There are many things that can go wrong with your carpet after it’s been cleaned. One of the most common issues is shrinkage. We’ve received many calls from “do-it-yourself” carpet cleaners, who have hired a machine from the supermarket, only to find that upon the carpet drying it has shrunk significantly! In some cases this can be fixed, but sometimes the carpet may have to be replaced! In this article, we’ll explore what causes carpets to shrink.
Carpets come in a variety of constructions, and some are more prone to shrinkage than others. Carpets that have a jute backing are most likely to shrink under certain conditions, which we’ll look at later.
Why is this? Well, Jute is a natural fibre that is commonly used as carpet backing, due to its high absorbency properties, it swells up when it comes into contact with water, which puts stress on the carpet causing it to shrink.
How can you avoid shrinking your carpets?
Having a little knowledge about the construction of a carpet can go a long way in helping you to avoid some common carpet cleaning problems, such as shrinkage.
The first thing you may want to do is identify the backing of the carpet. You can do this by finding a corner piece and lifting it off its gripper. If it’s Jute it will be brown in colour (see picture below). Once you’ve identified it you’ll know that you have to be extra careful with the amount of water you use on the carpet. If you’re using a carpet cleaning machine you’ve rented from the supermarket, this may be difficult to do because they tend not to have very strong vacuum motors, which means they don’t get as much of the water out of the carpet as a commercial carpet cleaning machine during the rinsing stage. So what often happens is the water seeps deep into the Jute backing causing it to swell.
So if you do go the DIY route be conscious of this, and try not to spray down too much water into the carpet when rinsing it.
What happens if my carpets have shrunk?
Shrunk carpets can usually be salvaged, unfortunately rectifying the issue comes with an additional cost. You will need to hire a carpet fitter to re-stretch the carpet back to its former size.
If you want to avoid any unwelcome surprises after having your carpets cleaned, or you have challenging stains on your carpet like ink stains, we would suggest you hire a reputable carpet cleaning company like ours to do the work for you. We have never shrunk a carpet, and we never will. Our low moisture cleaning technology uses minimal amounts of water, so there is no risk of overwetting the carpet. In addition to that our cleaning process involves using a heat blower to have your carpets dry within 30 minutes of being cleaned!