Ep 059 - Is Your Home Actually Clean -- Or Just Looking Clean

Welcome to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, where you'll discover strategies to save money, save time, and be better organized in managing your largest financial asset and biggest expense, your home. Your hosts, John Bodrozic and Beth Dodson, who are co-founders of HomeZada, have been supporting homeowners for over 20 years. They are here to share with you their tips and suggestions, as well as interviews with industry experts, with the goal of helping you become a smarter homeowner. Now, here's your hosts, Jon and Beth.

Is your home actually clean or just looking clean? And what might still be hiding in your carpets that vacuuming can't remove? Today's guest is Ed Quinlan, president of Chem-Dry, a global leader in carpet and upholstery cleaning. deep expertise in cleaning science and healthy home practices, helping homeowners like everyone listening understand what it takes to maintain a clean living environment. Today we're unpacking why vacuuming alone doesn't always solve the issue. And boy, do I know, I love my carpet cleaners. And what could still be hiding beneath the surface if you are only vacuuming. And thank you so much for joining us on Be a Smarter Homeowner podcast.

Yeah, it's so great to be with you, Beth.

Oh, thanks. Thank you. So I wanted to start with, um, vacuuming and why it's not enough. So a lot of people will vacuum, and whether they use a central home vac— some people have it built into their home in a system, some people use a cleaner itself, like something that you push, and there's a variety of those out there— but tell me a little bit more about why vacuuming doesn't Work enough?

Well, I think it's important to underscore that vacuuming is important, right? And so there's not, not, not that, not that I don't wanna discount vacuuming because it is so important. You know, the dry particulate that comes out with vacuuming is, is remarkable. And, you know, a, a good powerful vacuum with good solid construction, suction, I mean, you know, and a durable, something that really gets into the fibers and you have, Throughout your home, many homeowners are going to have different types of carpet.

Yes.

And you'll find, especially in the bedrooms, we want our more plush carpets, right? We're often on there without our shoes on and our bare feet. We want those fibers to be really nice and soft. And so you want a vacuum that can handle all that. And then when you get into, like, the family spaces, the bigger trend is things like frisé. Right? And those frisé carpets, they might have different texture lengths in the carpet, right?

Mm-hmm.

And think about the construction of the carpet and then vacuuming, right? With all that variety, as dirt, especially dry dirt, you know, different soils and the dust and the dander and all that settles into the carpet, the vacuum's trying to get it all out as best as it can. And so a powerful vacuum with a HEPA filter, you know, the more plush it is, the more likely it is to sit on the top of the fiber. But when we get into those frisées, which is often where we're laying down our babies, or we're laying on the carpet to play with the kids or the grandkids or watch TV and whatnot, those carpets, they have a lot of different variety in how they're catching the dirt. And then my vacuum has got to work extra hard to get that out because of all the different dynamics in the texture. So, Just the science of vacuuming. Awesome.

Do it.

Do it a couple of times a week. Do it every day if you, if you can take the time, right? Especially your traffic areas, right? The spaces you spend the most in, give them good vacuuming. But really, vacuuming isn't enough because while that will capture all those particles at the top of the carpet fibers, what about the stuff that gets down below?

Right.

Right. And that can really become problematic over time. It can damage the carpet fibers as you— right, as it sits in there and as you have traffic on it, and it builds up. And so it is important to get your carpets professionally cleaned with a hot water extraction process. And I, and I would say, yes, you know, average homeowner does it every 12 months. You know, we have a whole set of customers that do it every 3 months because they really want an extra clean house, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Really common, people will want their carpets cleaned before a mother-in-law visit, or, you know, there could be events or parties or whatever that are driving—

After.

You know, once a month is okay too. Of course, I'm a carpet cleaner, so I'll say once a month is okay too.

Totally.

But, you know, when I think of what do you need, this is more than just about having it look clean, right?

Yes.

It is important that your carpets look clean, but we also want them to be clean. And so that's why a deep cleaning on a regular basis is important. Yeah.

And I do that myself. Now I do have a question, you know, so, because immediately I thought of pets.

Yeah.

And now the trend right now is to have those pets, especially dogs that don't shed, but the reality is they're still bringing in dirt from the outside because usually they're doing their business outside, but also from For those people that have shedding pets, whether it's cats, dogs, rabbits, whatever the case may be, I'm assuming that this is even more needed because the dander, not only from our own bodies and skin and hair and that of the pets, can then double down, especially if they are closer to the carpet.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pets is a— pets is a whole key segment. Yes, for the dander. Yes, for the soil. Yes, for the hair. All those added challenges that come from having pets. And then, you know, if you have a pet in your home, I'm gonna break it to you, every now and then they make a spill, they make a mistake.

Yes.

And even though we do our best and we really try to teach them, you know, our Chem-Dry technicians, when we go through the house, we just, as a matter of protocol, We'll bring out a blacklight, and the blacklight will expose to us the areas where you have little surprises and spills. And, you know, I can't tell you the number of homeowners that we've encountered that are like, oh yeah, my pet never piddles in the house. And then we find this spot, you know, might be the corner of the couch, or it might be, you know, next to a table leg or something like that, where, you know, a dog— and maybe it wasn't your dog, maybe it was a playdate with a neighbor's dog, I don't know, but— Yeah, we find this, we find the spills, they'll fluoresce under the black light. And then, you know, and then we have a specialty treatment, you know, and our technicians are great because we teach, we teach them how to go diagnose it to find out exactly what it is, right?

Yes.

And so you'll literally watch your technician get down on the ground and he'll be scratching the spot and sniffing it to make sure that it is what he thinks it is. And in our training, we go through and we sniff And we learn, you know, what does, what does cat urine smell like versus what does dog urine smell like and all these aggressive odors. Uh, and then learn how to treat it because ultimately we want to get rid of the, we want to get rid of the odor-causing agent. And we also, we want to get rid of the smell too.

Yeah. And prohibit the animals from doing it again. You guys are like CSI for your pets.

Totally CSI for your pets. That's great. I love that. This is hilarious.

That's great. I'm like, but yes, this is so important. Because if I understand, and this is one of the reasons why I clean my carpets, is if you're not pulling all the excess up out of the carpets, then you can, as a homeowner, you can actually develop illnesses, or whether it's lung-based, respiratory-based illnesses, but it also could be skin-based illnesses because it's irritants. Is that correct?

Yeah, so think of this like a filter, right? So, uh, the largest air filter in your home is your carpeting, right? And you think of all the air that is going across the carpets. And we also clean upholstery, and, you know, upholstery can capture—

Totally.

Can capture dirt. Um, but, you know, the carpet ends up being the largest air filter in the house, and Just like we need to clean the air filter in our furnace.

Yep.

And in our air conditioning system and our HVAC system, we also need to do that with our carpets. And that deep cleaning, uh, I call it more of a restorative cleaning because, you know, you can, you can vacuum at home and you can, you know, you can get a little Bissell and have it in the closet and use it now and then. But for a deep restorative clean, you need a professional. And for instance, in Chem-Dry, we use these truck-mounted systems Extremely high vacuum power, and then for our cleaning process, we'll apply down a low volume of moisture. We use about about 20% of the moisture as a traditional steam cleaner, and our secret is we're putting carbonation into that. So it's a carbonated cleaning system, and the carbonation gets in there, and the the volume and the power of the carbonation agitates. Gets into the fiber and allows us to, rather than have to get back into the— down into the backing and use a lot of high pressure, we use low pressure. We get the carpet fibers and don't push down into the padding and the backing and the subfloor where you have risk of, you know, if you have too much water down there, that could create a new risk.

Right.

Risk of mold and mildew and bacteria growth, and you don't want that. So we use less water, scientific water, you know, a lot of chemistry goes in. That's why chem in Chem-Dry is for chemistry, right?

Right.

We really use the chemistry with the carbonation to help put less water in, and then we have these massive vacuums to get it all out. So usually when people hire a professional carpet cleaner, a steam cleaner, it could take, you know, 1 to 2 days for the carpets to dry. You'll find with Chem-Dry it takes about 1 to 2 hours. It's crazy fast dry time.

That's brilliant.

You imagine the health benefit of that.

Yes.

Just having it drier faster. And now I can get back on the carpet quicker too.

Yeah, because it's— that was one of my biggest issues whenever I would have my carpets cleaned. Nobody could get on them for days. And I'm like, well, how do I access some of my rooms? And fortunately, like, I don't have kids or pets inside my house right now. Other people do, and like try telling a child or a pet, "Nope, you can't go there," and it's it's kind of difficult for them. That is brilliant.

You're gonna move out for two days just because you're correct. So correct.

No, that is brilliant. So you're pulling up all of this this this bacteria, and we talked briefly that it could cause ailments for some people. If they don't clean it, because that's the, that's the case. And do you— so one of the things I can see this doing as well is, I know it's done it for me, even in the traditional cleaning using a truck. Yes, because I do believe the trucks are important. And it can elongate and extend the life of your carpets.

Yes. Well, so, so we've done some research with a bunch of our national accounts, our commercial clients, right? That traditionally, because of all the traffic, because of all the dirt, and you think when you're, when you're in a commercial setting and you have so many people coming into your store and all the traffic, right? They, they were changing out their carpet every 2 years and putting brand new carpet down at a giant expense, right? And by putting Chem-Dry in a regular rotation and us getting all that dirt out and keeping it looking clean and, and being clean, right, they were able to extend the life of the carpet and they were replacing it every 8 to 10 years.

Huge.

Rather than every 2 years. I mean, 5 times the life.

Huge.

That's an anecdotal story, but yes, you know, that's a great example of you can get more life out of your carpet If you clean it regularly.

And that also applies to your upholstery too.

Correct. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

You can literally extend the life of your furnishings, of your carpet, if you are regularly cleaning it with deep cleaning so that it can sustain itself ongoing. And then furthermore, it has less opportunity to cause illnesses when you've deep cleaned.

It makes for a healthier home all around, right? A cleaner home is a healthier home.

Yes.

And that's gonna, you're gonna get those benefits across your family. And, you know, many of our homes too, you're coming around pets. We have pets, we have kids, and they're laying on the carpets and they're laying on the upholstery.

Yep.

And then they go outside and they bring stuff in.

Yep.

And if you're not cleaning it, you know, think of it as like, if I don't wash my clothes, I may just wear my clothes every day and every day and never wash them. What the buildup is like and how damaging that is to the fibers of the clothes. Not to mention everything else you get to put up with around the odors and the smells. But, you know, we want to catch— we want to catch all that dirt before it becomes set and becomes a stain. We want to catch any spots and spills quicker so they don't become a stain or something permanent.

Yes.

And getting the upholstery cleaned, getting the carpet cleaned, we can help— we can help your house look new for a lot longer. Yeah.

Yes.

People might come in and go, oh, maybe that color is out of trend of that carpet. Maybe that carpet was installed, you know, 30 years ago and the color's off. But gosh, it looks brand new. Yeah.

And what comes around goes around. It comes right back around. Just saying. All the '70s colors are coming back again. I have no idea why, but okay.

We're not the shag carpets. Shag carpets.

Oh my gosh. Crazy. Crazy. I remember all that.

Yeah.

So, so basically what we're saying is make sure, and I've included this and we put this in HomeZada as well, make sure you're cleaning, deep cleaning your carpets regularly, whatever regularly means to you, but regularly.

Yeah. If you have kids, you're gonna wanna clean more, more frequently, a couple times a year, right? If you have pets, you're probably wanting to even clean more often than that, right?

Sure.

The frequency matters. The frequency will help with extending the life and the value of your, of, that investment in your carpet.

So, what if people— so, some people may not have done this at all.

Yeah.

And let's face it, there's a lot of people that don't. But, you know, I told you before the show I had a guy, so I have a guy for everything. So, tell me what signs might be happening that affect your upholstery and carpet that may show you that you have an unhealthy home because you haven't done this? We're not trying to scare anybody. We're just trying to help people make better choices.

Well, so your traffic areas and your traffic patterns, right? If you, if you maybe you have a little area rug that's covering part of your, of your floor, or maybe you have a— I was gonna say a chair, or Or like a lounge or a recliner, right? Go ahead and just grab that and slide it off to the side or pull back that corner of the rug. Can you see a change in color?

Oh yeah.

It's been way too long, right? You, like, your carpet should be getting cleaned enough that you're not gonna notice any change in color. That discoloration, the longer it sits, the harder it's gonna be for us to get rid of those traffic lines. Now we have some phenomenal chemistries to really help us go after that and some, some, some really thought-out chemistries around, uh, being as, uh, as gentle on the carpet fibers as possible, but also as mean on the dirt as we can possibly be.

Sure.

Because you really want to release the dirt. But we also, at Chem-Dry, we care a great deal about the homeowner and, and the people who live in the space. And so our chemistries are really designed to be friendly and kind to the user, but But we also have aggressive stuff that we can pull out when we have to pull it out if there's some really bad traffic lines. But you also notice this on your stairs. If you look at your stairs and you have carpeted stairs, you'll see wear patterns, right? Because everybody tends to go up the middle, right? You go, oh, I'm starting to notice those. You know, it's too long. If you're starting to notice those things, you've gone too long. You need to call us.

Okay. So, okay, so you start seeing wear patterns, you start seeing discoloration.

Yeah.

And it's time to make sure they're clean.

Yeah, that— I, I would say it's— yeah, it's time. So, you know, ideally you'd be on a schedule so you don't ever hit that point, right? But if you see those, another piece is maybe odors. And usually you're not going to be the one to catch the odor because you live in it, right?

Correct.

Now, I have a teenage boy and To him, his room doesn't stink. But, you know, when I go in, I notice first thing. We have a lot of conversations about that. We clean his room a lot. And it's just the nature of being a teenage boy.

Totally. Totally.

It is what it is. So, um, if you have, if you have a guest come in, you know, and this could be a best friend, right? When your bestie's over, you could just say, hey, does the house smell okay?

Oh, great question. Great.

It's absolutely amazing what cleaning the filter, this giant filter in your home, the carpets and the upholstery. When we clean that and it just smells and feels so fresh. And if you would like, we can even add, you know, we can add fragrances if you want it to smell like citrus or lemon or whatever. Like, we can totally do that for you. We have one of our most popular fragrances the last few years is eucalyptus, right? It's very clean, fresh kind of scent.

Clean.

And it's part of our anti-allergen product called Fresh and Free, which is sort of a fun—

That makes sense.

fun kind of, uh, fun kind of smell to go with this sort of really rejuvenating treatment that we do, uh, to the homes. But, you know, so we can, we can make it smell like a Hawaiian breeze if you want, right? Like, like all those things.

That's great.

A lot of people, it's probably 20% of customers, they actually don't want a fragrance, right?

Right.

They just want it to have no scent, and that's okay too. We have that. So whatever works for you. But if, if your friend comes in and they're like, yeah, it's smelling a little Smell a little off, that's a good sign.

Yeah. So, so basically, this is hilarious. So traffic patterns, odors, um, discoloration, and then if your friends and family say anything. Brilliant. No, I will say this, and just for anyone who's listening, so I've— I get my carpets cleaned all the time because I'm really particular. Um, and not all my house is carpeted. Some of it's wood, some of it's carpeted, et cetera. But, um, I had a neighbor. I still have the same neighbor, so I don't know why I'm saying I had it. He, he came and went, came back. So he's a neighbor. He literally did. He bought his house, left, came back, and he kept it. And so he, um, he was deathly allergic to dogs.

Hmm. Deathly allergic.

And we threw this big giant party in the neighborhood and he shows up. And of course, I knew not everybody likes dogs, so I had my dog in the garage. I said, no, I'm sorry, you have to stay in the garage. And I know you're gonna be unhappy, but this is life. And for anyone out there who's so sad I had to do that, but she was a big giant German Shepherd.

Oh, beautiful.

And people are intimidated by those dogs.

Yeah.

So I wanted to respect everybody's wishes and she was fine and dandy. But he walked into my house and he had no idea I had a dog.

Oh, oh, good.

Because I clean my house regularly and because I clean my carpets. That's great.

And she—

a shepherd is a shedder. Yeah, totally are. They shed nonstop. So vacuum enough was not enough for us. You couldn't just vacuum and everything was going to be hunky-dory. You literally needed to keep your carpets clean in order to get rid of just Traditional dog smell, and it doesn't matter how much you bathe them, they're just going to be outside.

And there's oils on their skins.

Yes.

Right, that are just going to transfer over and they're going to get on your upholstery, they're going to get on your carpets. You're going to want all that stuff cleaned, you know, and, uh, you know, hot water cleaned. It's important though that, that it's being done with hot water. Avoid shampoos. You'll find with the do-it-yourself stuff they use a lot of shampoos which are loaded with surfactants. These are not good for— no, not good for you, not good for your, uh, for your fibers. So, you know, use a professional and ask them for, hey, can you help me get the safest stuff possible for me and my family? But here's what I need to solve. I gotta get— yeah, I have a dog. If another great way to like notice is go ahead and just, um, most, most people wear their shoes in their home, right?

Yes.

Consider becoming a shoeless house and have everybody take their shoes off right at the door. And, you know, at my house we have a little bin right at the back door, and you come in and you leave your shoes there. And but we are a sock house. So oftentimes you find shoeless homes are barefoot homes. Barefoot is actually harder on your, on your carpets and your upholstery.

Really?

Than socks. So, you know, if, if you don't wear socks, consider putting socks on around the house. It'll just help keep the oils that are on your skin through your feet from transferring over into the carpets, right? And so a sock house is the ideal preferred, you know, most healthy option for your home.

This is a great tip we're leaving people. Yeah, shoeless house, sock house.

If you put on white socks, walk around the house, and the bottom of your socks are dirty, probably time to get a cleaner.

Oh, another tip. That's awesome. That's fantastic. So shoeless house, sock house.

Sock house.

Sock house. We're gonna keep calling it that, the sock house.

Yeah. And I know you're gonna have vet guests and visitors and you sort of navigate through those things because, you know, you don't want to, um, be that person. But, but for average regular, you know, uh, you know, home rules, those are some good rules too.

Yeah, but we can pretend we're in a Japanese house.

Yeah, there we go.

There we go. Every time we're in a Japanese house, respect those guidelines. And I have friends who are a shoeless house.

I love it.

Even with guests and with events, they're like, uh-uh, at the door. And I'm like, so you don't have to worry about being that person. A lot of times people can't wait to get their shoes off.

There we go.

Um, so I understand you're nationwide in your company, and I'm gonna get ready to ask a question that's probably a little too broad. And you may have some answers for it, but a lot of people don't know what carpet cleaning costs. So obviously things vary depending on different locations in the country, different techniques that you're going to offer and how specialized the system. But can you give ideas to people what this would cost?

Yeah. So a couple of things as you're looking at the carpet cleaning, a couple of factors. One is, you know, how How big is the space, right? Because some franchisees— and we're a franchise organization, so in essence that means in your city someone has joined the Chem-Dry family. We cover 83% of the U.S. population. You know, we're, we're in most cities and towns across the United States, and we're actually in 29 different countries. So yeah, it's, it's a really great, uh, great organization and fun to be part of this network of expertise. And that really is where the foundation starts. Like, these franchisees come for a week-long training to learn all the science about, about carpet cleaning before they even get to start their business.

Great.

And then they have coaches and trainers that help them their first year. We have a 24/7 tech support line. So if they ever run into an issue, they call us at corporate and we can help. And, you know, we have just so much experience across our 500+ locations across the United States and Canada that You can't— you're in good hands when you contact a chem dry. So, you know, start with an expert, somebody who knows their stuff, um, and then they'll come in and over the phone they can give you an estimate for your town, right? They'll literally give you your local estimate. Um, uh, but yeah, oh, and it might be by square foot, so they want to know the square footage of the house or square footage of the rooms, or they might just price per room and say how many rooms are in your house, how many bedrooms, because—

Right.

common sizes of bedrooms and family rooms and whatnot. And they tend to know their communities quite well, so they'll help you get an exact price. Prices will range from somewhere around $80 per room is probably an average across the US. Some people are going to be higher, some people will be a little bit lower, or on a square footage basis, around $0.55 to $0.60 a square foot for a basic standard clean.

Okay.

Now, if you want to add on, You know, which is, I, I, if you're really after extending the life and value of your carpet, Totally. We actually can reapply the stain-fighting power that carpet came from the factory with. We can reapply that while we're there. And because we're using our hot extraction process, our hot carbonating extraction process, we actually help bond it better to the carpet than competitors do. There's some amazing science in how we in how we do this protection for carpet and upholstery. And then like anti-allergen products or—

Okay.

We get a lot of calls actually even from our competitors around specialty stain removal because the moment someone spills red wine or they maybe spill, you know, a chocolate fudge sundae, you know, or nail polish, right? Little kids and nail polish and it lands on the carpet, right?

Yeah.

Or I mentioned, you know, dogs and their pee, right? The moment it gets hard, I find most of the competitors, they, they're like, ah, we don't know how to do that. Just call Chem-Dry because we specialize in annual trainings with our franchisees. We do all these technical trainings. We have an online university, master technician program. So know you're going to be in good hands when you call us and we'll be really fair to you. We'll give you an estimate on the phone. And while we might not necessarily know how long it's going to take us to remove all that nail polish, like—

Totally.

One of my franchisees sent me a picture recently up in Boise, Idaho, of this little girl just covered in nail polish. She took the mom's, you know, case of 24, and every color was all around. And I think it took a good, what, about 6 hours to get—

Holy cow.

So it wasn't, it wasn't inexpensive to pay a professional to remove that much nail polish from the carpet, but it did save the carpet.

Totally, which is a bigger expense to replace it.

Much, much bigger. Much, much bigger. Yeah, so we, we're glad we saved the day. And you know, now what we didn't do is we didn't take care of the little girl's clothes or all the nail polish on her skin. Mom had to— mom had to be patient with that.

This is hilarious. No, I mean, first of all, you guys are CSI for the carpets, and I think this is hilarious. And then you're coming up against Little kids and pets who, who they can't hide from all their curiosity and how it all works. Oh, it's so funny. So Ed, this has been fantastic. I thank you so much for all these tips. It's been wonderful. How do people find you and or Chemdry so that they can figure out how to contact you guys?

Just so easy. Just chemdry.com. C-H-E-M-D-R-Y dot com. And 1-800-CHEM-DRY.

Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you again so much for being here. And for everyone out there who really never thought they needed their carpets cleaned, I promise you, it's one of the best things that will ever happen. It's wonderful.

Once you do it, you'll become a regular too. Correct. That's what I tell people. Once you've experienced it, you will totally become a regular. You'll love it.

You totally will. So I want to thank everyone for being here. If you find this valuable for anybody you know, please share it with them. We would love to have you back here, so please subscribe. Subscribe to Be a Smarter Homeowner Podcast, and you will be the smartest homeowner you can possibly be. So thank you, and come back and see us again. Have a great day.

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