Winter’s Mess: Removing Salt Residue from Carpets

HOW TO REMOVE SALT STAINS OUT OF YOUR CARPETS

If you live in a cold climate, you’ll very likely see white stains on your customers’ house, business or car carpeting from road salt.  Fortunately it’s quite easy, if a little repetitive, to get the stains out. See Steps below to get started desalting your customer’s carpet. Please follow next steps (Oh yes… and don’t forget to charge extra per Sq Ft for this service)

 1) In a spray bottle, mix up a solution of 1/2 warm water and 1/2 white vinegar. Vinegar is a natural cleaning agent that, while it certainly doesn’t smell good, sure is powerful. Depending how big is the area you are going to clean, mix it up in a spray bottle or your pump sprayer. There’s also carpet shampoos and salt cleaners, but if you had those, you probably wouldn’t be on this page

2) Spray the stained area with the vinegar/water solution, saturating it. Wait about 10 Minutes. Use a scrubbing brush at this point if you’d like. You want to do it delicately, however; the aim is to stir up the salt, not to dig it in deeper. Just lightly scrub the carpet, stirring the stain to the surface.

3) Press a dry, clean towel over the wet area. Dab the area gently — again, not forcing the stain down, but absorbing what’s come to the top. For Larger areas, use your carpet cleaning extractor or a wet/Dry Vacuum instead. If using towel, remove the towel when it’s soaked. If it’s soaked and there’s still liquid left, grab another towel and repeat.

• Again, Instead of a towel, this step can be done with a wet/dry vacuum or with your carpet cleaning Extractor. pull out your machine, and start sucking up the salt stain. 
• If the stain looms, repeat the process a few times. Salt can be stubborn, but it’s definitely removable. If vinegar doesn’t work (with a few applications, it should though), look into a product that is specifically designed for road salt removal.

5) Watch out for the smell! The last thing you want is the carpet to smell like vinegar. Note that the smell will disappear within a few hours. However, you can apply the DryMaster Fresh deodorizer on the carpet and the vinegar smell will be gone instantly!