Red Rocks Carpet Cleaning & Upholstery Care strives to more than just carpet cleaning service. Our goal is to ensure you enjoy a great experience while we’re in your home or business. We recognize that carpet cleaning is often seen as a necessary task to maintain a clean-living working environment clean. Our primary goals are to provide you with fresh clean carpet and ensure your complete satisfaction with our service. As a small family-owned business that values old fashioned customer service. We also rely on referrals to family, friends, and co-workers to grow our business. With that in mind, we want you to be completely confident in referring our carpet cleaning service to anyone that you know. Take a moment to read about our cleaning process and see what sets us apart from other carpet cleaning companies.

 Safe Cleaning Solutions

Our cleaning solutions is designed with the safety of your family and pet in mind. Throughout the years, as we’ve refined our carpet cleaning process, maintaining the health and well-being of your loved ones has remained our top priority. This is why our cleaning method are trusted by Daycares, nursing homes, and other similar facilities. When we clean there will be no sticky residue are left behind, leaving your carpet soft and clean in soft, without residue that could cause them to soil prematurely. This is just one of many benefits to using our carpet cleaning service.

Removing Pet Odors and stains

As pet owners, we must deal with the necessary task of cleaning up after them when they leave stains and odors on our carpets or furniture. Despite this challenge, there are several effective methods for removing pet stains and smells. Keep in mind that maintaining a clean and odor-free home is essential for the health and happiness of you and your pet.

We offer two types of pet odor removal. The more cost effective of the two options is the topical odor removal.  For our topical pet odor removal, we use a specialized product designed to break down urine and salt crystals, making them easier to extract from the carpet. We apply this product directly to the affected areas and let it sit to allow it to work effectively. Afterward, we use a sub-surface extraction tool to remove the urine from the carpet’s padding, backing, and fibers. We repeat the treatment until no more urine is detected. Finally, we address any remaining stains with our specialized spotting product.

Topical Odor Removal

This type of odor removal products works on an ionic or molecular level. How it works is a malodor smelling molecule will chemically bond with odor removal molecule to create an odorless molecule. To put it in simple terms, the pairing agent odor removal product cancels out the bad smell. We’ve found that these products do work quite well, however one major issue we see is that when using pairing agents, the actual source of the odor isn’t being removed from the carpet. We firmly believe the carpet should healthy and truly clean.

Enzyme Agents

Enzymes are good bacteria and their job is to search out bad bacteria such as the kind in urine that causes the odor. When the enzymes encounter the bad bacteria, they begin to break it down and eat which destroys the malodor causing bacteria. Enzymes are an excellent choice when it comes to pet odor removal and is what we mainly utilize to attack pet urine odor.

At Red Rocks we are going to:

• Locate and identify cat urine in carpet with a black light
• Manually inspect walls and baseboards in affected areas for damage
• Manually inspect for urine in carpet and pad
• Depending on severity, clean or remove baseboards and drywall
• Replace affected carpet pad and seal subfloor if necessary
• Thoroughly clean both the carpet fibers and backing with pet enzyme cleaner
• Let dry and reinstall carpet

 Locating and Identifying Urine in Carpet

There are a few methods to find the source of the cat urine smell. Our preference, and the preference of many professional carpet cleaning companies, is to use a black light. Cat urine glows under a black light due to the phosphorous contained in urine. This makes it easy to spot.

We recommend using a black light with a wide beam pattern and plenty of LEDs. You do not have to spend a fortune, and a cheap light can still work, it just makes the cat urine harder to see.

Using a Black Light

To use the black light, first turn off the lights and close the blinds. While it does not have to be completely dark in your home, trying to spot pet urine of any kind of daylight or a bright environment will be much tougher.

Next, scan the areas and identify where the cat urine smell is emanating from. Likely what you will find is that your problem may extend beyond simply having cat urine in the carpet. Often the cat pee has been sprayed on the baseboards, drywall, and an entire corner of the room. Take note of affected areas.

Manual Cat Urine Carpet and Wall Inspection

The next step is to see how bad the cat urine damage is. This is going to take a bit of poking, prodding, and pulling back the carpet.

After you’ve located the cat urine with the blacklight and before you start pulling back the carpet, we recommend examining the drywall and baseboards first. This will give you an idea of how bad the problem is and what level of deep cleaning you may need.

Cat Urine in Drywall and Baseboards

Start by using a blunt object, like a dowel or rod, to press on the drywall and baseboard. If a cat has frequently been using an area as a bathroom, many times you will find the drywall or composite baseboards have been saturated with urine.

Drywall will be soggy or crumbling, not firm. A light poke will not provide the resistance you would expect and may pass straight through. Baseboards (especially composite) will show visible damage like bubbling paint and warping.

If you have damage as described above, now may be a good time to call a professional carpet cleaning company that specializes in pet odors and stains. These contaminated areas of drywall and baseboard likely need to be removed, sealed, and replaced.

Wood base boards can potentially be salvaged; however, drywall or composite baseboards will need to be discarded and replaced.

Inspecting the Carpet and Pad

Once you have located the cat urine with a blacklight and investigated the drywall and baseboards (assuming that is relevant to your issue), it’s time to really see how bad the cat urine in the carpet and pad is.

Pull Back and Examine the Carpet

Using needle nose pliers, you will need to reach under the baseboards and gently pull the carpet back, being careful not to rip the carpet. Once you have done this, it should be easy to spot the cause of the cat urine smell.

Examine the backing of the carpet. Cat urine should clearly show each ring or a cluster of rings where the cat has peed, and the urine has dried. It will appear as dark rings or a darkened area.

Look at the Tack Strips

Once the carpet has been lifted you can get a look at the carpet pad and the tack strips. Are the tack strips discolored, yellow or black? If so, those will need replacement.

Examine the Carpet Pad for Damage

Does the carpet pad have a moisture barrier? This will look like a plastic sheet on top of the pad. If so, it may be possible to clean it. If not, the carpet pad will likely show damage and should be replaced.

If the carpet pad does not have a moisture barrier, you should pull back the carpet pad to see if urine has made it through and into the subfloor beneath. Whether the subfloor is wood, or concrete is irrelevant.

Both are porous surfaces that cat urine odor can penetrate. If the urine has made it to the subfloor, it will need to eventually be encapsulated to get rid of the cat urine smell and keep it from creeping back up.

Once we have  identified the source of the cat urine odor, you have a few options. Either you can attempt to clean the area using a pet enzyme cleaner or other home remedies, or you can tackle the problem head on, knowing that you’ve done the job right.

In our experience, when dealing with cat urine, it’s best to remove damaged materials and replace them. Carpet itself can be thoroughly cleaned, however carpet pad (unless it has a moisture barrier) likely should be replaced.

Typically Urine Stains Have Already Dried

Most of the time when you discover cat urine in a home, it already will be dried. Cats are often sneaky or are urinating in places that you may not initially notice. Often this discovery is not a single incident, either. Because it’s typically not an isolated incident, there is usually enough damage to warrant restoring the area, not just trying to cover up the odor.

Surefire Steps for How to Clean Cat Urine From Carpet

• If the drywall and/or composite baseboards are affected, cut out and discard the affected areas. For solid wood baseboards, you can likely paint them with two coats of Kilz oil based paint to seal them.
• If you have a moisture barrier on your carpet pad, clean it thoroughly the cat urine odor is gone. Otherwise, cut out and remove any cat urine saturated carpet pad and replace with a piece of pad that is of the same thickness and density.
• If cat urine made it through to the subfloor, clean the area, let it dry, then seal the subfloor (wood or concrete) with two coats of Kilz paint.
• Thoroughly clean and rinse both sides of the pulled back carpet. Both the face of the carpet and the backing will need to be thoroughly rinsed. Use a pet enzyme carpet cleaning solution for urine.
• If you have a portable extractor, that will work best. Repeat until odor is removed and carpet is thoroughly rinsed. Let the carpet dry. Use fans if you have them to speed drying. Make sure the urine smell is gone once dry.
• Replace any removed drywall or baseboards. Paint and prep the area.
• Reinstall the carpet using a knee kicker. If it is a large area, a power stretcher may be necessary to properly stretch carpet back into place.