life saver

J

jpzapata

Millennium Detailing
two days ago got a call from a client saying that he he needed some serious interior detailing. So I made an apointment to give him a quote. When I got there it was not that bad just a couple of stains on the floor of the car (baby drpping bottle full of milk stains. Gave hime the quote and he was happpy. Then he goes and and mentions tht he owns a limo service. So I am hinking to my self let me make agood impression and maybe I can land a good service contract. Well when I get there the next day and I am ready to start my extractor does not work. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! What to do now? Since he had left I dashed over to Costco to see if I could get some thing to get this done. The only thing that I saw portabe and the heated the water was this thing callled little green by Bissel. So I sais what the heck ans bought it. I was doubtful at first being only 79.00 and so small. But it worked great and it saved my butt. Let me tell you if you want to offer interior shapoo service and hhave limited funds this a great starter uper.
 
Great that it worked out for you.
The "Little Green Machine" seems to get pretty favorable reviews even though it isn't very heavy duty. Fortunately, not every job requires heavy duty.:)

Another thing I have wondered about is the rental units you see in about every hardware, grocery, and drugstore around here. They have upholstery attachments and it seems like they should work when you need something in a hurry. I don't know the cost of rental, but I doubt that it would be prohibitive for occasional use.

Did you get the Limo business?

Charles
 
I rented one of those machines, the "Rug Doctor". It was $20 for 24 hours. You also need the what they call the upholstry attachment (wand & vac head) for $3. Instead of buying the upholstry cleaner you get the carpet cleaner unless you are cleaning your seats. They also had a $5 dollar mail in rebate on the machine and $1 on the cleaning solutions. You can buy pre-treatment, pet stain remover, spot remover, and odor remover. The machine was easy to set up and use. The car I used it on was 15 years old and to my knowledge had not been extracted before. I made two passes on it and the floormats and had dirty water in the recovery tank both times. After the carpet dryed it felt kind of stiff. After some thought I think what I should have done was make one more pass with just plain water.

Reason I did this was because I don't have money for my own machine right now and I wanted to get some experience using it. The carpet and foor mats are not perfect but way better than before. :jump I have pics I can post if anyone is interested.

Frank
 
Here are the pics I promised. My connection is slow so I am only going to post a few. The first two are before and after shots of rear seat. The third pick is the water from the recovery tank after the second pass. the dirty water was all uniform in color but had started to seperate by the time I took the picture. I should have done a third pass. :naughty
 
I HATE rug doctor! If you're lucky enough to find a machine with less than 3 million hours of use, it may work *ok* I used to use them to clean carpets when I did some contracting. It did get some junk up, but it was a cheap machine. I cant believe how much they sell them for if you want to buy one. I bought a 12 amp bissell machine from Sams Club for about $225. It has a steam heat option, all the attatchments etc and it works awesome. The hose is long enough to reach into the car and the brushes rotate and actually do a good job. It extracts almost all of the water, making drying a snap. Plus, when you're done with the car, the house carpets can always use a good cleaning! I think it's an investment that will pay for itslef down the road.

Mike
 
I saw a new Hoover portable steam cleaner at target the other day. It was about $150 and looked like it was only going to be marketed at Target (It had lots of red target bullseyes all over the box). It was a little smaller than a canister vac and had the how water option. But when i read the boxit seems that it shoots out really hot air with the water, therefore heating it in the carpet. I too have limited funds trying to start up so I might try it. The OXY cleaning method just takes a long time and seems to only work really well about half the time. If i get it, I'll let you all know how it works. :moon:
 
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