Accidents happen. Even the most well-trained pet can have an accident in the home due to any number of different causes.
If you own area rugs and pets, it’s important to understand four ways that urine can damage your rugs as well as what you can do to protect your rugs from damage.
Urine can cause permanent fiber damage and this damage is only visible from the top.
Urine salts attract moisture to the cotton foundation of the rug and this moist environment can cause the cotton foundation to rot and mildew.
Bugs also use this environment as a food source and if left alone, this will result in a hole in the rug.
The ammonia in urine can damage dyes and can damage the rug’s ability to hold dye. This leads to bleeding colors and color loss, especially on silk rugs.
As the urine decomposes, it releases an odor and we become accustomed to smells and urine odor gets worse over time. So commonly, rug owners don’t even realize that the odor is as bad as it is.
In order to eliminate the odor, all the urine salts and bacteria must be washed out of the foundation of the rug.
Top cleaning the rug with carpet cleaning equipment won’t work because the source of the odor is in the base of the rug, in the foundation.
Tufted rugs with a backing can be cleaned with standard carpet cleaning equipment. These rugs are cheaper to make, but they are made with a layer of latex to glue the fibers in place. Urine can penetrate and bond with the latex in these rugs, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to completely remove the odor.
Finally, decomposing urine can stain rugs.
As urine soaks into a rug, it spreads out on the bottom layers of the rug. These stains are like icebergs. They’re small on top and much larger underneath the rug.
Here are five things you can do to make living with pets and rugs easier.
Have a spot removal plan. You want to clean up pet stains and other spills quickly. Your rug cleaner should be a partner in this process and we can teach you what to do if you have a problem. And if you come home to a catastrophe, we’re a phone call away.
When possible, buy rugs that can be washed. This will probably mean woven rugs with colorfast dyes.
Get a busy design to hide stains and spots better, especially if you have light-colored rugs.
Get pads under your rugs to protect your floor.
Apply fiber protectors to suspend spills and give you more time for cleanup.
Also, if you have pets, you should have your rugs washed every one to three years.
If you have any questions about proper maintenance of your rugs, just give us a call and we’ll be happy to help you out.
