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Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G. Takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends and the latest innovations for your home.

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It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Now let's get this show started with our host, Eric G. And John Dudley.

Welcome to the around the House show, your source for home improvement.

I'm Eric G. We got a great show coming up today.

Dudley, great to see you, my friend.

What's happening, brother?

Good to be here, man.

How are you?

Oh, excellent, man.

And I had an interesting conversation and this was totally fun.

I ended up having a great conversation with Ed Quinlan, the president of Chem Dry, you know, the carpet cleaning guys.

And I realized a lot of great stuff from this conversation that can really help out getting ready for the holidays.

So let's jump out to that conversation, Dudley.

And man, I learned so much out of this one.

Nice.

Let's go.

This is perfect timing for getting ready for the holidays.

You know when your mother in law comes over and starts poking around the house and maybe didn't think you cleaned it up to her standards.

This episode is for you.

We have Ed Quinlan, president of Chem Dry.

You've heard about them.

They are that carpet and surface cleaning experts all across the country.

Ed, welcome to a wrap.

Yeah, thanks Eric.

Great to be with you today.

Looking forward to visiting and sharing some tips and ideas with all your listeners.

Man, I tell you what, I want to talk about this because I think everybody relates to this.

I moved into my wonderful girlfriend's place here as we're combining households and she has got probably.

Well, it's the builder grade carpet that the national builder put in upstairs, up the stairs into the second floor where the bedrooms are and everything cream colored.

It was a decent to low end carpet.

But what was the first thing she did before?

Well, she had a small dog.

So she would get out the handheld carpet cleaner that you buy at Target or Costco or wherever and start cleaning.

The problem is is you can't clean carpets like that with those machines like you would your hard surface floor because now the carpet's all stretched out.

And then the builder didn't do any help because they left the doors into and out of these rooms that are many mainly closed to keep the dog out.

Well, there's a maybe an 8th or a 16th gap between the carpet.

So now we have these black lines of car across the carpet because, well, that is now the perfect air filter from room to room.

That's right.

And it's just what happens.

And now I'm going to go through and fix it here.

But she's like most people out there, they had no idea how to take care of their carpets in their home.

And there's some science to it, and it's important.

Yeah.

You know, we've been doing carpet cleaning for nearly 50 years.

This year marks 48 years for the Chem Dry brand.

And our history comes out of a space of innovation.

And so for the last 50 years, we've really been focusing on how do we empower our local franchise owners.

Each franchisee is independently owned and operated, and they're local and they're the ones who come in and take care of your carpet.

I should first and foremost congratulate you, Eric, to you and your girlfriend.

This is a big milestone.

So excited for that.

Thanks, Ed.

Thanks.

Appreciate it, Ed.

Right.

Anytime there's a transition, you want to make sure that whether you're leaving or whether you're coming in, that you're really making a nice.

A nice healthy space.

And then I would also advocate, it's important that while you're there, you get on a cadence in your space for a deep cleaning of all your surfaces in your home, not just your carpets and upholstery, because like you said, those are just natural organic air filters in the home.

Any kind of soft surface is going to help trap the dust and the debris.

Now, on, on one end, that sounds a little gross, but actually it's actually very healthy for you if you have a maintenance plan to clean it.

Right.

They say that the carpet in your home is the largest air filter that you have.

And so it's collecting all that dust and debris.

But unless you're going to vacuum it regularly, you know, you should be vacuuming a couple times a week at minimum once a week, but really a couple times a week.

And, and then on your hard surfaces.

In fact, we could even go room by room around how to care for different rooms in the house.

But you know, your hard surfaces, you want to make sure you're dusting up and doing a good sweep and then a mop.

Sweep daily to every two days and mop at least weekly.

You want to much of that up because on a hard surface, as you walk across that hard surface, you're literally kicking up the.

The allergens the dust that settle down to the floor, there's nothing to trap them.

Whereas when you walk across a soft surface, by soft surface I mean carpet or area rugs or something that can help, you know, capture that, it's going to hold onto it.

And so rather than circle, circulating up into the air and into your airways, it's going to stay down low.

And sure, it might kick up a little bit around your feet, but it's not getting up around your, around your feet, your face.

Now, now notice I'm talking about even some circulation happening at the low level.

If you have kids and pets and you like to lay on your carpet and roll around or take a nap on the floor, you want to clean all this and you want to clean it regularly.

So we can talk about tips around that too.

You know, and it's funny, I always say this.

When I've moved into a house that I've bought and it had existing carpet in it, to me it was always like walking around in somebody else's socks.

Oh my God, I wanted to clean it.

You know, it's like, okay, there's nothing wrong with that, but I want to get it better, I want to get it there.

And to me, at least in my experience of removing carpets, putting new carpets in and all my remodeling years, the worst thing that I always saw was no offense to all you hardware store owners, grocery store owners and the people that make those.

Let's go rent the carpet cleaner for two hours.

Those are great for cleaning up the frat party before somebody gets there.

But let's be honest, that's not a good carpet cleaner.

No, no, no, no, no, don't use those.

I mean, yeah, don't use those.

Yeah, they're so good.

You want a deep professional clean.

And you know, here's the reason why is those use tons of water and they have really low powerful vacuum.

And so traditionally carpet cleaning has been designed around and you'll see this across.

A lot of the competitors too is around.

They put a ton of water in the carpet and then they're trying to get as much powerful vacuum to get out as much as they can.

And I'll tell you, the truck mounted industry has really advanced over the last five decades and is so much better today than it was then.

And so, you know, usually people would say it can take two to four days for my carpets to dry when I use a steam cleaner or if I use one of those home tools, similar kind of problem.

There's just too much chemical going in and not enough coming out.

And so that just takes a long time.

They're down to about one to two day dry times.

That's good chem dry.

We're at one to two hours.

And a little bit of the science as to why and how we're able to do that, first and foremost is we use a core cleaning solution called the natural.

Uses the power of carbonation through our hot carbonating extraction process.

So it's hot liquid water, carbonating water and goes in.

We use one fifth the water.

So our goal is to, our goal is to get the carpet fiber wet, but not the backing and not the sub.

Right.

Not the pad, not the subfloor.

You know, oftentimes, in order to get enough water in there to solubilize the dirt, our competitors are putting lots and lots of water in.

We're using, with this hot carbonating extraction process, not only do we use 1/5 of water, but we use this tool called the power head, which applies the water in a really strategic way, allows us to coat the fiber, agitate the fiber to get that water to mix in, solubilize the dirt.

And then we have the same powerful vacuums and in several instances more powerful vacuums with our truck mounted extractors.

So we get out that much more water.

So 1/5 of the water going in, massive vacuum, bringing it out, we're able to pull all that dirt out.

And it's not just dirt, Right.

It's dirt, the dust, the allergens, the gunk and get all that out of the carpet.

That's sort of our secret formula to success in chemdray.

And that's why we have one to two hour dry times and not days.

Well, if you think about it, if you get into the restoration company discussion here, if you have water on your carpet from a flood for two or three days, they're gonna come in and many times get rid of that carpet and pad because of mold growth.

Yeah.

Why would you introduce that?

Right.

Yeah.

No, that's a significant risk when you have water sitting that long.

Now it's creating a breeding ground for mold and mildew and bacteria and yeah, we need your homes to be.

We need all of our homes to be safe and sanitary and clean.

And so a deep clean and that regular routine maintenance cleaning with a process like chem drives is the perfect answer.

To find out more information, head to aroundthehouse online dot com.

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We'll be right back after these important messages.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

Your trusted Source for home improvement.

Dudley and I are sitting here having a great time and we've been talking, you know, with Ed Quinlan, president of Chem Dry.

And you know, Johnny, I love talking to guys like this that are innovative.

I mean, we've all gone out and rented those stupid carpet cleaners, but it's nice to actually talk about a professional that doesn't leave more soap in the carpet.

Right, right.

You mean the ones I used to rent at Albertsons to clean up the apartment to get my deposit back?

Yeah, that one, exactly.

They're horrible.

So let's go back out to Ed here and find out the right way to do things.

We're using with this hot carbonating extraction process.

Not only do we use one fifth of water, but we use this tool called the power head, which applies the water in a really strategic way, allows us to coat the fiber, agitate the fiber to get that water to mix in, solubilize the dirt.

And then we have the same powerful vacuums and in several instances more powerful vacuums with our truck mounted extractors.

So we get out that much more water.

So 1/5 of the water going in, massive vacuum bringing it out, we're able to pull all that dirt out.

And it's not just dirt, Right, it's dirt, the dust, the allergens, the gunk and get all that out of the carpet.

That's sort of our secret formula to success in Chem Dream.

And that's why we have one to two hour dry times and not days.

Well, if you think about it, if you get into the restoration company discussion here, if you have water on your carpet from a flood for two or three days, they're going to come in and many times get rid of that carpet and pad because of mold growth.

Yeah.

Why would you introduce that?

Right, yeah.

No, this is significant risk when you have water sitting that long.

Now it's creating a breeding ground for mold and mildew and bacteria and, and yeah, we need your homes to be, we need all of our homes to be safe and sanitary and, and clean.

And so a deep clean and that regular routine maintenance cleaning with a process like Chem Dry is the perfect answer.

It is.

Because I tell you what, I know when we do these carpets here, and nothing against my girlfriend, lover to death, but I know that there's going to be so much soap because that's what those machines rely on.

If she followed the directions, there's going to be so much soap coming out of that thing.

It's going to, the truck's going to Have a bubble machine out there probably trying to pull that out of there.

Yeah, that's in essence, that's what many of those machines are doing is they're using a lot of chemical, you know, shampoos, we'll call it.

Right.

You've heard them call it shampooing the carpet.

I don't really like that term because we don't.

At Chemdray, we don't use shampoos, we don't use any surfactants.

Our goal is to get it as clean as possible with the optimized chemistry.

So no soaps, no detergents, no surfactants.

In fact, I've seen carpets where we've gone in after someone using a lot of soaps or surfactants has done that, you know, the shampooing process.

And it can take us an extra couple of passes just to suck out all that soap.

Because as we get it wet again, it's going to foam up again.

Right.

And we'll get it back to the point where, where we get it clean.

And our ultimate goal is get out everything, not those soaps and surfactants.

Not only are they, are they messy, but they also have, you know, just a characteristic to them where they attract dirt.

Maybe you've heard of this term, dirt attracting residue.

That's what they leave behind.

And so dirt lands on the carpet, they make your carpets appear dirtier than they really are because the vacuum can't get that stuff out.

Icky almost.

So it just kind of bonds into that.

And I think that's another thing too, is having a quality vacuum cleaners is just as important for your daily maintenance.

Because if you've got one of those kind of cheaper ones that barely suck anything out, you're getting the top surface, but you're not getting the deep down stuff down there.

And so that way you can have a cleaner carpet by just having a better cleaner.

Think of how much time we spend on the various surfaces of our house and whether I have area rugs, wall to wall carpeting, my upholstery.

We take our bedding that's on our mattress and our sheets and we go and we wash it with a deep, deep rinse.

Right.

You want to do the same thing to these soft surfaces across your home.

You know, we'll come in and we'll do that for you.

We'll do it.

You know, I recommend every six months.

I have some customers that do it every three months because they want, you know, especially if you've got a lot of traffic.

Right?

Yeah, you'll Want to do it more often.

Most homeowners across the US clean every 12 months with a deep cleaning.

You know, and here's we talk about holiday cleaning.

A little bit of that impetus is my mother in law is coming.

You know, I have family coming in and I want my house to look its best, but to be honest, the best, as long as I'm going to get it clean and I want it to look good, why not actually get it healthy, clean?

Right.

And a deep, healthy clean means I'm not just after how it looks, but I'm also about, is it adding value to.

To the people who are in my home.

As we get into the winter months, we're spending all this time indoors and so having those carpets cleaner for us that also.

We want to cozy up.

Right?

Want to cozy up.

We want to snuggle into the couch and our face is going to be right next to those fabrics.

We want them to be as clean as possible for us, for babies, for anybody coming to our house.

It's amazing.

And one thing that I did this last year, which has been a change, is.

And again, it was my former co host that really got me a lot.

Caroline Bozowski.

She's known as America's Healthy Home Expert.

She was like, eric, take your shoes off when you walk inside.

Yeah.

And I finally started doing that and.

It makes a big difference.

Floors so much cleaner, too, because you're not dragging in.

Oh, yeah, I scuffed my shoes off.

But when you get dirt and mud on your arm, do you just kind of brush it off real quick?

No, you have to go clean it.

So why not walk in the house and leave that stuff outside?

And that's a big difference as well.

Yeah.

I think it's very common nowadays for homes to just have a little space where people are leaving their shoes.

And, you know, many other cultures, that's just what they do by culture.

Right.

In America, I see it more and more and more.

Yeah, Yeah.

I think that post pandemic education that some of us got that went, hey, let's leave some of that stuff outside.

Maybe that's one of the good things that happened out of that.

And then, you know, my last house that I sold, I didn't have any carpets in, but I had lots of different, like area rugs.

And that was its own thing because I couldn't clean them myself.

And then if I took them down to one of the boutique rug cleaners, I was going to have hundreds or thousands of dollars into cleaning rugs that quite frankly weren't even worth the cleaning cost because I bought.

Right.

Well, if you, if you have a premium area rug and you've paid 10, 20, $30,000 for that rug, of course you want to take it to one of those, to one of those facilities.

You know, Kim Dry, I have many franchisees who offer those services, especially in larger markets and, and do a wonderful job of deep cleaning those premium rugs.

Also, we do offer in home cleaning for area rugs.

So we can come to your house, we can clean them in, in your home.

We use that same hot carbonating extraction process.

So it's a good solid clean.

But for that full, like wash clean, we'll take it off site.

And there are different tiers even for the off site cleaning, because the tends to be the more expensive the rug, the more likely it is to have been handmade and may have some significant dye issues.

Right.

And so the, the dyes in those rugs, you really want to make sure that you're not gonna ruin the rug and have it come back.

If it started out as a red rug and it comes home as a pink rug, that's not acceptable and you don't want it to bleed out and whatever across those beautiful patterns of these.

In many times, these are heirloom rugs handed down from generation to generation.

So we take really, really great care of those.

Yes, it can be more money to take care of them, but they're prized possessions and so we treat them in that way.

For the stuff that we bought at the local hardware, hardware store, we have a process in home, or we can take it off site, get it that old, wash clean in a pretty affordable way.

Obviously cheaper in the home because we won't have the transportation costs, but we can do a great job.

And then you can, you know, be pretty happy with the results.

And it's so much less violent than me going out with the pressure washer in the driveway and doing it.

I tell you what, it's just so much better for the carpet.

Yeah, yeah, that can be pretty hard on the carpet.

And nowadays there's some new fibers being introduced across, I guess, all the segments.

But some of these new fibers are designed to fall apart when they're wet.

And so your chem dry technician can help you identify the quality of your rug, the best way to treat it and clean it, and give you a plan on what's the, what's the best thing to do for this specific rug around the house.

We'll be right back after these important messages.

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Now let's get back to Eric G. And Ed Quinlan, the president of Chem Dry.

Cuz just throwing anything outside, you could run into some major problems.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

And you brought up a good thing about kind of the science of how carpets and rugs are made these days.

Because there are so many ones out there that maybe have a treatment to them that are in your house that are installed, or there's ones out there that maybe were built out of the recycled plastic bottles, you know, or there's a lot of different ones that are pretty stain proof and so they'll take a lot of abuse.

But you still have to really know what you're putting on them because maybe the chemical that you're buying at the store or the chemical that somebody else is coming over with might not be the best for that, you know, for that real strand of material that's the fabric that's built into that carpet strand.

Yeah.

In fact, that's a really good point.

The different types of carpeting and a lot of these new carpets that have these phenomenal stain fighting abilities to them because they're repelling a lot of the water based stains, using the wrong product on there can actually set a stain into those.

And because of the chemistry of some of these products, they're intended for different carpet fiber types.

So we can help you navigate once we know what your carpet is.

And that'll require a technician to look at your carpet.

He has some tests he can perform right there in the home and check and help identify exactly what fiber type it is.

You know, wool carpets.

Wool carpets are amazing.

They're great natural fibers, easy to maintain and care for.

But uh, but they're, they are pricey for sure.

Right.

But, but they're a very, very high quality, durable.

That's how carpets used to be.

Was everything used to be all wool.

And then as they started to create synthetic carpets, nylon fibers came out.

Nylon is a really, really high quality fiber type.

Holds its shape pretty well for really long periods of time.

And so some of the longer performing carpets are that by the nylon type and then these new polyesters while they do a wonderful job at repelling the stain.

So if I spill some pie on there or maybe my coke.

Right.

I can get it out pretty good.

But sadly, you know, the, the wrong, the wrong chemistry can, can create challenges for those fiber Types.

Chemdray has a.

A consumer product.

So not just does the technician take care of it while he's there.

You know, if there's ever a spot or a spill or an issue.

But we have a neutral ph power of carbonation product called spot remover.

World famous spot remover.

And we sell it directly to consumers.

Nice and right.

Just as a way for a franchisee to help empower their.

The homeowner to make sure that that carpet is getting treated with something neutral that we know isn't going to damage the fiber, but will do a wonderful job of extracting the stainless steel.

I say if Kimberly can't get it out, no one can.

So we're going to give the first shot to for you as a homeowner to just use a can of this spot remover.

Right.

Spray it on.

You know, nine times out of ten is going to resolve the stain for you.

If not, then you call our professional.

Our guy will come out, he can fix that for you.

We have a whole lineup of chemistry very, very advanced training on how to fix spots and spills.

So it doesn't matter what you spilled on your carpet.

We're going to give the best shot at getting it out.

In fact, I have a picture from one of my dear friends up.

I'm in Logan, Utah.

Okay.

And a friend up in Boise, Idaho, who their little girl had taken nail polish.

They found mom's, right?

Mom's collection of nail polish.

There had to be like 18 colors of nail polish.

And she had a wonderful job with an art project on the landing of the stairs.

It was all over her.

All over the stairs.

Just.

It was so adorable to see the picture.

I'm like, oh, Picasso in the making.

But clean up technician out.

And we literally had to go line by line and get all that out of the carpet.

But it's a way to save that carpet.

Alternatively, it's replace the carpet throughout the whole stairs.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's if you can find something that kind of matches what the other one was too, right?

Yeah, much.

This could be a while you're at a project, but.

Yeah, yeah, it could be the whole house, Right?

Yeah.

Well, you know, I got to say, that's good marketing because now you've got a spot cleaner.

They come in, they clean it, and they go, thanks.

And now I got a clean out of my dirty carpet.

Well, you know a little bit about our process when we come into the home, because our aim is, number one, we want to clean for your health.

We want the carpet to look clean.

And we want it to be clean because it needs to be for your, for the health of your family.

We're going to identify for you, do you have kids in the house?

Do you have pets in the house?

Because we'll treat your home differently depending on how your lifestyle is.

And we'll go room by room and we'll evaluate the surfaces with you.

And then our technician has some pretty cool tools to help him identify where trouble areas might be.

If you know that things that you might not necessarily been exposed to.

Like for instance, you talked about these, the air filtration pieces, right.

Because of the way air moves throughout your house, sometimes there are gaps, whether they're near doors or sometimes on homes over against the walls.

Maybe two inches out from the wall, you'll see these little black lines develop and that's really air escaping out and through the construction of the house.

We have products, very, very fine particulate dust, if you will.

We call it air filtration lines.

And that stuff is just so fine, regular cleaning won't get it, vacuuming won't get it.

You know, you can throw some pretty mean chemicals at them, but they've got to, they, they've got to be extracted.

Right.

For your health.

So we have a product developed just for that.

Train our technicians on how to use it and they'll come in and they'll remove those filtration lines from anywhere in the home.

Is back to, you know, we clean for your health.

We need your home to be as healthy as it can for you.

That makes sense.

So Ed, when you get into a house, you know, so many people now have gone over to like a luxury vinyl plank or an engineered wood floor or even you've got Those, you know, six 50s and 70 cool mid century homes that have the, the brick or the flagstone or whatever when you walk in.

Those are all such different surfaces to clean and care for, but they can also be filthy dirty.

And you have no idea.

Yeah, yeah.

From the deepest shag on carpet down to really tight.

You know, sometimes people put that in their basement and with it with a tight loop on their carpet all the way through to hard surfaces.

There's some really unique surfaces out there like limestone, which is very porous, a stone or you might have granite, which is the opposite, right?

Yeah.

Through to ceramic tile, which ceramic tiles are just absolutely wonderful for cleaning.

But then you have grout right next to it.

And that grout can totally absorb a lot of gunk and dirt and debris.

In fact, I challenge practically any homeowner if you have a ceramic tile in your kitchen, go find a place where there's not a lot of traffic.

Look up near the kickboard and that's your original color.

You're not going to find that out in your walkways.

Right?

You've like, you've become accustomed that you have black grout or charcoal colored grout when the grout was actually originally light gray.

I have ruined.

So as a certified kitchen designer, I've designed thousands of kitchens in my career.

So many times I said, hey, you got a screwdriver?

Let's take the toe kick off the dishwasher for a second, get underneath there and they're like, this isn't black grout.

And whoever's cleaning, whether it's the guy or the girl or whoever that's in there cleaning, you can watch the face turn to horror.

It's so bad.

It's so bad.

You know, especially grouts, new grouts are a little bit different.

If you're using a great grout, there's some of those that are just super durable that they've got new technology and it's the dirt's now on the surface, not like it's deep in of those 80s and 90s grouts or, or older.

Yeah, those are a lot easier to clean.

And what we'll do on the grout is we have adjustable pressure.

So we don't want so much pressure that we're going to damage the grout and remove it.

Especially the older grouts.

Right.

Those can be a little bit more tenuous.

The newer, the, the newer grouts really have a lot of great qualities to them, but they're easier to clean.

But you do have to have extraction.

Otherwise we're just mopping around the dirt and it's just finding whatever pores it can get in.

And we just, we do need to extract it.

So we'll have very powerful extraction.

Those same truck mounted cleaning machines that we use to clean the carpets, we're using those to extract from our, from the grout as well.

Hyper focused on the space where we're extracting.

So we get, we get phenomenal extraction power from that.

So the right amount of water plus liquid, our chemical plus then the chemicals depend on the different type of surface because we don't want to damage any of the surface, the grout or the tile.

We don't want to etch it, don't want to change it.

But we're trying to use power of chemistry to help us get in and get the, get those, those dirt particles and the grime out.

Usually we'll go do a demo for a customer.

We'll find a spot, show them what their tile can look like.

And then of course, now you've got a clean spot, you sort of probably want to do the whole room.

So that's a win.

We love that.

But, but then you've got a clean looking space now we can seal it.

We have clean like clear sealers.

If you really love the color of your grout that it is.

But if you want to change the color of your grout, whether it's around the house.

We'll be right back after these important messages.

Welcome back to the around the House show.

To find out more about us, head to aroundthehouse online.com make sure you subscribe to the podcast and our social media channels.

Now let's get back to Eric G. And Ed Quinlan, the president of Chem Dry.

I think everybody out there, whether you've whatever surface you have having some kind of an air quality monitor, there's no excuse not to have one.

Now you can buy these things from on Amazon, you can get some good ones online, you can buy one from your, your favorite technology place.

But really having something out there to go, hey, I have a high particulate matter in my house.

What's causing this?

You know, I have a lot of chemicals in my house.

Is that the carpet cleaner that I was using in my machine that's off gassing that now really understanding what's going on in your air quality inside your home could be a big deal.

These surfaces can really play a part of it if you're not taking care of them correctly.

You know, we're, we're definitely part of a bigger picture, right?

You've got to be making sure that your vacuum is a HEPA filter vacuum.

Make sure that you're changing out the air filters in your, in your ventilation system on a regular basis and meeting those routine standards.

Make sure those are clean.

And then, you know, think of carpet as just as one more added benefit.

If you have wall to wall carpet, you know, we'll clean that will we'll be able to identify those air filtration lines and get those solved for you as well.

If you have area rugs, by the rug will help you develop a plan for how to make sure those are cleaned and cared for on a regular basis.

And then if you have hard surfaces, whether it's wood floors, engineered floors, you know, we treat those a little differently.

We want to know is it an engineered floor versus a solid plank?

Because that helps us understand the Cleaning pattern.

Some of these new floors, they look like wood, and you think they're wood, but they're not.

And they might be like a wood print on top, which is like an ND MDF underlayment.

And, you know, we ran into that where, you know, we have to treat that wood very, very differently.

You know, what happens when MDF hits water.

All of a sudden it expands.

Right.

So we want to make sure we're.

And you don't want your floor to buckle, so we really want to manage everything.

Right.

This for that floor, these new lvt.

Lvp.

LVT is luxury vinyl tile.

LVP luxury vinyl plank.

Planks look like wood, and tiles look more like stone or ceramic and.

Or slate whatnot.

Right.

And those, those surfaces, giantly popular.

They come in various grades.

Some are more brittle, some are more pliable, some come with padding, you know, all the different things.

Some lock together wonderfully, some don't lock together at all.

And.

Right.

And so literally, floor by floor, we need to evaluate with you what is the right plan.

And because we don't want to create new challenges down the road for you, and we want to, we want to give you advice on how to care for it in the interim.

So if we're in your house every six or 12 months, what's happening in between those times?

You know, especially if you've got kids, if you've got babies, right?

They're going to be laying on that surface, whatever it is, I guarantee you they're going to be on there.

Right.

And dads like to roll around on the floor with their kids and play.

And we want to pull out our Matchbox cars and drive them around and, you know, all the things.

We need it to be healthy.

We, we need it to be healthy.

So we got to do the, got to do the thing and get it clean.

Maybe grandma comes over.

I mean, pets are maybe a little different because kids, you've got, you've got concerns around their skin getting against all that and the messes that they might create dirt and grime.

But really, pets are a whole new level because you have the dander and the hair spots and spills, you know, in fact, at Chemdray, we have a product called Pet Urine Removal Treatment.

Nice if you.

To somebody's house who has a pet, especially a little dog.

Little dogs are harder than bigger dogs to manage, right?

Yep.

But these dogs find a spot and they love to pee there, right?

Yep.

Chembray has a product, this pet urine removal treatment, professionally applied, it will Annihilate the odor.

It will completely get rid of the odor.

And a phenomenal product and process.

It's very quick.

It does take a couple of days, like one to two days for it to fully, fully work.

And in really aggressive rooms that we're going to ask you to avoid that room for that day while it finishes the off gassing.

The way those urine odor molecules work is just over time, they release the odors, they decompose, right?

Yeah.

So we go in, we remove everything that we can remove, and then we apply our treatment, and the treatment goes molecule by molecule.

When it touches the molecule, it is going to accelerate that process so that.

That what would take, you know, six months to a year for of off gassing to get the smell gone is happening within the matter of 24 hours.

Wow.

In most instances, the odor's gone within eight hours.

But, you know, we work to get that work to get that done and get it done fast.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's the thing.

And I tell you what, with pets, it can be so horrible.

You guys should put like body cams on your technicians so you could do like a video channel of this.

You guys have had everything from the dog ran into the skunk and rolled on the carpet to.

You could write a book on the.

Crazy things you find in any odor this product works on.

In fact, probably should just call it professional urine removal treatment.

And to be honest, it's not just.

It's not.

Not just urine.

Like you mentioned, skunk smells.

Like, if all these odors, these bio odors, like this product works phenomenally.

It does a just a remarkable job.

And our franchisees stand behind it.

We stand behind it.

It's only available from chemd.

Right.

Most of our competitors are using other technologies like enzymes to try and remove the odors we're using.

Really, these are very advanced technologies and very, very effective.

And, you know, we work across our product line to gain patents wherever we can, so we can, you know, protect and support that for our franchisees because it's really important to them as it comes to the consumer.

And then we even have some ways to help you.

If you've got dogs and you, you're dealing with their messes when after we've treated the area, there won't be any smell there anymore.

So you might have the dog go back there because of habit, but they're not going back to mark the territory because there was already a smell there.

So that's a great.

That, that's a great relief.

As a homeowner, it Means you can actually, you know, to retrain the dog.

Hopefully.

Hopefully.

There's the plan.

Right.

And I've seen cats that aren't, well do the same kind of things.

You know, it's just those pets can really cause some havoc and cause some serious damage.

And if you can save having to buy the whole new living room or carpet by coming in and having a professional take care of it, that's a major win for you as a homeowner.

Yeah, totally.

Totally.

I think of it like a trifecta.

If a home has kids, this is a high priority for the deep cleaning and, you know, extra attention.

The home has pets.

We're gonna.

We've gotta identify what are those impacts and how do we help against all that.

And then lastly, is anybody in the home have any kind of allergies or asthma or sensitivities?

Right.

Because that's gonna help us make sure that we're using the right products, the right processes.

We're really caring for the home making.

You know, we.

We don't want chemicals that are landing on your carpets or your upholstery if you're sensitive.

Right.

In fact, our core cleaner, the natural that I was telling you about, there's no surfactants.

Right.

No detergents.

It's safe for kids and pets.

In fact, it's.

It's received the eco logo certification and the EPA Safer choice certification.

Is wool safe approved, Clean seal approved?

Yeah.

It's nice to know that you've got the power of something so gentle.

Yeah, but deep cleaning, Gentle for humans, but deep cleaning against the dirt.

Absolutely.

And, you know, we.

We've talked about upholstery a few times.

I just want to hit on it before we head out because we are running out of time.

But I want to make sure we talk about it because that dark brown or black couch that you have, that's made out of cloth, that is made out of fabric, it is way dirtier than you think it is, and I promise you that you just don't know it.

Yeah.

Oh, so true.

So true.

And even the leather, I mean, you often look at worn leather, but there's layers.

I mean, we can deep clean your leather, get all the gunk that builds up over time.

Leather will last forever if it's cared well for those fabrics, those fabric couches, we can clean them up and help really extend the life and durability of them.

Yeah, no question, no question.

Well, Ed, thanks for coming on the show today.

Is there anything that we didn't touch on?

I mean, you Guys have so many things that you can do for keeping that health up in your home as far as keeping things clean and keeping things in their best shape so they last the longest.

Yeah, I would.

My only comment is, is really think of, think of this as part of your overall care for your home.

And don't be afraid of it.

Carpets are.

They're very, very comfortable and soft.

We've seen the trends shift back to carpets in the home, in your bedrooms and in the family room.

So places where you want to be cozy.

But obviously it makes sense that those old trends of carpets in the kitchen or in the bathroom, I don't expect those trends to ever come back.

I hope not.

Yeah.

In fact, I hope they don't.

But, you know, the right surface in the right space for the right outcome.

And think of, of us, Chem Dry as a partner in helping you in your professional care and then giving you advice on your maintenance in between professional cleanings.

Perfect.

Ed, what's the best way for people to find their local, you know, their local dealer that lives in their neighborhood there, that can come over and care for their home like that?

What's the best way for people to track you down?

You know, Kim dre, we're in 29 countries.

We have a thousand locations across the USA and Canada.

Chances are we have somebody in your neighborhood.

Right.

And so just go to chemdry.com C-H-M-D r y.com or you can call us at 1-800-CHEM-DRY.

We'll connect you with a local operator.

Perfect.

Ed Quinlan.

Thanks for coming on today, man.

Keep doing what you're doing.

I love everybody having a clean house and it's a great time of year to do it.

I appreciate it, brother.

It's a great topic.

I love it.

Thanks for coming on today.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the House.

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If you have not subscribed to the podcast and our YouTube page, check us out at aroundthe house online.com we will see you next time.