You might wonder why this step is essential. Watch the video and I think you'll agree, this is very different from just vacuuming your rug.
There's two reasons to properly dust your rug. Firstly, if the dry soil isn't removed it just turns to sludge when it's wet. Any cleaning company doing a surface clean of the rug in your home will find it almost impossible to remove this sludge. Not removing the dry soil results in a poor surface only clean, which might look good initially, but soon becomes dull again as the trapped soils are walked on and trample back up.
Secondly, whilst we do vacuum your rug to remove surface soiling, such as hair and daily fluff, vacuuming alone will not remove the deeply embedded grit and sand. If you leave the grit and sand in the base of the rug it acts like sandpaper and the sharp edges wear at the very base of the fibres as you walk on the rug, this greatly shortens it's life. The rug pile hides these soils, and your rug may not even look that dirty, but the dry soils and grit will be deep in the base. That's why it's recommended you clean, or at least professionally dust your rug every eighteen months to two years. Once we've vacuumed your rug we'll then "dust" your rug to remove that grit and sand.
How do we "dust" your rug? We use the latest machinery that simulates how rugs used to be cleaned. Rugs were often hung over a washing line and the back beaten with a stick or leather belt strap, which produced clouds of dust that just blew away. In our workshop, your rug is fed face down through "the duster", where a spinning bar with leather straps attached beats the backing of the rug. We control the speed of the beating to cause harmonic vibrations, which make the dry soils and grit to fall out of the rug. This is happening in a vacuum chamber where the fine dust is picked up from the air and filtered out, this leaves the heavier grit and sand to fall onto the enclosed tray below to be swept away. This process is repeated until we see no further grit falling out of the rug.
For more delicate rugs or rugs with much finer dust, such as plaster dust following building works, we can use our "air-dusting" process. This uses compressed air blown through a special floor tool. This airflow dislodges even the finest dust and the vacuum shroud around the wand safely picks that up and filters it into a tank. Some cleaners use air dusting, but just allow the dust to blow out into the open street. The dust is actually classed as trade waste and just allowing the dust to blow away is illegal. Our workshop is fitted with dust extraction units to capture this dust and dispose of it correctly.