Carpets tend to be the great air filters of the house, collecting everything from pollen to mold spores to dust blown in from Nebraska. It all settles into the pile where joins with dirt and pet hair until the carpet cleaners arrive to remove it. Carpets are also the unintended collectors of all kinds of detritus carried into the house on the bottom of shoes, including dirt, grease, doggy doo and more. When faced with another bill for carpet cleaning services some homeowners start to think that maybe the whole carpet idea just isn’t worth the trouble. But are they right? Is it better - and even healthier - to live in a house without carpeting?
Is Carpet Cleaning in Denver Worth it?
It might seem like carpeting is more trouble than it's worth. Especially in a place like Denver where nature sees fit to gift us with an abundance of ragweed, mold spores, tree pollen, dust from the Great Plains and more. Some folks start thinking that maybe the best idea is to save time searching for “carpet cleaning near me” and just chuck the carpets altogether. In fact, that’s probably the worst thing you can do. Why? Because:
- Carpeting really is a big filter - As we noted at the beginning of this piece carpeting tends to act as an enormous air filter, pulling in and holding all kinds of contaminants until carpet cleaners arrive to remove them. So why on earth would anyone consider that a good thing? Because all the ragweed, pet hair, prairie dust and mold spores that are collected by the carpet are ragweed, pet hair, prairie dust and mold spores that aren’t floating freely around the house, being endlessly shoved back into your face by the HVAC system while you’re trying to eat, sleep and be merry. Look at it this way: all those pollutants and allergens are going to be in your house no matter what. It’s better that they’re taken out of circulation by the carpeting.
- Carpeting helps keep your home warmer in the winter - It gets cold in Colorado during the winter. And winter can sometimes last from October to early May. You need every bit of insulation you can get in your house in order to keep your energy bills under control. Wall to wall carpeting is essentially an extra sheet of insulation that not only makes it possible for you to walk around the house in the winter in bare feet, but also helps trap heat in the room. It prevents drafts from filtering through the floor, prevents a cold basement from sucking heat out of the rooms above it and retains warmth that it radiates back into the room even after you shut the heat off. Unless you’re fond of paying outrageous heating bills the wise thing to do is to leave your carpeting in place.
- Carpeting is not solely responsible for your allergies - The fact is that while carpet cleaning in Denver is important for removing the contaminants that have been trapped by your carpeting, the carpeting itself is not solely responsible for your allergies. During the 1970s Sweden banned wall to wall carpeting thinking it was responsible for allergies. After they did allergy reports skyrocketed. Why? Because subsequent research revealed that most of those allergens that had been safely out of the way in the pile of the carpet were now collecting on furniture and being distributed through houses via the air ducts. In 1990 they reversed the carpet ban. In 2001 Cornell University, environmental analyst Alan Hedge conducted research on carpeting in schools, ultimately concluding that it helps to make them healthier places for the very same reason: because the carpets collect contaminants and hold them out of the way.
- The real problem is often poor carpet cleaning - While carpets do a great job of filtering pollutants from the air and holding them until you call for carpet cleaning in Denver, the most important thing is that you DO call for carpet cleaning. Homeowners who don’t can’t expect the carpeting to simply continue to collect dirt and debris forever. It will eventually reach the saturation point and when it does it will be as though the carpets aren’t there at all. Some homeowners try and clean the carpets themselves to save money. The end result of this strategy is often lots of pollutants jarred free from the pile but not properly collected. These then become free agents floating around the house making things worse than they were before.
So What Should You Do?
- First, keep your carpets. They not only make your home healthier they also help you save money on your heating bills.
- Second, make sure you vacuum your carpets on a regular basis. This will help ensure that loose contaminants that have not settled into the pile are not floating around causing problems.
- Third, call Steve’s Carpet Care & Restoration for top-rated carpet cleaning services at affordable prices. Our truck-mounted steam cleaning machine is more than a vacuum. It reaches down to the base of the pile and removes every grain of pollen, every last dust mite and every remnant of mold and mildew.
The Bottom Line
Getting rid of your carpets to save a few bucks on carpet cleaning services is one of the worst things you can do. Not only will you wind up paying more to heat your house, but you’ll expose yourself and your loved ones to clouds of allergens and other contaminants that the carpet would have removed from the air for you.