Warning long speech.
The area circled is called felting. It is actually a destruction of the fiber twist. It can happen many ways.
1) General wear with out regular vacuuming and cleaning.
2) Improper scrubbing when cleaning.
3) Too high a psi when using a hot water extractor, or air hose. Anything over 200 psi in a car can cause car carpets to felt or fuzz.
4) A combination of not properly vacuuming before water extracting then scrubbing to make up for that fact.
Now I’m not trying to be a twit. My main purpose is to illustrate the damage that can be caused when not following a good carpet cleaning procedure. Most quality detailers think nothing of putting 3-5 steps into cleaning paint, yet for a carpet or fabric they look for a 1-2 step process. Why is that? Carpet has 1000 times the surface area, fabric has nearly as much. So what makes detailers seek out a 1 step solution for something that is a 5-7 step process.
Mostly it is training and the lack of it. I believe it to be a lack of adequate documentation in the detailing world about how one should address car carpet, fabrics and leather. So being a believer of be a part of the solution not the part of the problem type a guy that I am. I am going to share some ways to lesson the damage. Keep in mind damage of this sort can be done in a single sitting, but usually it is a progressive result of all the things I listed above. Lastly I’ll share some ways to reverse the process as much as possible 20-30%. You may be thinking the carpet looks clean, and it probably is cleaner, but this damage can be transferred to a fabric ie headliner or a seat with far less effort. When those felt you can be sure the customer will notice.
A) Dry vacuum. 90% plus of all soils in a fiber or a carpet are particulate. That means they are best removed by a vacuum. If you ad moisture to them they become a near solid block like concrete and are far harder to remove. (to test this get some corn starch, pour a table spoon in a bowl. Vacuum it out. Then pour a table spoon in a bowl and mix in one table spoon of water. Then vacuum it out. ) To increase your success of dry vacuuming add in blowing right in front of the vacuum with a compress air hose (no more than 100 psi) or vacuum at 90 degree angles 2-3 times per vacuumed section.
B) Pre spot. If you have a specific stain IE gum, food, dyed carpet this is the time to address this area. Your spotting agent will have far more effect if it does not have a detergent in the way.
C) Pre condition the carpet. Preconditioning means you are applying a surfactant (wetting agent) heavy detergent with mild oily soil solvents before you actually clean the fiber or carpet. Generally these are 10-11 on the ph scale.
Neutral detergents make for (in general) poor cleaners, They make better specific spot removers.
alkaline cleaners make for great dirt and grime cleaners. but do very poorly on tanins, urines, and protien based soils.
Acidic detergents make for poor dirt removals, but do very well on urines, tanin, some protien based stains, and some food based dyes.
Enzymes are usually reserved for organics like foodstuffs, grass, and others.
Solvents, make for very poor detergents as they have almost no cleaning ability. However wehn combined with an alkaline detergent you will finde a combo that will defeat many oily soils found in cars. Apply the solvent to fiber first, work in with brush, then apply AK detergent.
Okay back to preconditioning. Once you have applied the precondition spray to the fiber, gently rub it in with a towel or a horse hair brush. You are not scrubbing. You are making sure your detergents are coating as much of the surface of each fiber as possible. Once this is done you want to wait about 10-15 min. This will let the detergents work on the soils and greases on the fiber. (caution) if you let it dry out the detergent then becomes a soil that you have to use a detergent to remove. Making more work for yourself.
D) Extraction: this is the means where you rinse the soils, pre spotters, and pre conditioners using a rinsing agent or a rinsing detergent that dries to an inert powder. The key things here is to be sure you have proper chemicals, psi, air flow for drying and sufficient vacuum lift to remove the moisture you are putting into the fiber. This is a lot to consider.
For most cars I recommend:
100 psi as the max,
150 cfm minimal lift for the vacuum,
drop fans for drying the carpet, headliner, seats and trunk.
Rinse agent I recommend a product like prochems all fiber rinse, or a slurry like point blue or dry slurry.
E) Dry vacuuming after the cleaning:
As a general rule for every up and down stroke you spray water or rinse solution on, you should vacuum only for 3 strokes at one half the speed.
F) Application of protectants: This step you mix and apply protectants. How much? Depends on the product. But here is what I use for prochems 6:1 Once the product is properly mixed I spray the fiber to the point that; when I wipe the back of my hand on the fiber it just begins to glisten with moisture. At that point I groom the protectant into the fiber with a small rake or a clean terry cloth towel.
G) Proper air movement/ventilation. This is the section where you drop small fans in the back seat aiming the airflow just over the carpet. Drying time should be between 2-4 hours for carpet and 1-3 hours for fabrics.
How do you revers felting? Heat, moist heat. Say you are asked to remove a really tasty piece of ABC gum out of the floor. more than likely in the process you will felt the fiber a bit. How do you repair that damage as best you can?
a damp towel
a steam iron filled with hot water set to cotton high steam
put the towel on the area, once iron is at full steam apply it to toweled area for 20-30 second intervals for about 2 min total.
brush lightly with a stiff carpet brush and let cool.
The heat will help the fiber remember it's original twist and reset it into that original twist.
