There are a number of complexities with urine in carpet that mean that carpet cleaning (alone) will not resolve the issues it causes. Urine tends to penetrate further than the face yarn right to the backing or underlay and often as far as the sub-floor. This can and often does mean that the urine stain on top is often a half to a third of the size it has spread to underneath. When the urine hits the hard floor it reverse mushrooms and spreads so if decontamination is required it is over a larger area than might first be thought.

Two facets of urine contamination

There are two parts to the urine issue and one or both can cause major headaches for consumers and carpet cleaners alike.

Stains (if applicable) - Urine stains cannot always be removed. In fact, Stains from urine are amongst the hardest to remove from most carpet fibre types. This is especially true of urine in natural fibres such as wool and cotton. However, our success rate is very high.

Why is it so difficult?
Urine, although acidic when fresh, quickly dries to a very high pH of around 11.2 as it forms urea crystals. In wool this can be detrimental to the fibre often causing permanent chemical burning that cannot be removed. These release ammonia odours and harbour numerous bacteria. Urine can also contain blood in older animals and medications can affect staining also. In fact, the natural pigments in urine have properties all of their own which become more difficult to remove with age. The first 24-48 hours is critical.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that all is lost. A well trained carpet technician who has completed stain removal courses and has some experience may have a few tricks up their sleeves. They will usually try some basic stain removers and then use try some oxidisers and even add extra heat to really get the best of their products. Carpet cleaners have access to products that simply cannot be applied by home owners as they don't usually have the equipment to remove the solution afterwards. Enzymes and encapsulants have been added to the arsenal in recent years and make a world of difference on results.

ODOURS Sometimes there are no stains even evident, but the odour can be overpowering. The crystals that form around urine bacteria must be broken down before we can effectively kill off the bacteria. Carpet cleaning on it's own will not have much effect on urine. Carpets and rugs need to be soaked in a urine treatment and I have on some rugs had to use several different types of treatment to get a positive result. That means it can take time to beat urine and needs to be done at our facilities.

So, our first task is to identify the areas affected which we do with some detection equipment. Hopefully these are isolated areas but once we ID the location we need to determine the extent of the problem so we can treat accordingly. Generally this involves using a urine treatment designed to breakdown the highly alkaline urea crystals that form around urine and bacteria and drenching the area with a purpose built antimicrobial. We then need to thoroughly rinse and extract the area using deep spot extraction equipment then rinse the area with hot water extraction.

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