- My name is Samad.
I run C3 Laundry Services.
We're a cleaning service in Ghana, Accra.
I have been doing this for
close to nine years now.
Today, I'll be showing you
how to clean a Persian rug.
This rug has never been cleaned before.
The rug is located in their dining area.
It had multiple stains on it,
food stains, coffee spillage, drinks, soda,
everything you could mention.
It has about 20 years of dirt sitting in it.
So, first of all,
you give it a good rinse in the beginning.
The water is always cold.
If you use hot water,
it may shrink the fabric or destroy the fabric.
You only use hot water in some cases
where you're treating a particular stain.
There's shampoo in the watering can.
You can't use just any soap for cleaning rugs.
It's a mixture of shampoo, the stain removers,
and then water.
So usually when you apply the shampoo,
you allow it to sit
for about five to ten minutes.
Then you know it's gone really deep
into the fibers.
The Persian rug is usually made of,
I believe it's silk.
So this rug, I'm not sure of the exact cost,
but it should cost between $800 to $1,000.
So, after putting the shampoo,
then you scrub with a scrubber,
or a buffer, some people call it a buffer
but I call it a scrubber.
So the buffer basically agitates the dirt,
and it helps get all the dirt out of the rug.
So I scrub all around the rug,
scrub, scrub, give it a good old scrub,
to get most of the dirt out.
There's a brush.
So, there are two types of brush,
the hard brush and then the soft brush.
So, the type of rug will determine
which brush you use.
For this one, we use the hard brush.
Some rugs are handmade.
You can't use the hard brush.
You're going to destroy the fabric of the rug,
but with this type, it can handle the hard brush.
It's not handmade.
Some parts are handmade, like the fringe parts.
You have to scrape the water off
to get the first scrubbing session
of the dirt out.
So, I use a squeegee, or should I say a scraper,
a shovel scraper I got someone
to make for me over here.
If you pay attention to my type of scraper,
you see how it gathers most of the dirt
and pushes all the water away.
So, the pressure washer
helps loosen more dirt in the rug.
Pressure-washing the rug alone
cannot get all the dirt out.
You need the shampoo to help do its magic.
It's not a one-procedure thing.
So I give it a good old rinse with a squeegee.
Then we flip it to the back.
It's important to clean the work area,
so that dirt doesn't come back into the rug.
Then you can continue with working.
The back side will also require
putting shampoo on it.
It's the same procedure,
just that procedure doesn't take as long
as the top side,
because usually the dirt is trapped
more on the top side than the back side.
When you clean the back, some of the dirt
somehow goes back to the top part,
so you have to flip it up
and redo the whole process again.
Scrub, scrub, scrub.
Eventually you realize the water becomes clear,
so once it gets clear,
you know your rug is clean now.
Persian rugs are not too delicate, if I may say.
There are different types of Persian rugs.
Some require very close attention to cleaning,
but some will require the normal cleaning procedure.
This one needed extra care,
because of the fringes especially.
If you're not careful,
the fringes are just going to come out.
So you manually have to apply the shampoo
with the chemicals onto the fringes,
then you manually scrub.
I can use any brush to clean the fringes,
any hard brush.
It has to be a hard brush,
cause you're dealing with years of dirt.
You need a hard brush
to be able to scrub all that dirt out.
Then I use the power washer
to blow the dirt out of it.
So, I am using the wet vacuum
to vacuum most of the water out of the rug.
I repeat the process like twice,
I am able to get at least 80-90% of the water
out of the rug before I leave it out to dry.
I see some people use the centrifuge machine,
where it spins all the water out.
I believe those who use that machine
don't have very good weather over there.
In my country, the sun is always out,
so it helps dry the rugs quickly.
It came out great.
The client was very satisfied.
The original colors were restored as well.
I had no idea how the original colors
looked like. You're unable to tell
how it originally looks like
until you're done cleaning.
It's usually dirt sitting in there for years
that makes it heavily soiled.
It's best to have a vacuum in your household,
where once in a while,
you vacuum all the dirt out of your rug.
A rug like this can be cleaned every half a year.