A carpet visit in Ealing goes like this. The van parks as near the door as the street allows, one of us walks the rooms with you and confirms the price, and then the extraction machine comes in on its trolley and settles in the hall. From there only the hose and the wand travel round the house, so nothing heavy and wet gets wheeled across your floors.
On the day
First comes a thorough vacuum with an upright. Dry grit lifts far better before any water goes down, and a carpet that has been walked on for a year holds more of it than you would guess. Next the traffic lanes get a pre-spray picked for the fibre, a gentle one on wool and something stronger on nylon or polypropylene, and it is left a few minutes to work.
Then the extraction itself. The machine drives hot water and a little rinse agent deep into the pile and vacuums it out again a split second later through the same wand head, one strip at a time, each stroke overlapping the last. Where the dirt is worst, by the door and in front of the sofa, we slow down and go over it twice. To finish, the pile is raked in one direction so it dries flat and even.
Beds, sofas, chairs and tables get slid out of the way and set back down on foil squares or plastic blocks, which keeps rust and wood stain off the damp carpet. Wardrobes, pianos and full bookcases stay put, and we clean up to their edges.
What sets the price
The number of rooms and their size. £36 buys a bedroom and £43 a living room. A through lounge, the long knocked-through front and back room found in so many Ealing terraces, is £61. A small room such as a study or box room is £29, a hallway £22 and stairs £41 a flight, and every landing is £9 on top. Scotchgard, if you want it afterwards, is £33 a room. For one-off visits the minimum is £67.
| Service | Price |
|---|---|
| Bedroom | £36 |
| Living room | £43 |
| Through lounge | £61 |
| Stairs, per flight | £41 |
| Rug up to 3m² | £35 |
| Rug over 3m² | £51 |
| Bedroom, with a move-out clean | £29 |
| Living room, with a move-out clean | £36 |
| Stairs, with a move-out clean | £35 |
Drying
Synthetic carpet in a warm room will usually take socks after a couple of hours. Wool soaks up more and dries slower, and a cold back bedroom in January needs longest of all. Open a window a crack, leave the heating on low, and it speeds up a lot. Keep the heavy furniture off it until the evening if you can.
Older houses north of the Broadway
In the big Edwardian houses around Castlebar and Montpelier Road, wool carpet often stops at a parquet border or runs up a staircase with polished timber showing either side. Hot water and old wood are a poor mix, so the wand stops short of the timber and the last strip of carpet is worked by hand with a small tool and very little moisture. Loft conversions add a third flight in a lot of these houses, narrow and steep, and it gets cleaned tread by tread like the others. The new flats around Ealing Broadway station are simpler, with lifts and pale twist carpet that cleans up well.
Marks that survive the main clean get treated one by one, and the stain removal page explains which ones usually go. A rug lying on top of the carpet can be done on the same visit (see rug cleaning), and so can the sofa, on our upholstery page. You can see every rate we charge on one page.
Questions we get asked
Our loft bedroom is up a narrow third flight. Can the machine get up there?
It does not need to. The machine stays in the hall and we run hose up the stairs, so nothing heavy goes up the narrow part. Each flight is £41 and each landing £9, which means three flights and two landings come to £141 before any rooms.
There is a parquet border round our living room carpet. Will it get wet?
We keep the wand off the wood and do the edge of the carpet by hand with very little water. Any splash on the timber gets wiped at once. If the parquet has gaps or loose blocks, mention it when you book, since damp finds its way into those quickly.
Can you come on a Saturday or a Sunday?
Yes. We work every day from 8am to 7pm, and a weekend visit costs the same as a weekday one. Saturdays tend to fill first, so a few days’ notice helps.
Will the house smell afterwards?
Of damp carpet, for an hour or two, and that fades as it dries. No scent goes in. Where a pet has used the same corner for months, the smell may be in the underlay as well, and we will tell you on the day how much a clean is likely to shift.