Carpet Cleaning in Erdington

Pavement grit on a communal stair that no household looks after

In a block, every resident, every visitor and every delivery crosses the same few square metres of carpet in whatever they have been walking in, and there is no household routine to keep on top of it. Grit tracked in off the High Street pavements is abrasive, so it cuts the pile as well as darkening it, and the entrance matting gives up once it is saturated and starts passing dirt straight through. Domestic work here is driven by long occupancy instead: a family that has been in the same semi for fifteen years has a lounge carpet holding fifteen years of everything, and the stair strip carries all the traffic in the house.

• Communal stairs and landings crossed by every resident, visitor and delivery in outdoor shoes
• Entrance matting in a block, which stops working once it is saturated and then passes grit straight through
• Grit carried in off the High Street pavements, which cuts the pile as well as marking it
• Lounges and stair strips in the semis, frequently in the same family’s hands for well over a decade
• Fire doors on closers and no opening window, which makes drying a stair core the genuinely difficult part

Dry soil out before any water reaches a stair core

Dry soil comes out before any water goes down, and in a communal hall that stage is most of the job, because the grit walked in off the pavement is dry and wetting it only moves mud around the pile. A pre-spray follows with proper dwell time and agitation, which is what breaks down a year of shoe traffic. Marks are dealt with individually. Extraction then runs flight by flight, using a hand tool on treads and nosings, with blowers left going behind us because a stair core has no natural draught to dry it.

• One flight at a time in a block, so residents always have a route to their own door that is not wet
• Air movers left running in the stair core, because closers on the fire doors kill any through draught
• A hand tool on treads and nosings, with no wand dragged down the flight
• A colour test in a corner before anything else, since communal contract carpet is cheaply dyed and does not always hold

More detail on the equipment and the order of work: carpet cleaning across Birmingham.

Communal stair carpet and the semis

The communal work is in the blocks running between the town centre and Chester Road, plus the converted houses near the station. Agents usually book it on a regular cycle, and it works best mid-morning on a weekday, when the fewest people are coming and going and the building has emptied out onto the Cross-City Line. The domestic side is out on the semis towards the parks, mostly January and spring. We ask agents not to schedule us on the building’s bin day, because a stair core full of wheeled bins and a wet flight do not mix.

Priced per room and flight at home, per core in a block

Rooms and flights of stairs set the price, since setting up takes the same time whether we clean one room or four. Communal jobs are quoted per core, covering the entrance, the hall, each flight and each landing, and paid through the service charge. Heavy soiling and stain work add time. One thing holds on every job: on a communal stair the nosings go first, and a nosing that has been walked through is worn, not dirty, so cleaning will not bring it back, and you hear that at the quote.

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Six-monthly on a busy block stair, and what suits a house

Communal stair carpet in a busy Erdington block wants doing about every six months, and quarterly if the building has a high turnover or a lot of deliveries. Entrance matting needs attention more often than that and eventually needs replacing. Semis do well on twelve to eighteen months, dropping to annually with pets or small children. Let flats are once per tenancy, at the end, and it is worth checking whether the agreement makes it compulsory.