Dry Carpet Shampoos
There are two different types of carpet shampoo including dry carpet shampoos and liquid carpet shampoos. In my opinion, it is better to use the dry variety when possible for two reasons. First, using a liquid carpet shampoo means introducing water to your carpet and if you do not get your carpet completely dry after cleaning, you could be starting problems with mold or mildew. Second, dry carpet shampoos do not need any special pieces of equipment like a carpet shampooer. All you need to use a dry carpet shampoo is a brush and a vacuum.
You can further break down the category of dry carpet shampoo into two more categories including powders and foams. Dry carpet powder cleaners are sprinkled over a large area of the carpet such as a five by ten foot section. The next step is simple because it is to wait. The dry carpet powder is magnetized and it will attract any dirt in the carpet. After about twenty minutes or so you can vacuum up the powder along with all of the dirt that it attracted. The positive aspects of dry powder carpet cleaners are that they can be used to clean a large area very quickly and there is not much intense labor involved. The negative is that they may not be as effective as a liquid carpet cleaner. One characteristic that might be considered appositive or a negative is the fact that these products usually contain some kind of odor neutralizer or perfume. The neutralizer is good because it can eliminate odor, but the perfumes could be bad because all they do is mask any bad smells in your carpet. They could even react badly with the existing odors and make them worse.
Dry foam carpet shampoo works the same way as powders in terms of how you use them, but the difference lies in how they attract dirt. You spray the foam over a large area of carpet and wait twenty to thirty minutes for the foam to dry and then vacuum it up. The foam does not work by attracting the dirt with magnetism. Instead, the wet foam encapsulates the dirt particles and as the foam dries into a crystal, the dirt particles are trapped inside. These products are slightly more effective than powders, but they still do not give you the deep down clean that a liquid carpet shampoo will.
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