Get down on your hands and knees and smell the carpet. Seriously. If a room smells like a pet but you can't see a stain, the source is almost always a spot or two where urine soaked through to the pad, and your nose will find it faster than your eyes will.
That spot is the whole problem. Surface cleaning handles what sits on the fiber. Urine that reached the pad dries into salts, and those salts pull moisture right out of the air. In a Chapin summer, with lake humidity hanging over everything, the smell comes back every muggy week no matter how many times the carpet gets shampooed.
Safe-Dry of Chapin treats it with a live enzyme that follows the urine down into the pad and breaks it apart there. There's a $25 coupon for it.
How we handle it
The technician starts by finding every affected spot, including the ones you don't know about. Pets go back to the same places, and a room with one visible stain often has four or five more along the baseboards and under the edge of the furniture. We use detection tools to map them before anything goes down.
Next comes the enzyme, and enough of it to reach as deep as the urine went. That's where store products fall short. They treat the top half inch of fiber and leave the pad loaded. The enzyme needs a little time to work, so this part isn't rushed.
Cats and dogs leave different maps, by the way. Cat urine is more concentrated and stronger smelling, and cats like corners, the edges of rooms, and the spot behind a door. Dogs tend to go near the doors they want to go out of, or in the middle of a room they don't use much, like a formal dining room. Knowing that helps us find the old spots you've forgotten about.
Then the carpet gets a regular cleaning, which lifts the loosened residue and the visible stain out of the fiber. Stubborn discoloration gets extra spot work. At the end you walk the treated areas with the tech, and if you'd like, a protector can go on to make the next accident easier to blot up.
Smells and stains besides pets
Urine is most of this work. The same visit handles other trouble, too:
- Musty mildew odor from carpet that stayed damp, common in lake houses that sat closed all winter
- Smoke smell in carpet and furniture
- Food, grease, and oil stains, including the kind that wicks back up a week after somebody scrubbed it
- Some paint spots, depending on the paint and how long it has been there
We'll tell you before starting which ones should come out completely and which will only lighten.
What we can't promise
Urine is acidic, and over time it can permanently change the color of carpet fiber. When that has happened, the odor goes away and a faint mark can stay. Where urine has gone all the way through into the subfloor, usually at an old repeat spot, cleaning alone may not finish the job, and a section of pad might need replacing. The tech will tell you that during the inspection, so you aren't paying for something that can't work.
Left alone, urine does steady damage. It weakens fiber, so old spots wear faster than the carpet around them. It fades and shifts dye. It breaks down the pad. And it keeps feeding odor-causing bacteria every time the air turns damp, which in Lexington County is a good part of the year. Treating accidents early is cheaper than any of that.
And one opinion we'll stand behind: if a cat has started going outside the box, call the vet first. No treatment keeps up with an animal that has a medical reason to keep going.
Where we treat it
Wall-to-wall carpet, area and oriental rugs, sofas and cushions, and mattresses. A rug with a urine problem gets the enzyme right where it lies; it doesn't leave your house. For more on furniture, see upholstery cleaning.
Mattresses are the hardest case. Urine goes straight down into thick foam, and there's no pad to pull up and nothing to dry it from underneath. We can clean the surface, treat the odor, and make a real difference on a fresh accident. An old, soaked mattress may be beyond saving, and we'll be upfront about that before you pay for a treatment.
If you want the long version of how urine behaves in carpet and pad, and why it flares up on humid days, our sister site on pet urine removal goes into far more detail than we can fit here.
Between treatments
Blot fresh accidents with a white towel and plain water. Skip the vinegar-and-baking-soda mixtures, which mostly make the spot wetter and push it deeper. Avoid anything with heavy fragrance, too. It hides the smell from you, never from your dog, who will go straight back to the same spot.
Most pet homes do well with a treatment every six to twelve months, more often with several animals or a puppy still learning the rules. If an accident turns up a few days after we leave, call us.
We guarantee the work, and if you aren't 100% satisfied there's no charge. Somebody picks up at 803-310-3848 day or night, or you can book online. Take $25 off the pet treatment with the coupon on our specials page.