You've seen the rental machines lined up by the door at the big-box hardware store. For about the price of a pizza night you can take one home for the day, and that's tempting when the carpet keeps looking gray no matter how often you vacuum.
We clean carpet for a living, so you can guess our bias. Renting still makes sense for some jobs, and we'll say which ones.
What renting gets you
Rental machines run about $30 to $50 a day at home improvement stores, plus the shampoo, which is sold separately and adds up faster than you'd think. They're stronger than a household vacuum and will pull out more dirt than vacuuming alone.
The DIY sequence goes like this:
- Vacuum thoroughly first.
- Pre-treat stains with a spot cleaner.
- Run the shampoo through the machine evenly and give it the dwell time on the bottle.
- Extract as much water as you can, then go over it again with a wet/dry vac.
- Keep everyone off it until it's completely dry.
Before you start, read the machine's instructions, check the cord for damage, and make sure the solution is rated for your fiber. Wool and a bottle of generic carpet shampoo don't get along.
It's cheap up front and fine for a quick refresh in a spare room. The catch is everything else. It eats a Saturday, because moving furniture, filling and dumping tanks, and hauling the thing up the stairs is real work. Deep stains and pet odor usually survive. And the two problems we see most afterward both come from inexperience with the machine. Over-wetting soaks the pad, and in Columbia humidity that turns into a musty smell three or four days later. Leftover shampoo leaves the carpet sticky, so it looks dirty again within a couple of weeks and people assume they need to rent the machine again.
What a professional clean gets you
A professional visit costs more on the day and far less in effort. You don't move anything heavy or dump a single tank. Good equipment pulls out the dirt and allergens that rental units leave behind, including the dust and bacteria that sit lower in the fibers, which matters if anyone in the house has allergies. Grit is what cuts carpet fibers, so getting it out on a schedule also stretches the life of the carpet.
Industry pricing generally lands around 20 to 35 cents a square foot, depending on the size of the job and any extra treatments. Our standing offer, three rooms up to 300 square feet for $88, sits right inside that range.
Most companies use hot water extraction (what people call steam cleaning), a shampoo that works detergent into heavy soil, or spot treatment of individual stains. We do something different: a carbonated solution with no soap in it, so nothing is left behind to attract dirt, and so little water that most carpet feels dry to the touch in an hour or so. Your pad never gets soaked.
Picking a company if you go pro
Ask what products they use and if they're safe for toddlers and the cat. If someone in the house gets sick often, ask about an antibacterial sanitizer treatment. Get a price up front and ask about fees that aren't in the ad. Read reviews from actual customers, and pay attention to the ones that mention what happened when something went wrong. Any company worth hiring stands behind the work; our guarantee is simple, 100 percent satisfied or it's free.
So which is right for you? One spare bedroom, a free weekend, and light soil: rent. Pet odor, old stains, gray traffic lanes, or a Saturday you'd like to keep: that's us, at 803-310-3848. Our carpet cleaning page lists what a visit includes.