Area Rug Cleaning
No carpet cleaning company has a rug wash plant at their house — anyone advertising rug pickup is usually taking it to their garage and adding a fee. Spiker cleans your rug at your home for a fraction of that cost, treated by fiber type, because wool, silk, cotton and synthetic each require completely different handling and the wrong method causes permanent damage. Fiber identification and a dye-stability check come first. If a valuable rug truly needs full submersion, we tell you honestly.
What actually matters
An area rug is not carpet you can pick up. Carpet is attached, backed and almost always synthetic. An area rug may be wool, silk, cotton, viscose or synthetic, hand-knotted or machine-made, and dyed with anything from stable modern dyes to vegetable dyes that will bleed the moment they get wet.
Wool is the one people damage most. It is alkaline-sensitive — high-pH cleaners strip its natural lanolin and leave it harsh, brittle and permanently dulled. Wool also holds enormous amounts of dry soil, often several pounds in a room-sized rug, which is why thorough dry soil removal before any moisture is the most important step.
Viscose, sometimes sold as art silk or bamboo silk, is the material that catches people out. It looks like silk and costs a fraction of it, and it turns yellow and loses its texture with plain water. If we identify viscose we will tell you honestly what can and cannot be achieved.
Dye bleed is the risk on anything hand-made or older. We test every color in an inconspicuous area before the rug gets wet. That test takes a few minutes and prevents the one mistake that cannot be undone.
There is a conversation about rugs the trade mostly avoids having, so here it is. If you spent serious money on a rug, it belongs in a professional rug-washing facility — a wash plant. A real plant submerges the rug completely and then spins it out in a centrifuge, and that is not a process a truck or a driveway can reproduce. There are very few of them in Northern California. And no carpet cleaning company has a wash plant at their house, including this one.
That matters because of what gets sold. A company advertises rug pickup, collects your rug, and takes it to their own garage — where it is cleaned exactly the way it would have been cleaned on your driveway, with a collection fee added on for the drive. It comes back as though it went through a plant. It did not, and nothing about it was handled the way a plant would have handled it. We do not run that play. We do not own a wash plant, so we do not imply that we do, and if your rug is valuable enough to need one we will tell you to take it to a facility where washing rugs is the whole business. Saying that costs us the job, and it is still the right answer.
What we can do is clean the rug at your house and save you the send-out entirely. It is the same sequence the carpet gets: a counter-rotating brush worked across the rug first to lift the dry soil out, then an alkaline cleaner to release what is bonded to the fibre, then an acid rinse to bring it back to neutral. Natural fibres are handled as natural fibres, on their own chemistry. It is a genuinely thorough clean, and it is honestly not the same thing as full submersion and a centrifuge. Those are two different services and we would rather you knew which one you were buying.
Where the rug gets cleaned is not flexible, and it is worth knowing before you book. A driveway, a garage floor, tile or LVP are all fine — they shed the moisture. We will not clean a rug laid over carpet, because the padding underneath cannot dry and what grows in it is mildew; that is the same reasoning behind not setting furniture back down on damp carpet. And we will not clean one over wood or laminate, because wood carries coatings that swell and laminate does not tolerate moisture at the seams. So a rug needs somewhere to be, and the garage or the driveway is almost always the answer.
Two things have to be true before we arrive, and we would rather put them in writing now than negotiate them at your door. The rug needs to be out and ready, in the garage or on the driveway. We are not going to move furniture, lift couches, take a sectional apart or drag a rug outside — that is not part of this service, and it is the same policy that applies to every other room we clean. And we need access to power, because the counter-rotating brush has to run before anything else happens.
The last one is a refusal rather than a rule. Some rugs bleed. If the dye testing shows the colours are going to run, we will not clean it, because cleaning it is the thing that would ruin it. A rug like that needs a plant equipped to handle bleeding safely. We will say so and hand it back rather than gamble with something you cannot replace.
What is actually included.
Ours, and the cheap version.
| Spiker | A very low advertised price | |
|---|---|---|
| Price you are quoted | Published in full at the bottom of this page, before you call | Advertised figure; the real number arrives once somebody is in your living room |
| What counts as a room | Up to 15×15 ft, stated in writing. A staircase is one room | Commonly undefined — hallways, closets and foyers become rooms on arrival |
| Dwell time | Real dwell before extraction; chemistry needs minutes to break an oil bond | The first step cut, because it looks like standing around |
| Acid rinse | Always. Neutralises the alkaline and carries residue out | Usually skipped — the customer cannot see it on the day |
| Pre-vacuum | Every job. Free if you do it, priced per room if we do | Often assumed to be part of the machine |
| Furniture | We clean around it and say why moving it back onto damp carpet causes mildew | Moved and set back the same day |
| Pet urine | UV-mapped first, then flooded and extracted — an attempt, never a guarantee | Surface pass, often sold as removal |
| What you are told | What will not come out, before the work starts | After the invoice |
How we do it.
Same four phases, every job.
Inspect
We walk the job with you before anything gets wet. Fiber identification matters more than most people realize — a burn test or a close look at the pile tells us whether we are dealing with nylon, polyester, olefin or wool, and each one takes a different chemistry. We find the traffic lanes, the filtration lines along baseboards, the spots you have already tried to treat, and we tell you honestly which ones will come out and which ones will not. A stain that has been sitting in a jute backing for two years is a different conversation than last week’s coffee, and you deserve to hear that before we start rather than after.
Pre-treat
Pre-spray goes down matched to what we found in the inspection, and then it sits. Dwell time is the step cheap jobs skip because it looks like nothing is happening, and it is the step that does most of the work. Chemistry needs contact time to break the bond between soil and fiber. Spray and immediately extract and you are just rinsing the surface. On heavy traffic lanes we agitate with a groomer to drive solution down to the base of the pile where the soil actually lives.
Clean
The machine stays in the truck. That is not a detail — a truck-mount produces heat and vacuum that no portable unit can approach, and vacuum is what determines whether soil leaves the building or settles back into the fiber as it dries. We work in overlapping passes with dry strokes between wet ones. Hot water extraction is the method the Carpet and Rug Institute and most major carpet manufacturers publish, and for most carpet it is the method required to keep the warranty valid.
Protect
We groom the pile so it dries standing up instead of matted flat, set up airflow, and apply protector where it makes sense for the fiber. Then we walk it with you and tell you the truth about the next twenty-four hours — what will look different when it dries, what might wick back and need a second pass, and how long to stay off it. Most callbacks in this trade are not cleaning failures. They are expectation failures.
Area Rug Cleaning questions
we actually get asked.
From $2 per square foot, $2.50 with enzyme treatment, $3 with Scotchgard. Final pricing depends on fiber type and condition.
Because it changes the method. Wool needs pH-controlled chemistry and careful drying. Silk and viscose need extremely low moisture. Synthetics tolerate far more. The material determines the work.
Yes, with wool-safe chemistry. Wool is alkaline-sensitive — high-pH cleaners strip its lanolin and leave it permanently harsh and dull. Dry soil removal before any moisture is the critical step most people skip.
Fringe is usually cotton even on a wool rug, so it soils faster and yellows differently. It is cleaned separately with different chemistry. Fringe that is already damaged or unraveling we will flag rather than make worse.
We test every color before the rug gets wet. Hand-made and older rugs are the risk, particularly with vegetable dyes. That test takes minutes and prevents the one mistake that cannot be reversed.
No, and neither does any other carpet cleaning company working out of a truck. A real wash plant submerges the rug and spins it out in a centrifuge, and there are very few of them in Northern California. What we do is clean rugs at your house, which is a different service — a good one, but not that one. If your rug is valuable enough to need a plant, we will tell you to use a plant.
Usually not, and it is worth asking directly where your rug is going. The common version is that it travels to the company’s own garage, gets cleaned there exactly the way it would have been cleaned at your house, and comes back with a collection fee attached. Ask whoever is quoting you three questions: do you own a wash plant, is the rug submerged, and does it go through a centrifuge. If the answers are vague, you are paying for a drive.
If it is genuinely valuable, yes — and we would rather say so than take the job. Full submersion and a centrifuge do things for a rug that cleaning it on a driveway cannot, and a facility that only washes rugs sees more of them in a month than we will all year. What we offer is a thorough clean at your house without the send-out. That is the right answer for most rugs in most homes, and it is not the right answer for a rug you would be sick about losing.
On the driveway, on a garage floor, or on tile or LVP — surfaces that handle the moisture. Never over carpet: the padding underneath will not dry and mildew grows in it, which is the same problem as putting furniture back onto damp carpet. Never over wood or laminate either, because wood coatings swell and laminate does not cope with moisture at the seams. Have somewhere in mind before we come out.
The rug itself, out and in place, in the garage or on the driveway. We do not move furniture, lift couches or take sectionals apart to get to a rug — on this service no more than on a carpet job. And we need power we can reach, because the counter-rotating brush runs before any moisture goes down. Get those two right and the rest is ours.
Then we stop, and we hand the rug back. If the dyes are going to bleed, cleaning it is the thing that would ruin it, so we will not do it. A rug like that needs a wash plant set up to handle bleeding safely. Older and hand-made rugs and vegetable dyes are where this comes up, and it is the one call where being told no is the service.
There is no fixed schedule. Two adults with no pets and no kids will usually go 12 to 18 months. Add animals and it moves to 6 to 8 months. Animals plus children is closer to every 6 months, with protector annually or sooner. The real answer is the carpet — when oils build up enough that the traffic lanes look grey, it is already overdue.
Area Rug Cleaning across
six cities.
Now the numbers.
Every one up front.
Area Rug Cleaning — what it costs
Extras, priced the same for everyone.
Why this is not optional
Animals leave body oils in the carpet wherever they lie down. That is the source of the smell people describe as wet-animal — not the fur, not the surface soil.
What happens if it is skipped
We will not run hot water and high pressure across contaminated carpet without treating it first. Heat and moisture without an enzyme spreads the contamination through the pile instead of removing it, and the room smells worse afterward than it did before. This is the single most common reason a homeowner says their carpet smelled bad after a cleaning.
What we do
An enzyme goes down across the carpet face before any extraction begins. Enzymes are not deodorisers — they are biological agents that digest the organic material producing the odour. They need contact time and they need moisture to work. Those same animal oils are also what sand sticks to, so this step protects the fiber as well as the air in the room.
What protector actually is
Not a stain shield sold as an upsell. It is a bonded coating around each fiber and it is structural — it holds the twist and it holds the fiber closed.
What happens as it wears off
Sand grinding against protected fiber creates microabrasions in that coating. Every year it gets thinner. Once enough is worn through, the fiber starts to open — the trade word is blooming — and the tight twist unravels into a frayed strand. Light stops reflecting off it and starts scattering. That is the grey. It is permanent, at any price, from anyone.
Why annual
We are not selling you the same thing twice. We are re-gluing the fiber before it opens. Without reapplication there is nothing standing between the sand and the fiber, and the breakdown runs continuously until the carpet is replaced. It also has to go onto clean, neutralised fiber. Protector will not bond to carpet carrying alkaline residue — that is the most common reason people say protector did not seem to work. It was applied over residue and never bonded at all.
$200 minimum service charge per visit. We confirm your full price before we start. No surprises.
Ready when you are.
One call. Cleanest floors you've had.
GALT (916) 919-7642 · LODI (209) 663-0823 · MON–SAT · 9AM–5PM
WE DO NOT MOVE FURNITURE · PRE-VACUUM REQUIRED