb the chemical. The inherent problem is that a bonnet can absorb only a finite amount of chemical and soil. And once saturated, the bonnet will no longer wipe dirt away but rather transfer that soil and chemical back into your carpet, which results in a cycle of resoiling that can become virtually impossible to correct.
In reality, there is no mechanism in bonnet cleaning for removing dirt deep within the carpet pile or completely removing the pre-sprayed chemical from your carpet, which makes it virtually impossible to remove the soil from your carpet. If your bonnet is as dirty as your carpet, the rotary wiping action of the bonnet cleaner is simply smearing the dirt into the carpet. If your bonnet is dirtier than your carpet (perhaps you cleaned a high traffic entry area and then moved to a less frequently used office space), the rotary wiping action of the bonnet cleaner is actually transferring dirt into your carpet.
In addition, bonnet cleaning involves grinding the bonnet into the carpet in an effort to lift the soil from the carpet fibers. If any actual dirt, debris or sand is in the carpet, such grinding can result in abrading — or scraping off — the top of those carpet fibers. Carpet fibers become untwisted and severely frayed. These “open” carpet fibers, filled with residual chemical, become magnets for additional soiling issues.
Appropriate Bonnet Cleaning
If you must use a bonnet to clean your carpet, follow these simple rules to reduce the likelihood of damaging your carpet and to appropriately set your expectations as to the results you should anticipate.
1.Only use a bonnet if your carpet warranty has expired to avoid any potential warranty issues with your carpet manufacturer.
2.Only use bonnet cleaning in conjunction with other carpet care technologies, including vacuuming, ReadySpace® technology, or extraction, and never as the sole means of caring for your carpet.
3.Recognize that bonnet cleaning only removes the very top layer of dirt from your carpet surface and, therefore, should be used only for targeted periodic appearance improvement.
4.Realize that bonnet cleaning has no way of removing all the pre-sprayed chemical from your carpet, which means chemical will be left behind and could attract dirt.
5.Always use a clean bonnet that has been slightly moistened with your cleaning solution — but never use the dual-bucket method of over-saturating your bonnet in water or solution.
6.Flip and/or change your bonnet every 100-square feet or less depending on how dirty the carpet is.In reality, the downside of bonnet cleaning really does far outweigh the upside. But if applied correctly, rotary bonnet cleaning can temporarily improve the appearance of your carpet.
To learn more about how Tennant Company can help you create a thoughtful and positive comprehensive carpet care program, or to learn more about the dangers of bonnet cleaning, call 1-800-553-8033 or visit http://www.tennantco.com.
What in the heck is this & why is it on our website? This is purely propaganda from the “soak & suck” folks!
Easy there Jeff, I’ve been at this for almost 15 years now,and thought I pretty much seen it all, but this is the first I’ve ever seen anything like this. Just thought it would be good to show some of the newer guys what kind of crap, is out there.
I once spoke candidly with a carpet store owner about warranties on carpet. His exact words were,”good luck collecting on any carpet warranty. There are so many loopholes in the written warranty you will rarely, if ever get a warranty claim.” Now that’s from a store owner himself!
The fact is Heaven’s Best is the fastest growing carpet cleaning franchise in the world for a reason. It works better than anything out there. We all prove that every day.
I don’t know this for sure but I thought our buffers come through Tennent. If so, I wonder how they’d like to lose HB as a customer?
Jeff, I thought the same thing at first as well. Interesting propaganda.
The funny thing is that I actually spoke with a gentleman a few months ago that use to work at MOHAWK Carpet manufacture and he was an analyst for them. He analyzed damaged carpets for cause, etc. for their claims department.
The first thing he asked me once he found out I was a carpet cleaner was what method I used. He stated that traditional “steam cleaning” was the worst thing for carpets. He told me that the method that we use is the preffered method and that he highly recommends the “low-moisture” method that we use.
He even went to one of our local Chamber of Commerces (one that he is a member of) and told them that if any calls come in for recommendations on carpet cleaning, they should recommend us because we are doing it right.
Now, with that being said, I do believe that most manufacturers will state that “HWE is their preffered method. But, this particualr individual (one who analyzed carpet fibers) believed otherwise…
Dan
🙂
I feel that Heaven’s Best is still the best kept secret in the carpet cleaning industry. Most “know it alls” in the carpet manufacturing industry are aware of the bonnet system through are long time competitor “Chemdry”. As our new logo soon becomes more popular with the continued growth of our unique company, the “know it alls” will realize they didn’t know poo. Our secret is our vigorous pre-vacuuming of dry particulate and Cody’s secret formula. No one else have ever come close to this system. As Forest Gump would say “Thats all I got ta say about that”.
AMEN!
Mr Ferris is correct. Carpet warranties are a joke. Read one sometime if you don’t believe me. Most of the spills they show in their commercials would actually not be covered by their warranties. All cleaning methods are fine for carpet as long as they are DONE PROPERLY. Plain and simple.
Not going to dissect that Tennent statement, but one point to remember when confronted with the residue argument. What is “residue”? Most will label it as cleaning solution left behind in the carpet that attracts soil. Who really is leaving less “residue”/cleaning solution, the bonnet guy that leaves so little cleaning solution behind that it is dry in an hour……or the HWE guy leaving enough cleaning solution behind that the carpet is dry in 6-12 hours? (and FYI I have yet to see a HWE person take the time to follow their cleaning with a straight water rinse like many of them advertise) Do your homework and you will always be prepared for such questions/attacks.
I think its funny how everybody gets so caught up in what method of cleaning someone is using to clean your carpet. Carpet cleaning is 95% technition 5% method. If you have the greatest cleaning system in the world but you have a tech that doesnt want to do a very good job guess what happens with the end result. And on the other hand if you have a tech using a average system but wants to do a great job for you what do think your going to get? Thats right a great job. Please remember to not get stuck in the hype. Our system works great!! Keep working hard and I guarantee you will have the best system around.
Brett, you raise the best point of all. Great job.
Hi Bryan,
You are correct about purchase of buffers and I have talked with John at corporate and they have already called them, (tennant) on the “carpet” (no pun intended) about losing business . Also this might be a good time to promote the LMCCA that corporate is pushing, I joined last week and am pretty impressed with their web site. It will help us all stop that kind of nonsense by tennant!!!!!!!!!!
Ron Smith
State Owner Florida
I have sat back and waited until the dust has settled regarding the subject of spin-bonnet carpet cleaning that Tennant had written on Tip of the Month. Let me fill you in what has taken place. We got in touch with Tennant Corporation and talked to a couple of different people and levied an official protest on this particular article. We let them know that it was highly-biased, not factual, and was in poor taste, especially coming from a manufacturer that supplies equipment for low moisture and hot-water extraction professionals. At this point in our conversation, I wanted a retraction of the article, and asked for the gentleman who wrote the article to be terminated from his employment and threatened to discontinue buying Tennant products.
I had a reply back from the Tennant Corporation apologizing for the article which was written. They admitted that it was written in haste and in poor taste. The article which should have ran for one month was pulled after about two days. As of today, I was told that the gentleman who wrote the article has been moved to a different department and can no longer write.
So in conclusion, I feel that most of this matter has been resolved, but am still working on a retraction of the article. I feel the reason we received the results we did was because of Bruce Hanson of Hanson Janitorial and the majority of the people who belong to the LMCCA and the corporate office of Heaven’s Best.
The reason we are pushing membership in the LMCCA, it gives us a stronger voice in the carpet cleaning industry to combat these types of malicious attacks. We need to band together to keep this kind of stuff at bay. The low moisture process is growing by leaps and bounds and people are started to recognize what we are doing and feel like we have a viable system.
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