Commercial Carpet Cleaning in Mesa, AZ, From Daily Vacuuming to Extraction

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A carpet in a busy building does not wear out evenly, and it does not get dirty all at once. It loses ground a little every day, in the same few places, until one morning the front of the building looks tired. Commercial carpet cleaning in Mesa, AZ works best when it is planned against that slow loss instead of called in after it. As It Should Be Cleaning LLC is based in Mesa and has worked in the Valley of the Sun since 1988. Our business card calls this part of our work customized carpet care, and we run a carpet cleaning van for it.

This page is only about carpet: the levels of carpet care, how often each one is due, what to do about a spill before we arrive, carpet tile against broadloom, and how a deep clean is fitted around the hours your doors are open. The rest of what we do in our home city is on our page about commercial cleaning services in Mesa, AZ.

Cleaning a carpet and maintaining one are different jobs

The Carpet and Rug Institute, the trade association of carpet manufacturers, puts the difference plainly in its commercial standard, CRI 204. Cleaning is the removal of unwanted matter, and many people think of it as something done when needed. Soiling, though, builds up, and the longer it builds the harder it is to remove and the more it changes the fibers. Maintenance is the planned, ongoing removal of soil so that the carpet looks right every day, not only on the day after a cleaning.

The same standard gives the reason vacuuming sits at the bottom of every plan: 79 percent or more of the soil in carpet can be removed dry, by vacuuming. Dry soil is also what does the damage. It is gritty, it scratches the fibers as people walk on it, and those scratched fibers are what make the grey traffic lanes in a corridor. Grit that is vacuumed out tonight is grit that is not grinding the pile tomorrow.

The three levels of carpet care

CRI 204 says every maintenance program should have three levels of cleaning: routine, interim and deep. They do different work, and none of them replaces another.

Routine: vacuuming and prompt spotting

Routine care is done daily, weekly or more often, and it is mostly vacuuming. The standard does not treat every room alike. Entry foyers catch whatever soil the mats did not hold, so they are vacuumed more often. Lobbies and reception areas should be done daily or more. Elevator cabs, restroom entryways and carpet next to food service are what it calls high-traffic, frequent-pivot areas: places where people stop and turn, twisting grit into the pile, and they too are done daily or more. Private offices, meeting rooms and boardrooms can go to two or three times a week. We vacuum with HEPA vacuums, whose filters are made to hold the fine dust a desert city tracks in.

Interim: appearance cleaning between deep cleans

Interim cleaning is the step many buildings skip. CRI 204 describes it as cleaning for appearance that can put off or limit the need for deep cleaning. It uses low-moisture methods, is meant to cover a lot of floor quickly and lets the carpet go back into use soon after. It can be done over every carpeted area or only over the soil-prone ones, such as an entry, a main corridor or the carpet around a coffee station. The standard adds that the carpet’s manufacturer should be asked for its own recommendations, which is one reason we ask who made your carpet when we walk the building.

Deep cleaning by extraction

Deep cleaning removes the soil and old cleaning residue that vacuuming and interim work leave behind. CRI 204 sets out the order: vacuum first, mix the solution as directed, apply a pre-spray, agitate it into the fibers, let it dwell, extract, and let the carpet dry. In hot water extraction, a solution is sent into the pile and pulled back out with a strong wet vacuum, carrying the loosened soil with it. Heat helps the solution work, which is why the standard lists elevated temperature among the things that suspend soil. CRI also notes that in its Seal of Approval testing, water extraction systems generally ranked highest. And it makes one point every building manager should hear: deep cleaning should be done before the soil in the carpet is easy to see.

The IICRC, the standards body of the cleaning and restoration trade, publishes the procedure standard for this work, ANSI/IICRC S100, the Standard for Professional Cleaning of Textile Floor Coverings. Its seventh edition, from 2021, covers commercial and residential carpet and rugs, and among its topics are soil management, methods and systems of cleaning, pre-cleaning and post-cleaning inspections, and spot and stain removal. A fair question to put to any carpet cleaner is how the method they plan to use lines up with it.

How often each level is due, by traffic

CRI 204 gives a schedule by how hard a carpet is used. The table below follows it. Vacuuming of entrances and traffic areas is daily at every level, and spills are dealt with daily or as they happen, so the columns that change are the ones that cost the most planning.

Traffic	Vacuuming of other floors	Interim cleaning	Deep cleaning
Moderate	Two or three times a week	Once or twice a year, and soil-prone areas as needed	Once or twice a year, and monthly in soil-prone areas
Heavy	Daily	6 to 12 times a year, and soil-prone areas as needed	2 to 6 times a year, and every two weeks in soil-prone areas
Severe	Daily, with traffic areas twice a day	12 to 52 times a year, soil-prone areas above all	2 to 26 times a year, and weekly in soil-prone areas

Most buildings hold more than one of those rows. A small professional suite may be moderate everywhere except the six feet inside its door. A school hallway or the sales floor of a store can run heavy all year. The lobby of a building that opens onto a large parking lot may be severe at the front and moderate on the floors above. A carpet plan that puts the whole building on one row either wastes money on the quiet rooms or lets the busy ones go.

Where carpet gives way first

Some wear points are easy to predict once you know what CRI 204 says about them. Corridor soil does not stay in the corridor: if it is not vacuumed out, it spreads into the offices and conference rooms beside it. The space under a desk looks like a quiet area, but chair casters concentrate wear there, and the standard recommends a chair mat. It also recommends protective mats at coffee and food stations, water coolers, printers, elevators, service entrances and the tops and bottoms of stairs, wherever moisture and dirt arrive in one spot. Colour matters too: a light carpet needs more care in heavy traffic than a dark one.

One warning in the standard is worth passing on to whoever manages your property. Oily material tracked in from newly paved or newly sealed asphalt can yellow carpet over time, and once it has set into the fiber it is very hard to remove. If your parking lot is about to be resealed, tell us. That is a week to keep the entrance carpet vacuumed hard and the mats clean.

Desert grit and monsoon moisture

In the Valley, the soil walking in on shoes is mostly fine, sharp desert grit, and the standard describes what granular soil does: it dulls the carpet over time by abrading the surface of the fibers, so they reflect less light. The cure it gives is frequent vacuuming. For a Mesa building that means the vacuuming schedule near the doors matters more than the color of the cleaning solution.

CRI 204 also separates two kinds of mat. Outside the door, coarse mats that brush soil off shoes and hold a lot of it. Inside, absorbent mats that keep tracked-in moisture off the carpet. Most of the year the outside mat does most of the work here. During the monsoon, when rain can follow dust, the inside mat earns its place. We have also been called in for emergency cleanup after a dust storm, and on one of those jobs the client was still able to open for business that day.

Spots and spills: the minutes before we get there

CRI 204 notes that routine spot and spill cleaning is normally done by the building’s own people, and that the longer certain spots stay on carpet, the more likely they are to become permanent. A spot left in place also gathers soil. The standard tells three things apart: a spill, a liquid or dry substance dropped by accident that can sink to the base of the pile; a spot, usually something oily, tacky or sticky sitting on the top of the fibers; and a stain, a discoloration that ordinary cleaning will not lift. The first two are usually a matter of acting quickly. The third is a job for a professional, and the standard says that done wrong it can become permanent.

A short card at the front desk or in the break room, taken from the standard, covers most of what staff need:

• Blot, do not scrub. Use a white cloth or white paper towels with no printing on them. Scrubbing distorts the pile and leaves a fuzzy patch that shows even after the spot is gone.
• Lift solids first. Scrape up anything semi-solid with a rounded spoon, and break up and vacuum anything dry.
• Test before you treat. Put a little of the cleaner on a hidden corner, hold a white cloth on it for 10 seconds, and look for color on the cloth or a change in the carpet.
• Work from the outside in. For a spill the size of a baseball, work an area the size of a basketball, so the spill is not pushed outward.
• One product at a time. Rinse out one cleaner before trying another. Mixing them can set a stain or take out the color.
• Expect it to come back. A spot that reappears as the carpet dries is wicking: liquid from deep in the pile rising to the tips of the fibers. Blot again, and tell us about it.

Anything that does not come out with that card should be left alone and pointed out to us, with what was spilled if anyone knows. A coffee spill and a toner spill need very different treatment.

Carpet tile or broadloom

CRI 204 lists the ways commercial carpet is installed. Carpet tile and planks are held down with a pressure-sensitive adhesive, with adhesive tape or as a floating floor. Broadloom, the carpet that comes off a roll, is stretched in over a cushion, glued directly to the floor or double-stuck to a cushion that is itself glued down. The daily care is the same. The deep clean is not always.

Tile has an advantage that broadloom does not: a square that will not come clean can be lifted and replaced. Whether that is possible depends on whether spare tiles from the same run were kept, so ask your facilities person before we start. Tile is also held down by an adhesive, or by none at all, so how much moisture a deep clean may put into it is a question for the maker of that tile. For tile and broadloom alike, the standard’s rule is to follow the carpet manufacturer’s cleaning guidelines and, where the manufacturer is unknown, to follow CRI 204.

Drying time and the hours your building keeps

CRI 204 is firm that cleaning is not finished until the carpet is dry and ready to be walked on. Until then, foot traffic resoils it and people can slip, so damp carpet is kept off limits and marked with wet floor signs. The standard names what shortens drying: ventilation during the cleaning and afterwards, air movers, the building’s own air handling, and dehumidifiers. Chair mats go back only once the carpet underneath is dry. The Environmental Protection Agency adds a reason to take drying seriously: if wet or damp materials are dried within 24 to 48 hours, in most cases mold will not grow (EPA).

Humidity changes how long that takes. Before 2008, the National Weather Service in Phoenix dated the start of the monsoon from the first stretch of three days with an average dew point above 55 degrees, according to the University of Arizona’s climate program (CLIMAS). Damp outdoor air dries a carpet more slowly than the dry air of the rest of the year. If your building’s air handling shuts down at night or over a weekend, tell us when we schedule a deep clean, because that is the drying help the standard counts on.

We do daily cleaning around our clients’ schedules, and our hours include Saturdays from 6 am to 5 pm and Sundays from 9 am to 5 pm. Here is how the timing tends to fall in the buildings we are asked about most.

Offices

A deep clean late in the week gives a carpet the whole weekend to dry with nobody on it. The reception carpet and the lane to it can be put on interim cleaning between deep cleans, so the room a visitor sees first never falls behind the rest.

Schools

Classroom carpet takes glue, paint, crayon and lunch, often near the sink corner and the reading rug. As our Google profile puts it, we are proud to support schools, churches, banks and businesses. In a school, extraction belongs on days with no students in the room, and a tiled classroom is the place to ask about spare squares.

Churches

The sanctuary aisles are the traffic lanes, and the fellowship hall beside the kitchen is the carpet next to food service that the standard singles out. Deep cleaning early in the week leaves days of drying before the next weekend’s services.

Salons

Most salon floors at the chairs are hard surfaces, but the waiting area is often carpeted, and color and chemical spills are the stains that need a professional quickly. Tell us which products are used in the suite, so a spill can be treated with what suits it.

Stores

A carpeted sales floor has to be dry by opening time, so the deep clean is done after closing with the air running, and the fixtures that will be moved are agreed in advance. Dark store carpet hides soil well, which is exactly why the standard’s advice to clean before soil shows matters most here.

What a carpet plan for your building contains

CRI 204 calls a full program five things: soil prevention at the doors, routine vacuuming, a system for spills and spots, interim cleaning and deep cleaning. It also asks for periodic inspection and review, because a plan that is never checked drifts. Written down for one building, ours looks like this:

• A marked floor plan. Each carpeted area labeled moderate, heavy or severe, with the soil-prone spots circled: entries, pivot points, the carpet beside food and drink.
• Vacuuming by zone. How often each area is vacuumed, and on which visits, so the busy carpet gets more passes than the quiet rooms.
• Mats. What is outside each door, what is inside it, and where protective and chair mats belong.
• The spill plan. Who on your staff handles a spill, where the white cloths are kept, and how a stubborn spot reaches us.
• Interim and deep cleaning dates. Set on the calendar a year ahead, against your hours, holidays and events.
• Drying. Which doors and rooms stay closed, whether the air handling stays on, and when furniture and chair mats go back.
• A walk-through. A set time to look at the carpet together and move areas up or down a row if the traffic has changed.

Getting an estimate for your carpet

Call us and we will come out, walk the carpet with you and leave you with a free estimate. It helps to have a few things ready: who made the carpet and when it went in, if anyone knows; whether it is tile or broadloom, and whether spare tiles were kept; the spots that have defeated your staff; and the hours the building is empty. Carpet care can stand alone or sit inside a regular cleaning plan, and how a regular plan starts and runs is set out on our commercial cleaning page.

Questions people ask