What should I ask a carpet cleaner before booking?

How do you tell one carpet cleaner from another?

Nobody expects you to know this trade. But you can ask five questions, and the answers will tell you almost everything.

This page is the take-away from every myth on this site, in one place. Screenshot it. Use it on three quotes. Use it on us — that’s what it’s for. A cleaner who enjoys these questions is a cleaner who has thought about the answers.

Each one links to the article that explains why it matters.

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The five that matter most

1. What pressure do you run on carpet? 2. Where is your temperature measured — at the machine or at the wand? 3. Where will you park, and how much hose will you run? 4. Do you pre-spray, and how long does it dwell? 5. How many dry passes do you finish with?

If you only ask five, ask those. Everything below is detail.

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On pressure

Ask	A good answer sounds like
What pressure do you run on carpet?	A range, not one number — and a ceiling. Around 200–300 for most carpet, never past 500
Can your machine adjust pressure?	Yes, and they can tell you what they’d change it to
What would you use on wool versus a synthetic loop?	Not the same number. If it is, they don’t adjust
What happens if the carpet delaminates?	A straight answer, not a silence

Why it matters: past the point the fibre needs, extra pressure stops lifting water out and starts pushing it into the backing — which is slow drying, returning stains and delamination. A four-figure PSI number is a hard-floor figure. → Does a higher PSI truck mount clean better?

On heat

Ask	A good answer sounds like
Where is that temperature measured?	“At the machine” — the only place it can honestly be stated
Does the heat hold on a big job?	They know whether their heat is engine-recovered or separately fired
What temperature would you use on wool?	Much lower — industry practice puts wool well below synthetics, because heat strips its natural lanolin and can shrink it
What about olefin?	Lower again — it softens and mats at a surprisingly low temperature

Why it matters: water sheds heat all the way down the hose, so a precise temperature quoted at the carpet is describing something that changes minute by minute. And there is no single correct temperature — anyone quoting one number for every carpet is telling you they don’t change it. → Are all truck mounts the same?

On vacuum and hose

Ask	A good answer sounds like
Where will you park, and how much hose?	Shorter is better. 10–30 m is ideal
If it won’t reach, do you add hose or move the van?	Move the van. Adding hose is the convenient answer
Does the extra distance change your dry-time promise?	An honest yes
Is your vacuum set up for lift or airflow?	You’re finding out whether they know there are two

Why it matters: vacuum is what takes the water back out, and it falls away sharply with every extra metre of hose. How much water is left when they leave is your dry time. And nothing about a long run looks any different while it’s happening. → Vacuum: the number nobody talks about · Why long hose runs leave your carpet wetter

On chemistry

Ask	A good answer sounds like
Do you pre-spray, and how long does it dwell?	Ten minutes. That’s the number
How do you agitate it in?	A groomer, a brush, a rake — something
Is your chemistry in the tank, sprayed on, or both?	Sprayed on. In-tank alone barely beats plain water
Do you dry vacuum before wetting anything?	Yes — three quarters of the soil comes out dry

Why it matters: laboratory testing for the Carpet and Rug Institute found detergent used only in the machine’s tank cleans 4.6% better than plain hot water. Sprayed on first and given time, the same chemistry cleans 3.54 times better. → Pre-spray vs in-tank: what actually cleans your carpet

On what they leave behind

You will read that soap is bad for carpet. That is half true, and the honest half is the part nobody explains.

It is not soap. It is soap that was never rinsed out. Detergent left in the pile stays sticky, and sticky pulls dirt straight back — which is why a cheap clean can look brilliant on the day and grubby again within weeks. Rinsed properly and pulled back out, it is not a problem.

So the question was never whether chemistry went in. It is whether it came back out.

That one sentence sorts the whole market, and it does not require anyone to be the villain.

Which method, and what your warranty requires

There are five carpet cleaning methods, and every company uses one of them. Three of the five have no extraction step at all — they put a cleaning agent into the pile and rely on vacuuming to get it back out later.

That matters for two reasons. The industry standard splits the methods into interim work, which holds a carpet’s appearance between deep cleans, and restorative work, which resets it. And Shaw, Mohawk and Beaulieu all name hot-water extraction in the conditions that keep a carpet warranty valid.

A wipe is not a wash. Both have their place, but only one of them is a wash.

📊 The full comparison, with the standard, the warranty conditions and what each method is genuinely best at: carpet cleaning methods compared.

Five questions that get you a straight answer

1. You say no soap. Does that mean no chemicals at all? 2. You say no harsh chemicals — who decides what counts as harsh, and harsh for whom? 3. If there is no rinse-and-extract step, where does the product go when you are finished? 4. Can I see the water you took out of my carpet? 5. Is this an interim clean or a restorative one — and what does my warranty require?

On (1): nothing is chemical-free. Water is a chemical. Baking soda is a chemical. So is our pre-spray. Anyone who tells you their product contains no chemistry is either confused or hoping you are.

On (2): harsh for a healthy adult, or harsh for a crawling baby and someone with asthma? Ask whether that is an independent standard or their own judgement. Both are acceptable answers. Only one of them is usually given.

On (4) — and this is the one that cannot be talked around. A proper extraction fills a recovery tank with visibly filthy water, every single job. Ask to look at it. A method with no extraction step has no tank to show you, and that is not an accusation — it is just how the method works.

The part most cleaners will not print

If you are only price-hunting a cheap steam clean, you can absolutely get burned — and we would rather say so. There is no licence, no qualification and no experience required to start a carpet cleaning business in New Zealand. Anyone can buy a portable machine on Saturday and quote your lounge on Monday.

Done badly, hot-water extraction leaves your carpet wetter for longer and no cleaner than when it started. That is a real risk, and it is the honest reason the cheapest quote is often the expensive one. The method is not the whole answer. The person holding the wand is the rest of it.

On the promises

Ask	A good answer sounds like
What dry time are you quoting, and what happens if it’s wrong?	A number and a remedy
If a mark wicks back, what then?	This one tells you the most about the person
What’s included, and what’s extra?	Said before the job, not after
Are you insured?	Yes, and they can show you

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The answer that should worry you

There’s one response that sounds like confidence and isn’t.

“Yes, that’ll come out.” Said about a stain nobody has treated yet, on a carpet nobody has tested, before any product has touched it.

Nobody can know that. Not from the doorway, not from a photo, not with thirty years of experience. A stain is a chemistry problem you can’t see the inside of — what it is, how long it sat, what’s already been tried on it, whether it reached the backing. Treatment is what reveals the answer, and it reveals it while you’re doing it.

So a cleaner who promises the result in advance is doing one of two things. Either they don’t know that, or they do and they’re telling you what closes the job.

The answer that should reassure you is the more careful one: “That one I’d expect to lift. That one I’d want to test first. And that one I’d tell you now is probably permanent — I’ll try, but don’t pay me expecting a miracle.”

That’s not hedging. That’s the only honest version of the answer, and the person giving it is the one who has been wrong before and remembers it.

What a good answer really sounds like

None of these have a single right answer, and a cleaner giving you a confident number for every one of them isn’t necessarily the best cleaner — they might just be the most rehearsed.

What you’re actually listening for is whether they change their answer depending on the carpet. Wool is not olefin. A 30 m² lounge is not a 400 m² office. Somebody who runs the same pressure, the same heat and the same technique on all of it has stopped making decisions.

The best answer to most of these questions starts with “it depends” — and then explains what it depends on.

How we answer them

200–300 PSI on carpet for most work, matched to the fibre, and never past 500. Temperature quoted at the machine, because that’s where it can honestly be measured, and dialled to the fibre in front of us. Hose runs of 10–30 metres, and we move the van rather than pull more off the reel. Dry vacuum first, pre-spray with real dwell time, and slow dry passes at the end.

And if a mark comes back, we want to know.