Should You Hire A Machine And Clean Your Carpets Yourself?

You be the judge.  I\’ll provide some advice that will help you decide.

When you decide to clean your carpets, you may consider as one of your options to hire a machine and do it yourself.

This short article will help you plan your DIY carpet cleaning and figure out if it is cost-effective to do so.

For some people, hiring a machine to clean your carpets could be a good idea.

Maybe you are on an extremely tight budget. Or perhaps your carpets are at the end of their useful life and you’re trying to eke out an extra few months before replacing them and you don’t want to spend much money. In these situations, hiring a machine and doing it yourself can make sense.

If you decide to hire a machine, it doesn’t matter too much what type of machine you use. They are all cheaper makes, and low powered.

They’re designed for people who don’t understand much about carpets, carpet cleaning equipment, or carpet cleaning products. So the cheapest is often as good (or just as bad) as any other.

Before You Begin

Before you even hire the machine, check the machine manufacturer\’s website to make sure the machine is suitable to clean your carpets.

Some carpets are not suitable to be wet cleaned, and some carpets should only be cleaned by professionals using the right products and equipment and using the right technique. If you\’re not sure, find out. Using the wrong equipment or products can cause serious damage to your carpets.

If your carpet is one of the carpets that are unsuitable for DIY cleaning and you clean it yourself, the chances of ruining it are very high, and you are responsible, not the company who rented you the machine.

I never rent out my equipment because the risk of damaging your carpets from DIY cleaning is so high.

Machine rental companies such as Rug Doctor have a list of carpets that should NOT be cleaned using their equipment, on their website. This is mainly to protect them, but it’s useful for you too.

Even if you are not hiring a Rug Doctor machine, it would be a good idea to check their list of suitable carpets against your carpet because the same principles will apply no matter what machine you hire.

How Much Will It Cost?

To calculate the overall cost, you will need to pay the rental of the machine, plus a deposit in case you damage the machine. You will need to buy the carpet cleaning products, usually a detergent, a range of spot and stain removers, and a defoamer to stop the machine from being damaged by the detergent. You should check what amounts of cleaning products you will need because this will greatly affect the results you get.

Once you have got the machine and cleaning products home, take some time to become familiar with how to operate the equipment and how much of each cleaning product you should use. Using the wrong products, or too much product can harm your carpets. If you are sensitive to detergents you probably should not use these machines.

Once you’re thoroughly familiar with how it all works, you can begin cleaning your carpets.

How To Clean Your Carpets Yourself

Be aware that these machines will get your carpets very wet and drying will take a long time. To avoid nasty smells caused by bacterial growth from the wet carpets, it would be wise to use an antibacterial product, and maybe a deodorising product too. But doing this will add substantially to the cost.

Remember to put coasters under the feet of any furniture you put onto a wet carpet, as furniture stains on your carpet can be permanent.

Bear in mind that carpet cleaning is physically hard work. You\’ll need to move the heavy machine, and move and replace furniture, as well as empty and refill the machine regularly.

It would be an idea to allow around an hour to clean a medium-sized room, maybe more if there’s a lot of items to move and put back.

This would mean that you should expect a 2 bedroom house to take all day to do properly.

Of course, cleaning carpets yourself will be cheaper than having a professional do it for you. But a good reputable carpet cleaner will use equipment and products that will clean your carpets much, much better than you could ever do it yourself. After all, if the cheap hire machines were any good, all professionals would use them.

A professional will know what products will get the best results, and more importantly, what products NOT to use on your expensive carpets.

A skilled professional carpet cleaner will also be able to get your carpets dry really fast, something that simply cannot be achieved with DIY carpet cleaning.

If you are willing to take a risk with your carpets, and do all the work yourself, hiring a machine and cleaning your own carpets could make sense.

As a final advisory, please don’t use your own products in a hire machine. Things like washing up liquid or laundry detergent are not suitable for carpets or machines and could ruin both!

Some Final Tips

Certain other chemicals, home-made concoctions, and unsuitable cleaning products can cause damage to your carpets, and also to the machine you hired. If you damage the hire machine, it can work out more expensive than you expected.

Whatever you decide to do, plan ahead, and work out the full cost and time you’ll need to do the job properly. A little planning will make your cleaning project easier and less stressful.

I hope this article will help.

Perry Matcham, ACS Carpet Cleaning