When winter hits 90% of the customers that we clean have all the nasty dark residue/soiling in their garage from day after day of snow melting off the bottom of the car after their commute. The combination of stuff that is found within this soiling can be a real pain to try to get out of your carpet especially if you have a light color. The problem with this nasty soiling is its not just dirt. It is a combination of many things including oil, grease,road salt, calcium chloride, gasoline, wiper fluid, and pretty much whatever else the under carraige of your car picked up on the way home.
Each of these types of stains bring their own set of problems for us. If the grease is a graphite grease it has the potential to be permanent as this is one of the most powerful on the market meant for heavy machinery. Regular oil and grease will come out with our spotting chemicals, but for some reason graphite grease can be a hit or miss depending on the severity. Road salt doesn’t cause us a ton of problems besides possibly wearing down your fibers faster, but calcium chloride is a whole new ball game. It causes water and soap retention during our cleaning process which can cause your carpet to resemble oil streaks the next day. If this does become the case you need to have an acid rinse done on your carpets which can take multiple attempts before it starts to work.
On top of dealing with each of these stains individually we also need to try our best to not set the other stains before using our designated chemical spotter on them. This can be quite difficult to do as you can imagine as all of these items have become an intertwined mixture that is near impossible to separate during the spotting process.
The best way for us to try to help you is to come into your home, take a look at what we are dealing with, do our regular cleaning process, and see what the results yield us.