So you’re planning to have your carpets cleaned, but you still need to organise your life around your space. We get it.
Carpeted areas are often frequently used spaces and need to be returned to a usable condition as soon as possible.
Knowing how long carpets take to dry after carpet cleaning is very handy to know.
It sounds like a simple question, the answer varies because there are many things which affect the dry time.
We generally advise that on average, carpets take about 3-4 hours to dry after being cleaned. However, there are a number of things which can affect the timeframe.
WHAT AFFECTS CARPET CLEANING DRY TIME?
Fibre Absorbency
Some carpet fibres simply absorb more moisture than others and may take longer to dry. Did you know that wool fibres can absorb around 30% moisture without even feeling wet?
Ventilation
The better ventilated the area, the faster the carpet will dry.
Temperature
We don’t get many cold days in Townsville, but on a cold day, your carpets will take longer to dry.
Soiling Conditions
Were the carpets heavily soiled? If so they may have needed extra flushing out and may take longer to dry.
Cleaning Product and Technique
Depending on what conditions we are working with, we will select a product and a technique, even a different machine, to produce the best results for your particular carpet. Some of these allow carpet to dry faster than others.
6 PRO HACKS TO SPEED UP DRY TIME AFTER CARPET CLEANING
If it’s really important to get your area back in action ASAP, we have some special tricks up our sleeve that can help.
Surfactant Rinse
Everyone loves a good magic trick and this one is just great!
We can use a specialised rinse with a surfactant after cleaning. What this does essentially is it takes droplet formations of moisture and spreads them out. The extra surface area enables faster evaporation!
Lower water pressure
Did you know that we select the water pressure we use in your carpet cleaning after taking into account a number of different factors?
If drying time is of paramount importance, we can use lower water pressure than we ordinarily would.
This helps prevent moisture penetrating further into the carpet and backing and therefore will reduce the dry time. However, this may also affect the cleaning outcome though, and the carpet may not be cleaned quite as well as if higher water pressure was used. Therefore, this would only be considered if a rapid dry time was essential.
Warm a cold room
If your cleaning is done on a cold day, and you’re able to warm the air in the room, it will help the carpet to dry faster.
Extra Passes
When performing water extraction, we can repeat the process, and go over your area multiple times to draw out extra moisture.
Zipper
This guy is the Ben Hur of carpet cleaning wands. Imported from the USA and touted as ‘The World’s Best Commercial Carpet Cleaning Wand’, there is a lot of hype about the Zipper, and it is all deserved.
Although it’s not suited for everyday use, it’s an important tool in our arsenal. It can draw moisture out of carpet so efficiently that carpets dry about 35% faster.
Pro Tip
No matter what you try, you can’t beat science altogether.
If your carpets aren’t completely dry but you need to return furniture to the area, we have a hack for you.
We use furniture blocks, but as you likely won’t have them on hand, our pro hack is… Al-foil!
Place small squares of al-foil between the carpet and the foot of your furniture to prevent moisture transfer from the carpet up into your furniture. Super important for furniture with wooden feet.
