Dust Prevention

Preventing soil from entering a building in the first place means carpet cleaning can be less frequent, thereby reducing the amounts of chemicals used.

Large, frequently cleaned walk-on mats should be placed at each high-traffic building entrance. These mats should be large enough to capture several footsteps. Experiment with different sizes and textures to see what works best at each doorway. Every few days these mats will become “full” of soil. Therefore, it’s important to vacuum all doorway mats frequently so that they will continue to capture soil before it is carried into the building.

Some modern buildings are totally enclosed. If possible, the heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system in such a building should be operated so that the air pressure just inside each doorway is higher than that of the natural air outdoors. Doing so will push airborne dust back outside.

Vacuuming

Daily vacuuming with strong suction, tight filter, rotating brush machines removes up to half or more of the soil that falls onto carpets. How much effort does it take to attain this level of cleaning? Routine vacuuming, with up to four back and forth strokes of the wand across the carpet, is sufficient for low traffic areas. Up to ten wand strokes may be needed at outside doorways and other high traffic areas. Supplemental vacuuming will be needed along walls and carpet edges where soil tends to accumulate.

Other Prevention Techniques

Some building managers prohibit colored soft drinks, coffee, and other items that will easily stain carpets. Such a tight policy makeS building occupants unhappy at best. A compromise is to either to have hard floors instead of carpets in food service rooms, or to place sacrificial carpet mats in those areas.

It helps to think of carpets as large, flat air filters. Most light particles and airborne soil will eventually end up attaching to carpets. Unless something is done, significant amounts of carpet soil will come from kitchen fumes and other forms of building use. Properly maintained vents that exhaust outdoors can capture most materials that will otherwise fall out onto the carpets.