Upholstery Cleaning
Upholstery and mattresses are where dust mites live, feeding on the dead skin we shed into the cushions. Spiker cleans upholstery by fabric type: identification comes first, because the method that is safe on a synthetic sofa can permanently damage a natural fiber. We release the built-up body oils, neutralize the fibers, and reapply protector so it stays fresh longer.
What actually matters
The code on the tag decides what is safe to use
Upholstery is not carpet with a different shape. The cleaning code on the tag tells you what the manufacturer will stand behind: W means water-based cleaning is acceptable, S means solvent only, WS means either, and X means vacuum only — no liquid at all. Ignoring that tag is how a sofa gets ruined.
The most common failure we get called to fix is somebody cleaning an S-coded fabric with water. It leaves rings, it can shrink the fabric over the frame, and on some materials it causes permanent browning as tannins wick up from the padding.
Body oil is the real load, and it is not water-soluble
Body oil is the real problem on the pieces people use most. It is on the arms, the headrest and the front of the seat cushions, and it is not water-soluble, which is why a rental machine passes over it and leaves it there. It needs the right pre-treatment to break down before extraction does anything at all.
More of the dust load sits in the soft furniture than in the carpet
Here is the part that surprises people. Most of the allergen load in a house is not in the carpet — it is in the mattresses and the upholstery. The mechanism is dust mites. They live on the dead skin we shed, and it is their microscopic waste that goes up into the air and into our lungs. So if you want to work on the source rather than the symptom, you take away the food supply, and the way you do that is vacuuming.
Two vacuuming habits do most of the work
The shedding is concentrated exactly where you would expect. Eight hours a night in a bed, four or five hours in the same seat on the couch in front of the television — the body is shedding the whole time, and to a dust mite population that is a feeding frenzy in the two or three places you use most. Two habits do most of the work. Every time the sheets come off to be washed, vacuum the top of the mattress while it is bare; it takes a minute, and that is the only moment the surface is ever accessible. And do not go more than a week without vacuuming the couch and the recliner you always sit in. Those two are worth more than anything you can buy.
The plastic couch cover was solving a real problem
Underneath the allergen question there is an oil question. People used to throw plastic covers over a good couch. It looked ridiculous and it was solving a real problem — the body oils. We stopped using the plastic and the oils did not stop arriving. They work into the fabric and down into the foam, and over months that becomes its own biological experiment: oils, bacteria, and everyone who has sat there with a cold. It is the same soil chemistry as carpet, held in a surface you put your face against.
Animal oils are the hardest thing to get back out
The body oils are not the worst of it, though. The worst is what animals leave behind — the microbiology oils that produce that wet-animal, kennel smell in a room. Once that has built into the cushions it is very hard to get back out, and the reason is almost always time: people live with it, stop noticing it, and call a year later. If animals lie on the furniture, six to eight months is the outside limit. The alternative is simple and it works — a waterproof pet blanket over the cushions, the kind Costco sells, and vacuum underneath it anyway.
The annual reset: release, neutralise, protect
What we do once a year is a reset, and it is the same three-step chemistry the carpet gets. An alkaline step to release the body oils and the animal oils out of the fibre. A neutralising rinse, because alkaline residue left in fabric is sticky and sticky attracts soil — the same reason a badly cleaned carpet resoils within weeks. Then the protector goes back on, and it only bonds to fibre that has actually been neutralised. Release, neutralise, protect. Skip the middle step and the third one does not work, on a couch exactly as on a floor.
Leather, on the same visit
We also clean and condition leather as an add-on when we are already on-site for carpet, tile or upholstery.
What is actually included.
Ours, and the cheap version.
| Spiker | A very low advertised price | |
|---|---|---|
| Price you are quoted | Priced per piece, from a photo, before anyone is in your house | Advertised figure; the real number arrives once somebody is in your living room |
| How the quote is locked | Text a photo of each piece. The quote comes back against those photos, and that is the price | A figure over the phone, revised upward once the pieces are in front of them |
| The minimum | $200 covers the trip out. Bundle your pieces to meet it rather than paying it for one chair — we will tell you that before you book | Not mentioned until the invoice |
| Fabric | Identified from the tag, then tested in a hidden area before anything gets wet. An S-code means solvent only | One method for everything, whatever the tag says |
| 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 of the fabric | Usually skipped — the customer cannot see it on the day |
| Pet urine | UV-mapped first, then flushed 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.
What will not come out.
Told before the job, not after.
Every one of these is something we would rather say standing in your living room than have you find out once the invoice is written. Where a piece has a ceiling on how far back it comes, this is where that ceiling is. Most callbacks in this trade are not cleaning failures. They are expectation failures.
Oil that has been in the fill for years
Body oil and animal oil arrive on the face of the fabric, and while they are still sitting there an alkaline step releases them and a hand tool draws them back out. Given long enough they stop sitting on the fibre and work into it, and then down into the fill underneath, and what has gone into the fill is past the reach of anything applied to the surface. A piece cleaned at six to eight months comes back well. The same piece at three years is a different job with a lower ceiling, and we would rather tell you where that ceiling is at the walk-through than after you have paid.
The fill itself — we clean the cover, not the block inside it
A cushion is a fabric cover over a foam block, and the two cannot be treated the same way. The cover is cleaned and extracted with a hand tool under strong vacuum recovery. The block cannot be wrung out, and nothing that could wring it out would be safe to do to your furniture — over-wetting a piece buys you water marks and mildew in the frame, which is a worse problem than the one you started with. Most of what a household actually notices lives in the cover and comes out with it. Where the fill has taken on years of oil, cleaning the cover improves the piece without resetting it.
A smell that is coming from the fill rather than the fabric
Press down into a cushion and you push air out through material that has been collecting for a long time. That is the test, and it is why a piece can pass a visual inspection and fail a nose. An enzyme digests the organic material that produces the odour, and it can only work on what it actually contacts, so this is an attempt rather than a certainty and we say so before we start. Fragrance sprayed over the top does the opposite of helping — most of those products are sticky by design, they go on with nothing to rinse them back out, and the residue that stays behind holds soil.
Water marks on a fabric that should never have met water
An S-coded fabric is solvent-only because water itself marks it. Once somebody has run a rental machine or a supermarket bottle across one, what is left is not soil and it does not respond to cleaning: rings where the wet edge dried, shrinkage where the cover tightened over the frame, and on some materials a brown cast pulled up out of the padding as it dried. That is the most common piece we get called out to look at, and on a lot of them the honest answer is that the mark is now part of the fabric. It is also the reason the tag is read before anything else happens.
Nap that has already been worn off the arms and the headrest
Fabric shows colour because light reflects off intact fibre, and the arms, the headrest and the front edge of the seat cushions are where a piece is actually used. Once the surface there has been abraded flat, light scatters instead of reflecting, and the fabric reads dull and grey beside the panels nobody touches. That is fibre damage rather than soil. Cleaning it gets it clean; it does not put the surface back, and anybody offering to bring a worn arm back to new is describing something that is not physically available. Treat that offer as information about the company.
Colour that has gone, rather than a stain sitting on top of it
Bleach, benzoyl peroxide off a face cloth or a pillowcase, and certain houseplant fertilisers take the dye out of the fibre rather than adding anything to it. The headrest is where we see it most often, because that is where a face and a hair product meet the fabric every evening. What is left is not a stain sitting on the cover — it is colour that is no longer in it, and no cleaning process puts colour back. On a small area it can sometimes be dyed back by hand, which is repair work rather than cleaning, and it is quoted separately.
Anything that has already had a product put on it
The single most common reason a mark will not come out is that something was already put on it. Supermarket spotters, fabric sprays and carpet products used on furniture set material into the weave in a way a professional pass cannot undo, and they leave a sticky residue that pulls soil straight back to that exact spot — which is why the ring so often ends up looking worse than the original spill did. Tell us what went on it. It changes what we try, and occasionally it changes the answer from no to yes.
Urine that reached the fill or the frame
A surface accident on a cushion and a piece that has been used repeatedly are two different jobs, and the difference is not visible from above. We map it under UV light before quoting, because the size of what is inside decides the work rather than what you can see on the cover. Flushing and drawing it back out is a genuine attempt and it resolves a great many of them; it is never sold as a certainty, because until a piece is opened up nobody knows how far it travelled. Where it has been in the fill and the frame for years, the honest answer can be that the piece is past what cleaning does.
A natural fibre the wrong chemistry has already changed
Wool and the other protein fibres are not synthetics with a different label on the tag. Cleaned with standard high-pH synthetic chemistry they come back harsh, dull and changed, and they do not come back from that. It is the same principle the tile side of this business runs on: the material decides the chemistry, and identifying what is in front of you is most of the skill. On furniture the tag is the first read, a test in a hidden area is the second, and both of them happen before anything gets wet.
Upholstery Cleaning questions
we actually get asked.
Photo quote per piece. Text a photo and we give you a number. Bundling a sofa with chairs on the same visit makes the trip more economical for you.
W means water-based cleaning is acceptable. S means solvent only. WS means either works. X means vacuum only, no liquid. We check the tag before we touch anything, and if there is no tag we test in a hidden area.
Usually yes, and it is one of the most satisfying parts of the job. Body oil is not water-soluble, which is why home machines do nothing to it. It needs the right pre-treatment to break down first.
No. Upholstery is cleaned with far less moisture than carpet, using a hand tool with strong vacuum recovery. Most pieces are dry within a few hours.
More of it sits in the mattresses and the soft furniture than in the carpet. Dust mites live on the dead skin we shed, and their waste is the part that becomes airborne. Which makes the fix less exotic than people expect: take away the food supply by vacuuming the surfaces where the shedding actually happens, and have the oils and trapped debris extracted out of the fabric once a year.
The couch and the chair you always sit in, weekly — do not let it go longer than that. The mattress, every time you strip the sheets to wash them: vacuum the bare surface before the clean ones go on. That is the only moment it is accessible and it takes about a minute. Between those two you are taking away the food supply instead of chasing what it produces.
Six to eight months at the outside. Animal oils are the hardest thing to get back out of a cushion, and the difficulty is almost entirely a function of how long they have been sitting in there. If you want to stretch the interval, put a waterproof pet blanket over the cushions — Costco sells them — and keep vacuuming underneath it anyway.
Because what produces it is not on the surface. It is the microbiology oils worked down into the cushion and the foam, and a household machine has no way to reach them or lift them back out. This is also the one thing in this trade where waiting genuinely costs you: a couch cleaned at six months comes back well, and the same couch at three years is a far harder job. We will tell you honestly which one you have before we start rather than after.
Yes, and for the same reason. Protector is a bonded coating on the fibre, it wears off with use and cleaning, and it goes back on after the fabric has been cleaned and neutralised — never over residue, because it will not bond to residue. That is the annual reset: release the oils, neutralise the fibre, put the protector back. On the pieces a family actually uses, it is the difference between fabric that stays serviceable and fabric that goes flat and grey.
It will cover it for a few days and leave you slightly worse off. Most of those products are fragranced and sticky by design, and they get sprayed on with nothing to rinse them back out. What stays behind is residue, and residue holds soil, so the fabric gets dirty faster than it did before. Odour control that works is subtractive — you take the source out of the cushion. Anything sprayed on top is covering something that is still there.
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.
How we actually do it,
start to finish.
Every step, in order, in Brian’s words — including the part most companies leave out. Nothing here is a sales pitch; it is the job.
1. The fear open
Watch what happens when you sit down.
WHAT COMES OUT WHEN YOU SIT DOWN2. Name the cloud
Dust mites. Their waste. Dead skin. Pet dander. It's in the cushion, and every time somebody sits, it goes into the air in the room and into your lungs.
3. The plastic couch callback
Your grandma covered her couch in plastic. Everybody made fun of it. She wasn't wrong about the problem — she just picked a rough solution. The body oils she was trying to keep out are still going in. Nobody covers couches anymore and nobody's dealing with what's underneath.
4. Germs sticking to oils
Here's the part people miss. The fabric is coated in body oil. When somebody's sick and they cough on that couch, the germs don't fall off — they stick to the oil and stay.
5. Time compression
Now run that forward. Month after month, layer on layer. It stops being a couch and starts being a science experiment.
IT BUILDS IN LAYERS6. The animal transfer
Then the dog gets up there. Animal oils go straight into the fabric. That is where the wet animal smell comes from. It isn't the air, it isn't the room — it's in the cushion.
7. The damage warning
Leave it long enough and those oils work all the way into the fiber instead of sitting on it. At that point it can be permanent. There's a window on this.
8. Alkaline with enzymes
First we put down an alkaline treatment with enzymes. The alkaline breaks the oil loose. The enzymes go after the bacteria and the microbiology that causes the smell.
STEP 1 — ALKALINE WITH ENZYMES9. Extraction
Then we pull it out with a four inch upholstery tool. Hot water extraction, controlled, so the fabric doesn't get overwet. You can watch the oils leave. It comes back to raw fiber.
STEP 2 — HOT WATER EXTRACTION (commonly called steam cleaning)10. Acid rinse
Then an acid rinse to neutralize everything and get the fabric ready for the last step.
STEP 3 — NEUTRALIZING RINSE11. Odor treatment for pet households
If there are animals in the house, we add a treatment on the fibers for the microbiology oils that cause that smell. Almost every pet owner brings this up, so we handle it on the way through.
12. Protector
Last, protector goes on. Next spill sits on the surface long enough for you to grab a towel instead of soaking straight into the cushion.
STEP 4 — PROTECTOR13. Close
Spiker Carpet and Tile Care. Galt and Lodi. Thirteen years.
Upholstery Cleaning across
six cities.
Now the numbers.
Every one up front.
Upholstery 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.
Where the urine actually is
Not on the carpet. Through it. Urine passes the face fiber, through the backing, and soaks into the pad — and on a large or repeated accident it reaches the subfloor. What shows on the surface is a fraction of what is underneath. You will not find it in daylight. Animals go where you are not, and older deposits often leave no visible mark at all while staying fully active.
Why it has to be dealt with before cleaning
Cleaning over urine spreads it. Water carries the contamination outward into carpet that was clean, and it wicks back to the surface as the carpet dries. So the flush happens first, and only then does the room get cleaned.
What we do
Map the real extent with UV. Flood the area with enzyme in enough volume to reach the depth the urine reached — the pad has to be flushed, not misted. Then draw as much back out of the padding as the machine physically can. This is a genuine attempt and it resolves a great many of them. It is never sold as a certainty, because until the floor is opened nobody knows how far it travelled. Pulling carpet, pulling pad and sealing a subfloor is construction work and Spiker does not do it.
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