Our method
How we clean, step by step.
Every job runs the same seven steps, in the same order, on every carpet — matched to your fibre, never a default setting. What your care level changes is how far each step goes, not whether it happens: a Light clean still gets the vacuum, the pre-spray and the dwell time, it just gets them where they earn their keep. Here's exactly what happens between the van pulling up and your rooms walking dry.
The 7-step thermal wash process
Methodical soil extraction.
We don't just wet and vacuum your carpet — every clean runs the same seven steps, in the same order, on every job. What your care level changes is how far each step goes, not whether it happens.
Fibre & dye inspection
Match the clean to the carpet, not a default setting
Every job starts hands-on. We identify the fibre — wool, synthetic or a blend — and check dye stability and backing before anything touches the pile, so heat and solution are matched to your carpet exactly.
Avoids fibre damage, colour bleed and shrinkage. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Dry particulate vacuum
Grit and dry soils out before any moisture
Wet carpet turns dry sand into mud. We prep every room properly and pull deep sand, grit and dry soil from the base of the pile before any moisture goes near it.
Stops abrasive grit grinding at the fibre base. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Spot treatment
The marks that need their own answer, before the whole floor gets wet
Spots get read and treated individually before anything goes down over the top of them — a general pre-spray is built to lift soil off the whole floor, not to solve a specific mark, and once the pile is wet a spot is harder to work on. On a Regular clean a light spot treatment is included free. On Premier they get the full, deliberate go at them.
Marks treated on their own terms, not just rinsed over. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Biodegradable pre-spray
Break the grease bond, float the soil
A biodegradable formula goes down to break the bond between greasy soils and the fibre — the sticky film that makes carpets re-soil in weeks — and floats it ready for extraction. Then it has to sit: 10 to 30 minutes, depending on how soiled the carpet is. That wait is the step nobody sees and the first one dropped on an overbooked day.
Dissolves the greasy film ordinary steam misses. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Counter-rotating brush
Reach the compacted traffic lanes
A counter-rotating brush works the pre-spray down through the pile, so compacted, matted traffic lanes get the same coverage as the untouched edges — no patchy result. On a Regular clean it goes twice through the traffic lanes; on a Premier it's worked in two directions. A Light clean doesn't take the brush at all — that's the honest difference between the levels.
Lifts flattened traffic lanes back to an even pile. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
120°C thermal flush
Steam you can see at the wand, moisture straight to the van
The van-mounted LPG hybrid system flushes the pile with high-heat hot water — up to 120°C at the machine, dialled to the fibre — and pulls the moisture straight back to the van — embedded soils, allergens and odours out in one pass, finished with a low-pH conditioning rinse and a light natural essential-oil scent that deodorises and sanitises as it settles.
No soap residue, no re-soiling — and a fast dry. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Groom & rapid dry
Reset the pile, get the airflow moving
We groom the pile to reset its direction and get airflow moving through the room. With decent airflow you're walking on it in 2–4 hours — or add assisted drying and it's done by dinner.
Walk-on dry in 2–4 hours with decent airflow. Kid-safe and pet-safe formulas, always.
Reading a quote
Two numbers everyone quotes. Neither means what it looks like.
Heat and pressure get printed on every carpet cleaner's page, ours included. Both are worth understanding before you compare quotes — and there's a third number nobody prints that matters more than either.
Heat — and where it's actually measured
Water is heated at the machine. Ours reaches 120°C there. Then it has to travel to your carpet, and it sheds heat the whole way — further on a long hose run, further on a cold morning, further if the machine can't hold its temperature while the water keeps flowing. Stop to move a sofa and the water standing in the hose cools down, so the next pass starts cooler than the last one ended.
That's why we quote our temperature at the machine and tell you that's where it's measured. It's the one point where the number is a fact. A precise temperature quoted at the carpet is describing something that changes minute by minute.
Why ours doesn't sag halfway through your lounge
Most vans take their heat as a by-product of the engine that's also driving the vacuum and the pump — three jobs drawing on one power source, competing with each other, which is why those systems need layers of control and settle at a safe lower setting.
Ours is a separate LPG-fired heater — a Little Giant, from the company that patented the first instantaneous gas water heater back in 1921. Heat isn't fighting the vacuum for power, so it doesn't fade when the trigger stays down. In practice we run it at about half. Any more and the hose would mark your carpet. The capability is deliberately more than a carpet ever needs — the skill is dialling it back.
Pressure — more is not deeper
Carpet is cleaned somewhere between 200 and 500 PSI — the conservative residential figure is 200–300, typical wand work sits at 400–500, and it depends on the fibre and the soil. There is rarely a reason to go past 500 on any fabric. Push harder and you drive water into the backing instead of lifting it out. That's how carpet delaminates, that's how a stain wicks back to the surface two days later, and it's why an over-pressured carpet is still damp the next morning.
Machines advertising 1,000 PSI and up aren't wrong — that's a tile and grout figure, and hard floors genuinely want it. We don't do tile. We do carpet, and carpet wants control.
Vacuum — the number nobody quotes, and the one that sets your dry time
Suction falls away sharply with every extra metre of hose, and it's the biggest loss on any job. It's also invisible: a long run doesn't look any different to you. So we park close and run short — 10 to 30 metres wherever we can, 50 at the absolute limit.
That isn't for our convenience. Vacuum is what pulls the water back out of your carpet, and how much water is left behind when we leave is your dry time. It's the whole reason we can say walk-on dry in 2–4 hours.
A spec sheet lists what a machine can peak at. A carpet is cleaned with settings — and by how much water comes back out.