Thank you for visiting Thunderbolt Carpet Cleaning of Atlanta. Please view our most frequently asked carpet cleaning questions. We are happy to answer questions prior to making an appointment for your service over the phone. Contact us today to speak with a carpet cleaning professional about your specific needs or give us a call today.

 

Answer: Atlanta weather usually plays no part in carpet dry times. Typically, it takes 2 to 8 hours. You can contribute to dry times by doing simplistic things. If it's cold outside, turn the furnace on and fans if you have them. If it's hot outside, open windows and let the air blow through. For more on carpet drying tips, simply talk to your technician.

 

Answer: Mostly all stains will come out. You of course may be dealing with a permanent stain. Permanent stains are just that- permanent. That being said, most grayish/blackish stains will come out. Unless carpet fibers are damaged, traffic lanes should come out. Any stain that involves a dye of some sort, will present problems., no matter what kind of carpet cleaning method you use. Furniture stains (wood stain), food coloring , nail polish, mustard, hair dye, some markers, dyes in some candle wax, etc, often can't be removed.

 

Answer: Those are called soil "filtration lines," which are created by soot from your furnace, and in some cases, candles. We here at Thunderbolt Carpet Cleaning see them in nearly every Atlanta home. It's possible to remove them temporarily, but as long as your furnace is running, you will always be dealing with soil filtration.

 

Answer: In most cases, our Thunderbolt Carpet cleaning technicians will arrive within an hour from the time scheduled. It is very ordinary for a client to add on work while the technician is there. We want to perform our carpet cleaning service with 100% above and beyond satisfaction so if this is the case on the job before yours, we will make sure to give you a courtesy phone call to inform you of the updated time status.

 

Answer: No. We pretty much just show up at the time originally scheduled.

 

Answer: No. Many common "off-the-shelf" cleaning agents have a high pH, which may negatively affect your carpet. If it's too strong, it can take the color out and/or leave a residue resulting in resoiling. Typically, you will want to rinse out any spot cleaner you apply to the carpet.

 

Answer: Yes. We have available Dupont Teflon™, which is a carpet/fabric protector designed to keep your carpet or upholstery clean longer. This adds life and protects from wear. This service is an additional charge. We can provide you a quote over the phone or while we are already at your home.

 

Answer: We move light furniture such as sofas, coffee tables, and chairs in larger rooms such as the living room, dining room, and family room. We do not typically move stereo equipment, big screen TVs, china hutches, pianos, and such larger, or more sensitive objects. In bedrooms, we typically do not move furniture at all (especially on our "whole house" promotions). If you want bedroom furniture moved, please let us know when you make the appointment so we can set extra time aside. It's important for us to stay on schedule. There is an additional charge for moving furniture that falls outside these parameters. If you have a whole house coupon that says, "exposed carpet in bedrooms only," this does not mean we only clean the carpets in the bedrooms. It means we don't move furniture in the bedrooms, but we move furniture in the other rooms, which we also clean as part of the deal.

 

Answer:  You can stay. You can leave. You can stay and then leave, or leave a key and show up later. We often go out the garage, hit the garage door button, and jump the laser beam. Just let us know what you want. You are not required to be there.

 

Answer: Yes. However, we recommend you avoid high traffic until the carpet is completely dry. Alot of traffic may prolong dry time. Use caution as wet feet may cause slipping and falling.

 

Answer: It's best to pre-vacuum general debris from the carpets. Our system will suck up the little stuff, but larger pieces get caught in our filters. If you've vacuumed within the last few days, you are OK. Remove any breakable objects from tight corners and tables near stairs. We move light furniture, but we let you handle small things like toys and clothes. It is helpful if you move any vehicles out of your garage before we get there that you may want to use since the garage is typically blocked once we get started.

 

Answer: It's common for carpets to loosen up over time. If you want them stretched down flat, we can refer you to someone that does excellent work.

 

Answer: Deodorizer can be applied to your carpet at an additional charge (it is not included as part of our promotions). After cleaning the carpet, we treat the carpet (hose it down actually) with a high pressure sprayer applying a deodorizer that works immediately. In a single room, we use gallons of this stuff. We then rake it into the carpet with a special carpet rake and steam it out with our wand leaving no residue. This essentially means we have actually cleaned your carpets twice. I discovered this product recently at a trade show at a Las Vegas convention. We are extremely happy with it. It is highly effective and different than enzyme deodorizers that are used by most carpet cleaners including ourselves previously. We killed a lot of smells with enzyme deodorizers over the years, but there were some downsides. First, the enzymes took time to kill the bacteria. We think the carpets dried too quick from time to time mitigating the full effect. Also, it was clearly leaving a residue in the carpet that seemed likely to attract dirt. This new product works right away and gets steamed out. It takes us more time, but is more thorough. If you have a smell in your carpets, you are going to want this.

However, please be aware of the following. We often run into situations where pets have had many accidents on the carpet. If the urine has soaked into the pad, the odor will be mitigated by our deodorizing efforts, but a total solution may involve replacing the pad beneath the carpet and painting the sheathing below that with Kill-Z™ to completely remove the odor (which we don't do). It may seem like simply deodorizing the carpet and replacing the pad would be enough to take care of an odor problem. However, we had a situation awhile back where we replaced the pad and the urine actually leached up from the floorboards into the new pad and back into the carpet. The spots and the smell came back about a week after the work. So, we definitely know that urine can work its way back up into carpets from both the pad and the floorboards.

 

Answer: The products we use to perform pet urine treatment contain a pet deterrent. However, each pet acts differently, so we cannot guarantee that your pet will stop marking that place we treated.

 

Answer: We have never charged extra for heavily soiled carpets. This raises curious questions. What is considered heavily soiled? Who decides what this is and when? When we show up, do we announce your carpets are heavily soiled and then demand an extra fee?

 

Answer: No. There is no travel charge. Travel is included in the service (unless you are outside our service area). However, our service area is quite extensive.

 

Answer: Whole houses take about 2 to 3 hours. 3 areas take 1 to 1.5 hours. But, we usually book out 3.5 hours for a whole house to factor in travel, which is a big chunk of the day to set aside and why we really, really, really need at least 24 hours notice for cancellations. As a practical matter, we have become pretty gracious about rescheduling on short notice. We don't charge a cancellation fee unless you don't call ahead and don't answer your door. But, it is extremely hard on employee morale when our technicians find themselves sitting in a Dairy Queen for 3.5 hours because a customer changed their mind at the last minute. Just saying.

 

Answer: As long as you give us 24 hours notice, it's no problem.

 

Answer: Modern carpet technology is basically water resistant, and the limited amount of water left in the carpet due to our high-powered suction leaves the carpets damp, causing no problem to the carpet.

 

Answer: Some cleaning agents cause re-soiling, some do not. We use a commercial cleaning agent specifically designed to prevent re-soiling. Some companies use cheaper cleaning agents or methods, which leave a dirt-attracting residue. Most dry cleaning methods and "encapsulation systems" are inferior, so their agents boost the cleaning agents to overcompensate. This can leave particles in your carpet that attract dirt.

 

Answer: Yes. However, the area rug cannot dry over the wet carpet. After cleaning the area rug must be taken to another area that is dry and clean.

 

Answer: There is a phenomena that occurs beneath area rugs that lay on installed carpet. At least three factors contribute. 1) The fibers of installed carpets are typically glued to the backing. The glues offgass and this causes a shift in the PH balance of the carpet, which over the course of 4 or 5 months often develops a yellow tinge in the carpet beneath the area rug. When this happens, it is usually irreversible. 2) The light usually comes in the windows and dulls the carpet surrounding the area rug. When the area rug is pulled back, you then have a nice bright rectangle where the area rug was (95% of the time). 3) Dyes from area rugs are often unstable and bleed into the carpet underneath, especially along the edge of the area rug. By and large, in my experience (and I have alot of experience), when you put an area rug on a carpet, it is a one way trip. After about 4 or 5 months, you are going to be committed. My recommendation is that if you want to spend some money and add color to the room, get some new custom drapes.

 

Answer: Although most stains that are removed from carpets do not reappear, from time to time we run into situations where spots have reappeared after the cleaning. There are 2 reasons why this could happen. 1) Something in the pad or the floorboard (usually pet urine) has worked its way back up into the carpet. This is more common than you might think. The pad works like a huge sponge absorbing anything that penetrates it. There is a property of physics that allows the salts in urine to seek airflow, which means the urine finds its way back into the carpet even when the substance is seemingly dry. 2) The second reason spots reappear has to do with PH levels. Sometimes the PH balance gets shifted to one side or the other of the pH scale. This could be because spot cleaning efforts previously upset the pH balance before we arrived, or rarely, our agent reacted with some invisible thing already there. If your situation is a PH issue, we are happy to make a no-charge visit to correct the problem, which usually involves spraying a neutralizer on the spot and brushing with a carpet rake.

 

Answer: We don't get call backs too often, but we are happy to come back out and address any situation that might arise. Please call us within a week of the original appointment.