Iranian Carpet cleaning

How a spill ends is usually decided on your own floor, in the ten minutes while you are still looking for a cloth. This page is about that part of it: what to do at home and what never to do, how sending a rug out actually works, and the two situations where the order you do things in matters more than which workshop you pick, water damage and moths.

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Verified says one thing only: a real person stands behind this profile and manages it themselves. YabInfy does not check anyone's certificates, licences, experience or competence, and the badge is not for sale.

The first ten minutes

The further the liquid gets into the pile and the foundation, the more it costs to put right. Take any solids off with the edge of a spoon or a card first, lifting rather than pressing them in.
- Press, do not rub. Lay a dry pale cotton cloth over the spill and push down with your palm, moving to a clean part of it as it takes up colour. Rubbing drives the spill to the base of the pile and dulls the wool on the surface.
- Work from the outside of the spill inwards, or a small circle becomes a wide ring.
- Cold or lukewarm water, never hot. Hot water sets protein stains on wool, milk, egg and blood among them, and encourages the dye to move.
- No household stain remover on a hand-knotted rug. Bleach, oxygen powders and supermarket carpet sprays are made for synthetic fibre and industrial dye. What you are risking is not the stain, it is the colour: dirty wool washes, but colour that has been stripped or has bled comes back only through expensive handwork.
- Phone the same day, not at the weekend. Pet urine, wine, oil and blood all get harder the longer they sit, and say exactly what went on the rug, because the substance decides the method.

The things people do themselves and then pay to have undone

• A steam cleaner or a domestic wash-and-vac on wool. These push hot water deep into the weave and take only part of it back. The rest sits in the foundation, on the side nobody looks at, and takes days to leave. That means odour and mildew, the heat felts the wool, and on a glued back it softens the adhesive.
• A damp rug that gets rolled up and left. In a warm room a few days is enough for it to sour and for mildew to mark a pale ground. Roll a rug only when it is bone dry, pile inwards, and never fold one, because a crease breaks the foundation.
• Rubber-backed matting, or anything sealed, underneath. Ordinary household moisture leaves through the underside unless rubber or plastic stops it, and underneath is where you never look. Open mesh underlay, and lifting the rug a few times a year, is the whole of the prevention.

Sending it out, or carrying it in

• If they collect. Ask whether it is their own van or a courier, because with a courier nobody is at the door to unroll the rug with you and write down what it is. Ask how far up the stairs they come, and whether transport is charged one way or two.
• If you take it in. It is usually cheaper and quicker, and you can point at what worries you on the bench. Roll it, never fold it. The city list at the foot of this page is the place to start.
• Plan for a bare floor. The work on the rug is a day or two, but controlled drying is counted in days rather than hours, and in the busy season there is a queue on top of that. Do not send a rug out the week before guests arrive, and ask for a date rather than a "roughly".

Look at it on the doorstep

Unroll it fully where it is handed back, and settle up after you have looked, not before.

• Size. Measure it against the figure on your receipt. A rug dried too fast or under tension can come back drawn in or out of square, and a wavy edge is the same fault showing itself. Raise it at handover, not a month later.
• Colour, at the edges and on the back. Look in daylight, where a dark colour meets a pale ground and along the fringes. A faint pink or brown halo means dye has travelled.
• Fringes and selvedge. They should still be there, not shortened or knotted up to hide a loss. Snow-white fringes on an otherwise old rug can mean bleach.

Water damage and a household claim: the order matters more than the speed

A burst pipe, an overflowing washing machine, water coming through from upstairs: each produces the same urge, to get the rug out, get it washed, or get it to the kerb. Any of the three can destroy the claim.

1. Photograph before you move anything. The rug where it lies, the water line on the wall, the source, and the back.
2. Tell the insurer before anything is cleaned or thrown out. A washed rug is a rug with the evidence taken off it, and a rug already at the kerb never existed. Call, and put it in writing the same day.
3. Ask whether you may start. Depending on the policy they may want a written estimate first, or want to send their own assessor.
4. Meanwhile, get the rug off the wet floor. Waiting for an insurer means delaying the wash, not leaving the rug in water. Tell the workshop whether it was clean supply water, heating water or waste water, because that decides the treatment.
5. Throw nothing away until the insurer says you may: not the rug, not the underlay, not the receipts.

What is covered, and whether a neighbour's liability insurer is involved, comes from your own policy and your own insurer, not from a workshop. Getting a value in writing belongs to the quiet time before any of this, and is set out on the carpets page.

Moths: by the time you can see a hole, it is late

• The first sign is not a hole. It is a patch where the pile is thinner and shorter than around it, usually near an edge, under a sofa, or under a bed where nobody walks.
• Look for the small things. Sandy grains the colour of the pile, fine silky threads or little tubes stuck to the back, very small pale larvae. Draw a hand against the pile, and if fibres come away easily you have found it.
• Summer is the season. The damage is done between spring and autumn, in the dark and in stillness, and a rug rolled up in a cellar is exactly those conditions for months.
• Wash before storing, not after. Moths eat wool, but what draws them in is what is left on it: food and drink, sweat, old marks. A rug put away dirty is a table laid for them, and washing it when it comes back out in the autumn is too late.
• Wrap it so it can breathe. Pile inwards, around a cardboard tube if you have one, because sealed plastic holds moisture in and gives you mildew instead of moths.

Get this onto paper before you let go of it

• A receipt that describes this rug. Someone should be able to tell it from another using that paper alone: the measured size, the design or dominant colour, what the pile is made of, and the damage on it today.
• Cover while it is with them. Ask what insurance the workshop carries on customers' goods, up to what value, and whether it runs during transport.
• The price basis and the date. By the square metre or a fixed sum, and whether transport, moth treatment and repair sit inside that figure. An estimate is not a final figure, and a serious overrun should be put to you before the work is done; a fixed price should say so on the paper.
• What happens if a repair turns out to be needed. Dirt hides small holes and old repairs, and things surface once a rug is clean that nobody could see at handover. That is normal rather than a trick. Agree now that they photograph it, quote it and touch nothing until you say yes, and that you can have it back untouched if the number is too high.
• YabInfy checks none of this, so ask for it yourself, and ask to see the document where it matters.

Choosing someone from this list

Read the reviews for what a customer actually saw: whether the rug came back dry and without a smell, whether the risk to the colours was raised before the wash or after it, and whether the phone got answered while the rug was away. Nothing leaves this side about you, not which profile you opened and not whose number you asked for. One thing does become public from your side: the review you write, under a name you choose, readable by everyone. Numbers and addresses sit behind "Show contact details", and nobody stands between you and the workshop.

If what you want is to buy or sell rather than to clean, that is carpet shops. How this directory itself works is answered in the FAQ, and if you run a cleaning workshop, add your business.