Pet Odor and Stain Removal in Herndon, VA

It almost always begins at the top of the stairs

In a three level townhouse the landing outside the bedrooms is where a dog ends up when it cannot wait, because it is the last carpeted spot before a flight of stairs the animal does not want to attempt in the dark. That landing is also the worst possible place for a deposit. Liquid does not stay where it lands on a stair run. It follows the slope, moves under the carpet along the nose of the first tread, and works its way down two or three steps before it stops, so the family sees a spot at the top and smells something four steps below with nothing visible in between.

That is the single most common call we take in Herndon, VA. The fix is not complicated, but it does require treating the whole run rather than the one visible mark, and it requires getting under the carpet at the tread noses where the liquid has collected.

Carpet that came with the house

A lot of the carpet in the 20170 and 20171 parts of Fairfax County is original, which in many of these houses means fifteen or twenty years of service. Old carpet is not automatically a lost cause. What matters is the condition of the backing and the pad rather than the age on paper. A twenty year old carpet with intact latex and a firm pad can be treated successfully. A twelve year old carpet whose backing has gone brittle and whose pad has compressed to the thickness of a magazine will not hold up to sub surface work, and forcing it will delaminate the backing.

We check this before settling on a method, not after. Lift a corner at a doorway or a closet, look at the pad thickness and whether it springs back, look for browning on the underside of the backing, and the answer is usually obvious in two minutes.

What we look at when we lift a corner

• Pad thickness and recovery, since a pad that stays flat when pressed has stopped functioning
• Latex condition at the backing, which turns powdery when it has failed
• Whether the tack strip has rusted, a reliable sign of long term moisture at the perimeter
• Staining on the subfloor visible around the edge of the pad

Working a stair run properly

A stair run is the part of pet odor removal in Herndon that people most often ask to skip. Stairs are slower going than any other surface in the house, and they are worth every minute. We treat from the bottom step upward so nothing runs down onto ground we have already finished. Enzyme goes into the tread and into the nose, which is the rolled front edge where liquid collects and where a wand held flat will never reach. Then a hand tool sized for stairs does the extraction, one step at a time, with a separate pass at each nose. Stair carpet has a pile direction running down the flight, so the passes go with it rather than against it, which keeps the nap lying correctly once it dries.

A typical run of thirteen or fourteen steps takes forty five minutes to an hour if the odor has been there a while. People sometimes ask us to just do the landing. We will, but the landing is rarely where the smell is coming from by the time anyone has noticed it.

Old pad, new problem: what will actually come back

Pet odor removal in Herndon frequently means dealing with contamination that has been in place for years rather than weeks. Old deposits are not harder because they smell worse. They are harder because the salts have gone through many humidity cycles, pulling moisture out of the air each summer, reactivating, and drying again. Each cycle drives material deeper into the pad and, on a wood subfloor, into the top layer of the board. There is a simple test for it at home: if a spot is quiet in dry weather and unmistakable on the first warm damp day, the salts are still in place and waiting.

Extraction pulls what is in the carpet and the pad. It cannot pull what has soaked into wood. When we find that, taking out the section of pad and sealing the board underneath is the better call, and on stairs that means lifting the carpet from the tack strip on the affected treads. It is a bigger job than a cleaning, and we describe it plainly so nobody is surprised by what the day involves.

Be told honestly when carpet has finished

Some floors here have reached the end. A carpet with a delaminating backing, a flattened pad and deposits in several rooms is not going to be brought back by any treatment, and we say so at the inspection instead of taking a day of your time. The inspection is free and there is no obligation attached to it. Where the carpet is going to be replaced anyway, treating the subfloor before the new pad goes down is what stops the odor from returning through the new installation, and that we are glad to do.

Where the floor is sound, the work is straightforward and it lasts. Pet stain removal in Herndon usually pairs well with a general clean, so carpet cleaning in Herndon often runs on the same visit, and dogs that sleep on furniture make upholstery cleaning in Herndon worth doing at the same time. Loose rugs come out for separate washing, covered on our rug cleaning page. Between treatments, ordinary hot water extraction keeps the pile from holding soil that makes old odor easier to notice, and upholstery cleaning does the same for fabric. We run the same routine over the county line in Ashburn and Sterling.