I need to vacuum more often

March 18, 2022 1:46 PM

Professional rug cleaning takes decades of dirt off of this beautiful weaving that was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and just needed a refresh. 31m of carpet cleaning. Water, suds, pressure jets scrubbing, and a pleasing ending make this a satisfying watch in these turbulent times. Unless you're some rug dirt, in which case....
posted by hippybear (59 comments total)

For less talk, and more rock, I always tune into Lubuskie Centrum Czystości.
posted by Rat Spatula at 2:01 PM on March 18, 2022 [8 favorites]

Appropriate that my sidebar of relateds is all Baumgartner Restoration
posted by phunniemee at 2:05 PM on March 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
posted by Earthtopus at 2:06 PM on March 18, 2022

LCC is prime rugtube, and I've been fond of Advanced Cleaning Systems as well.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:12 PM on March 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

The sweeping out of all of the gross water and dirt is especially satisfying. But come on guys, barely a blip of a before/after at the end? Give me nice long views of the dry, clean rug! Show me the delicate patterns lost underneath the filth! That's the good stuff!
posted by fight or flight at 2:14 PM on March 18, 2022 [17 favorites]

I *feel* like some rug dirt, but that's not the same thing. Thanks for sharing.
posted by nat at 2:17 PM on March 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Appropriate that my sidebar of relateds is all Baumgartner Restoration

Baumgartner Restoration is one of the those YouTube channels that has just gotten better with time as the creator found his voice. Look at his early videos compared to his newest ones, and it's impressive how he now builds narrative into his work.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:17 PM on March 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

how...why is that so mesmerizing? I did not know this was a thing. SO.MUCH.DIRT. (def going to prioritize steam cleaning the dining room rug this weekend, which we have been putting off...shudder)
posted by supermedusa at 2:44 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: how...why is that so mesmerizing? I did not know this was a thing. SO.MUCH.DIRT.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 PM on March 18, 2022 [4 favorites]

Very excited by the “You’ve NEVER seen a rug this DIRTY ! MASSIVE transformation” video in the sidebar.

Truly, we all underestimated how relaxing watching paint dry is.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:56 PM on March 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

For less talk, and more rock, I always tune into Lubuskie Centrum Czystości.

I’ve been completely enthralled by his videos this past year and I’m so delighted I’m not alone!

There are some videos with a machine that literally vibrates the dirt from a rolled up rug and I’m astonished and horrified in the best possible way every time…
posted by mochapickle at 3:21 PM on March 18, 2022

Rug cleaning YouTube is a gateway to car detailing YouTube.
posted by JoeZydeco at 3:24 PM on March 18, 2022 [10 favorites]

Those who find this sort of thing satisfying to watch might also enjoy /r/powerwashingporn.
posted by Nerd of the North at 3:33 PM on March 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'll see you that deeply, deeply satisfying cleaning video, and raise this YouTube channel devoted to the incredibly satisfying and fulfilling world of culvert clearing. This stuff scratches an itch I never knew I had!
posted by fortitude25 at 3:33 PM on March 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I love rugtube. It’s like visual asmr when done right. I’ll be visiting all the links in this thread eventually, if I haven’t already.
posted by Mizu at 4:00 PM on March 18, 2022

So satisfying. Especially considering my work day today. Wednesday I spent a half hour showing someone what to do and what not to do. Today my day consisted of undoing their work because they spent the last two days doing nothing but what I had told them not to do. So somehow this made that bearable.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 4:35 PM on March 18, 2022 [6 favorites]

I've long understood that in my role at the end of the day my desk looks pretty much like it did when the day started.

I'm good at what I do; it pays pretty well, and I know I'm doing good in the world. But I have to admit that every now and then I feel a real pang of envy for people who can look at something they've done or made or finished, and actually see the thing, see the difference.
posted by mhoye at 4:58 PM on March 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

metafilter : prime rugtube
posted by lalochezia at 5:11 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

Youtube has long been recommending these types of videos to me, but so far I have resisted. Should I click the thingy?
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 5:43 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I watched it through and YT Has rewarded me with them cleaning a rectangular rug.
posted by biffa at 6:09 PM on March 18, 2022

Well, you just gave me and my 17 year old kid something to do together, so thank you for that.
posted by mollweide at 7:50 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I think you sort of need a special granite surface surrounded by drains for this kind of activity, but if you have that, then yay! Kid time!
posted by hippybear at 7:56 PM on March 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

On the other hand, I'm now giving my rugs the side eye.
posted by mollweide at 8:14 PM on March 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

Just think of the old "hang the rug and beat it" kind of cleaning. There were no hardcore dust masks at the time.

On the other hand, there's a place in the city near where I live that has a "bring the rug in, we'll clean it for $40" offer, which after watching this, if I had rugs and not carpet, I could see being a bargain.

I could mop and refinish while the rug was out of the house!
posted by hippybear at 8:33 PM on March 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have been watching these for a month or so now (I'd already seen the one from this post), and I do not understand why I find them so relaxing and fascinating. I'm glad I'm apparently not the only one. Why the hell do I have Favorite Cleaning Implements? (Ah, now they're going to use the water squeegee, that's the besssst ...)
posted by Chanther at 10:02 PM on March 18, 2022 [5 favorites]

What I completely fail to understand is why there's a flat waterproof surface under the cleaning area rather than a fine stainless steel mesh with drainage space underneath.

That section where he feeds water in on the underside of the rug and all the grey muddy filth comes pouring up through the surface, only to settle back into the top side before he gets rid of some small part of it again with the subsequent squeegee pass, left me feeling really irritated by what seems to me to be poor system design.

I cannot see the point in using so much water to step every dirt particle slowly across the rug on its way to the drain, giving most of the dirt every opportunity to resettle into fibres that then need more violence applied to lift it out again, instead of flushing it straight down through the weave.

If you're going to set up a surface devoted specifically to being a cleaning zone for floor rugs, why not set it up to make that easier? If dirt could get away from the rug by being flushed straight out through the floor instead of having endless opportunities to get re-trapped as it works its way across the rug, I'm completely sure he wouldn't have had to turn it over and over and over the way he did, would have had the job done in half the time, and that the last lot of water put through the rug would have run out clean.
posted by flabdablet at 11:27 PM on March 18, 2022 [8 favorites]

I think part of why it’s not done on top of a grate as you suggest is that the fibers need to be given time to actually absorb the water. When I’ve crocheted something in wool yarn and I’m ready to block it, I’m always amazed at how much time it takes for the fibers to relax, and then how much water it actually absorbs, and then how super stretchy it is when I’m squeezing it out and shaping it to dry. It’s like a full hour before the stuff is fully saturated soaking in a bucket with a drop of soap. With an old fragile wool rug, I imagine scraping it over a grate would be a no-no for fiber reasons, and then you’ve got the issue of water absorption to help the dirt release more gently vs efficiency and it’s probably a whole thing about dye retention. I bet for synthetic rugs the process is different.
posted by Mizu at 2:07 AM on March 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

The impermeable white surface appears to be moveable panels on top of a grate, which would suggest they can work directly on the grate for rugs where that approach is better.

I have always heard jokes about boring television being like “watching paint dry” or “watching grass grow.” But watching grass grow in time-lapse can be great television.

Don’t tell anybody (or they’ll joke about my username) but drying paint goes through a set of interesting appearance changes, and the pattern of those changes is related to but different from the pattern in which the paint was applied.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 3:06 AM on March 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

That was very satisfying indeed, and just the motivation I needed to get me outside, cleaning the Saharan red dust that was dumped on the UK last week off the windows.
posted by essexjan at 3:33 AM on March 19, 2022

I imagine scraping it over a grate would be a no-no for fiber reasons

I would have imagined running a brush over it at high speed under the weight of a floor polishing machine would be at least as much of a no-no, but apparently not so.

What I'm envisioning is stainless steel mesh, made of maybe 2mm wire in a 6mm grid, laid over the top of the existing support grate so that it doesn't sag as it's walked on. I wouldn't have thought that such a mesh, being made of smooth round wires that would only ever get smoother for having gritty rugs dragged around on top of them, would put any stress on fibres that a flat floor wouldn't.

Have another look at the pressure-washing cleaning stages. You can see the water coming from the nozzle turning grey as it lifts grit from the rug, and you can see the rug filtering and retaining a line of mud as the water flows away from the blast zone. That mud just sits there, settling back into the rug until some of it gets shoved sideways with the squeegee. I'm quite sure that pressure washing would be a lot more effective if most of the mud that the pressure washer blast picks up could just drop straight out underneath instead of having to make its way sideways through quite a lot of rug to escape.

the fibers need to be given time to actually absorb the water

Is fibres absorbing water actually the point, though? Seems to me that washing works by getting water to detach grit from fibres and carry it away. I would have thought that fibres swelling as they absorb water would if anything tighten the weave and make it harder, not easier, for silt-laden water to move through the gaps between them.
posted by flabdablet at 4:19 AM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

The question of why it’s not done over a grate is actually asked and answered in the comment section of the video. He says the grate would leave marks on the pile of the rug that don’t come out.
posted by fancyoats at 4:48 AM on March 19, 2022 [5 favorites]

flabdablet, let’s start a rug cleaning business together because I’m 100% with you.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 7:03 AM on March 19, 2022

the fibers need to be given time to actually absorb the water

Okay, so start the process by letting the rug soak in a puddle of water or water/shampoo for an hour or two. Then move the damn thing onto the Flabdablet-Turtles NanoMesh 3000 and watch all that dirt get efficiently flushed down the drain.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 7:08 AM on March 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

Rug cleaning YouTube is a gateway to car detailing YouTube.

Is car detailing youtube a gateway for wristwatch repair youtube?
posted by mikelieman at 7:13 AM on March 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

I love the bucket-with-holes-in-it he uses to spread the cleaner on the rug.
posted by Well I never at 7:28 AM on March 19, 2022 [3 favorites]

I mean, having skimmed my first YouTube rug cleaning video in my jammies, I think I know a little bit more than whoever this squeegee clown thinks he is.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 7:29 AM on March 19, 2022 [12 favorites]

If you're going to set up a surface devoted specifically to being a cleaning zone for floor rugs, why not set it up to make that easier? If dirt could get away from the rug by being flushed straight out through the floorbreak

If you look at the rectangular run cleaning I link above, after they do one side they flip the rug and the other side remains filthy, suggesting the water and dirt is sluicing across the surface of the rug rather than passing through.
posted by biffa at 7:55 AM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

If it was just on a grate, putting the hose underneath would just dump the water down and provide no fluid bed to squeegee water and dirt out.

I was also wondering about the water usage, we're probably looking at thousands of gallons of only mildly dirty water for just this one rug. I do see a storage tank in the background, and I'm wondering if they capture, filter, and cycle through much of it?
posted by jellywerker at 8:14 AM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hugely gratifying, but vaguely disturbing just HOW MUCH DIRT comes out on the 5th? 6? Washing…

We have a wool rug that hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned ever, from the 1970’s and now I’m giving it some major side eye, and fixing to look up professional rug cleaners in my area. Of cource, now that I am an expert, having watched this video, I will know what to demand when I find someone as sufficiently committed to rug cleanliness as this guy, which I am not sure is possible. He is very committed.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:40 AM on March 19, 2022 [6 favorites]

The question of why it’s not done over a grate is actually asked and answered in the comment section of the video.

YouTube is pretty notorious for presenting different comments to different people, and I couldn't find that question+answer pair. Linky?

He says the grate would leave marks on the pile of the rug that don’t come out.

I can't see how a stainless steel mesh with a grid pitch not much coarser than a typical rug's own backing weave could possibly leave more prominent marks than the perforated steel drum of their spin dryer does.

suggesting the water and dirt is sluicing across the surface of the rug rather than passing through.

A lot of it will do, for sure. But all that mud underneath doesn't actually have to stay underneath, soaking back into the rug the whole time; it could just drop out through a mesh and go away. And considering the only purpose of having huge volumes of water sluicing over the surface is to keep it moving fast enough that the dirt stays suspended instead of settling back into the rug, I have to question whether most of the volume being sluiced over is actually achieving anywhere near as much mud removal as it could. When it's sudsy water full of rug shampoo it's going to hold a lot of dirt in floating suds, and grubby suds probably are best got rid of with a squeegee, though I have to agree with the YouTube commenters who point out that squeeging from the centre on outwards is a lot sounder than going edge to edge. But it still seems to me that all of the rinse and pressure wash steps would have to work better without a hard floor pressing an essentially immobilized mud layer back up from underneath.

When my washing machine washes clothes, the rinse cycle includes a spin and spray step with much the same rationale: you want to get as much suds-released mud out of what you're washing as you can, and encouraging clean rinse water to flow through the fabric rather than just sloshing around and vaguely diluting the mud is a big help. Obviously enhanced gravity isn't available while the rug is laid out flat, but hot superwater from a pressure washer will push quite a lot of itself through even quite a heavy rug if it has somewhere to go on the back side.

having skimmed my first YouTube rug cleaning video in my jammies, I think I know a little bit more than whoever this squeegee clown thinks he is.

You and me both, clearly.
posted by flabdablet at 8:48 AM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

The previously mentioned Advanced Cleaning system does their similar cleaning process on a plastic grate instead of hard floor.
posted by roaring beast at 9:22 AM on March 19, 2022

Wouldn't it have been easier to get that tiny bit of rug out of the huge amount of dirt?
posted by JSilva at 9:36 AM on March 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

does their similar cleaning process on a plastic grate

Oh, that's so much better!

I also like that they explain that their centrifuge is not just a spin dryer but a rinse as well, and they run it until the rinse water runs clear.
posted by flabdablet at 9:48 AM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was also wondering about the water usage, we're probably looking at thousands of gallons of only mildly dirty water for just this one rug.
posted by jellywerker at 8:14 AM on 3/19

In one of the industrial parks I managed, we had a carpet cleaner like this. After watching this video, I think we probably should have been submetering his water!
posted by vespabelle at 11:00 AM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

why there's a flat waterproof surface under the cleaning area rather than a fine stainless steel mesh with drainage space underneath.

@flabdablet In the first 1:45 of the video they do have the rug on top of a plastic grid. Once they add water, it must be better to have the dirty water float on top of the rug rather than being drained through the rug, which would likely lead to most of the dirt being reabsorbed back into the rug.
posted by Lanark at 12:51 PM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I cannot stop wondering why the surface is level, instead of slanted like a drainboard.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 5:30 PM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Because it’s annoying to have Yakety Sax playing all day?
posted by amanda at 7:19 PM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I bought a lovely hand-knotted rug at Goodwill, stained but in good shape. I washed it in my driveway. I do this with rugs pretty often; the neighbors are amused by me scooting around with bare feet to get the dirt out. It's pretty fun on a soapy wool rug. This rug had a pet stain or 2, some stains that were bright colors, and a weird rust-colored dust came out when I beat it. I've gotten dirt out of rugs, but this generated rusty dirt through several washings and rinsings. I ended up having it professionally cleaned (by the sq. ft., 200US). The original navy blue is now nearly black because of whatever was in it, the cream background is deeper. Still a good deal. I enjoyed the hell out of the video, thanks.
posted by theora55 at 7:46 PM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Also, I squeegee with a snow shovel, and my driveway has a decent grade which helps rugs drain. Wool rugs are awesome and resist dirt pretty well, but I usually have a rug or 2 that needs to be cleaned each summer.
posted by theora55 at 7:53 PM on March 19, 2022

Where does your driveway drain to?

What kind of detergent do you use for rug cleaning, if any?
posted by flabdablet at 8:49 PM on March 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

Good question. My driveway drains to ditches leading to a lovely lake, and I use the smallest amount of detergent possible, usually something labeled as reduced toxicity. My house has a septic system, and my waste, shampoo, soap, dishwasher detergent, laundry drainage, etc., ends up in the lake, too. I am cognizant of my very real impact. My human waste probably has the most impact.
posted by theora55 at 10:45 PM on March 19, 2022

If it's ending up in a waterway, the main thing you don't want to be running down your drains is phosphate.

If soap flakes dissolved in a bucket would do a decent job on your driveway rugs, they're probably about as close to harmless as any detergent can possibly get; lots of microbes will happily eat low concentrations of sodium- or potassium-saponified fats without taking damage. Better still would be to do that and arrange some kind of diverter so your wash water ends up soaking into a lawn instead of running away to the waterway.

Release of detergent-laden water as an environmental crime was a plot point in Breaking Bad. I struggle to believe that any regional government would be quite so corrupt as to allow it to go on from any kind of commercial washing concern at any kind of scale, so I'm pretty sure there would need to be the same kind of on-site wastewater recapture and processing going on at these rug washing outfits as you'd find in a commercial car wash.
posted by flabdablet at 11:21 PM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

My house has a septic system, and my waste, shampoo, soap, dishwasher detergent, laundry drainage, etc., ends up in the lake, too

If you dig a swale directly downhill from your septic system's leachfield, keep that well filled with mulch, and plant heaps of shrubby leafy things downhill from the swale, you should be able to make quite a significant reduction in the amount of soluble nutrients that make it all the way off your property. As a bonus, the swale should cope with having any amount of garden waste dumped in it to top up the mulch level.
posted by flabdablet at 11:29 PM on March 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

I went through so many emotional reversals watching this. When I witnessed the first squeegeeing, I was all, where is this, I must sell my house and move there and give these people all my money to let me do this one thing all my waking hours for the rest of my life. Then he rinsed the soap off and the rug was completely black and I was like, wait, what, how can it still be that dirty? Then I became suspicious that in fact the dirt was coming out of the big hose thing. Because how?

Then I noticed how much water was coming out of the big hose thing.

How much water was coming out of the hose thing, the pressure washer, and the tricked out carpet washer thing. Then I remembered a moment where the camera caught a map of Florida on the wall and only then did I clock the guy's accent. Then I paused and looked up Tru Clean Rug Spa and God damn, Pinellas. Now we know why the aquifer is fucking empty.

Then he flipped and washed the rug fiftytwelve more times and I thought, wait... so... has anyone asked the simple question why are we walking on these things? If it can't go in the washing machine, it shouldn't go on the floor, right?! Then I thought about all my own goddamn wool rugs all over the house that can't go in the washing machine. Then I looked around me at all the stuff made out of wool just in my immediate environs, all of it being rapidly consumed by moths, and my final thoughts came in a rapid and frightening jumble: people have to stop; wool needs to stay on the sheep; I need to go back to bed.
posted by Don Pepino at 8:11 AM on March 20, 2022 [8 favorites]

Good idea, flabdablet, wish I could do that. I'm on a small lot and can't really build a swale; never use phosphate cleaners. I organize my household to minimize pollution and hope my neighbors do the same. Regional governments in the US will happily let businesses wreck the environment, then close shop and leave the mess to taxpayers. I live in Maine, a very wet, green environment; there's plenty of plants, trees, shrubs.

Wool. Wool rugs seldom need to be cleaned and can usually be cleaned with a steam-vac that uses little water. A synthetic rug that is machine washed frequently may not be better at water conservation. Regular vacuuming controls moths. Wool rugs last a long time, and can be composted when they die.
posted by theora55 at 11:36 AM on March 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maybe they could soak the rugs...? Rather than keep blasting them with endless Niagras of hose water, suspend them in a big tank for hours and hours and let the silt settle out of them? Then maybe they could clean and re-use the tank water? Is it possible they ARE recycling and reusing water? If that were so, I might still want to sell my house and pay Tru Clean Rug Spa to let me squeegee dirty water out of rugs for the rest of my life.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:33 PM on March 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maybe they could soak the rugs...? Rather than keep blasting them with endless Niagras of hose water, suspend them in a big tank for hours and hours and let the silt settle out of them?

Advanced Cleaning Systems does use a soaking tank when dealing with rugs that have things like urine saturated in them, but it seems to work best with contaminants that are water-soluable (again, urine) and not grit.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:40 PM on March 20, 2022 [1 favorite]

Lotta fuckin rug experts on mefi these days god damn
posted by phunniemee at 1:45 PM on March 20, 2022 [7 favorites]

I feel honored and gratified that my posting of this video has created so many experts and new carpet cleaning businesses. I feel like I have unlocked some kind of MetaFilter Achievement, but no badge has appeared on my screen yet.
posted by hippybear at 2:03 PM on March 20, 2022 [8 favorites]