Carpet cleaning in Harrow

Carpet cleaning in Harrow costs £36 for a bedroom, £43 for a living room and £61 for a through lounge, with each flight of stairs at £41. We use hot water extraction: a machine sprays hot solution deep into the pile and sucks it back up, dirt and all, in one pass. On most semis we park on your drive, which saves a lot of carrying.

Room prices

One-off jobs carry a £67 minimum. A lone bedroom would therefore be £67. Add a second room, or the stairs, and you are past it.

Steps on the day

First the furniture. Sofas, beds, chairs and coffee tables get moved or propped on foam blocks. Then a thorough vacuum with a dry machine, which a lot of firms skip, and it matters, because wet extraction over loose grit makes a sort of mud. A pre-spray goes on and sits for about ten minutes to loosen the soil. Heavy traffic lanes get worked with a brush. Extraction passes overlap, and the last few are dry passes to pull out as much water as we can.

Harrow’s water is hard. Rinse a carpet with it straight from the mains and, once dry, a pale chalky haze can show in the pile, most obviously on navy or charcoal. So the water going through our machine is softened first. It’s a small cost to us and it saves a call-back.

Metroland stairs are the worst carpet in the house

The typical interwar Harrow house has a single steep flight running straight up from the hall, with no landing halfway and no turn. That is one £41 charge. It is nearly always the dirtiest carpet we see, because every trip upstairs goes over it and an upright hoover can’t reach the crease at the back of each tread. We clean treads and risers and go round the edges with a hand tool.

A loft conversion usually means a second, narrower flight. Mention it when you call and it gets added at £41, so the figure is right first time.

Extraction compared with a quick surface clean

Bonnet cleaning and dry powders work on the top of the pile. In a guest bedroom that hardly gets used they can look fine for a couple of weeks. A hall runner or a stair carpet with years of grit ground into its base is another matter, and that grit only comes out with a machine that flushes the carpet through and pulls the dirty water into a waste tank.

Before we arrive

• Pick up the small things: toys, chargers, the dog’s bed, plants.
• Leave the big furniture to us, though wardrobes and anything fixed to a wall stay where they are.
• Show us where pets have had accidents, even old ones. Urine needs a different treatment from a coffee spill.
• Tell us if there’s a drive we can park on.

Drying times

Expect about two hours before the carpet can be walked on in socks, with furniture back by the evening. A shut-up house in wet weather is slower. So is a downstairs through lounge with a bay window, where the air barely moves, compared with a bedroom upstairs. Foam pads stay under wooden furniture feet until the pile is dry, or the wood can leave a brown mark.

In the flats around the town centre and Harrow Square we carry the machine up and set up in the hallway.

Which stains usually shift

Tea, coffee, mud, most food and most pet accidents come out completely or close to it. Red wine normally goes too, best of all when nobody has scrubbed it into the backing. Show us any older marks and we’ll tell you what to expect before starting.

Adding carpets to another booking

About half our carpet jobs ride along with something else. On an end of tenancy clean the carpets are left until the kitchen and bathrooms are done, and they are charged at the move-out rate, £29 a bedroom and £36 a living room, rather than the prices above. A deep clean is charged by the hour, but carpets within it still go at the room prices above. You can also have them done on a morning your weekly cleaner is already there.

Most carpet calls come from North Harrow and Rayners Lane, where the 1930s houses still tend to have fitted carpet in every room but the kitchen. Everything else we do is on the main page.

Questions we get asked

What does a living room carpet clean cost in Harrow?

£43 for an ordinary living room. A through lounge running from the front bay to the back window is £61. Booked on its own, a single room goes up to the £67 minimum.

Do you have a minimum charge for carpets?

Yes, £67 for one-off work. One bedroom alone is £67 instead of £36. Two rooms, or a room plus the stairs at £41, clears it.

When can we walk on the carpet again?

In socks after about two hours. Furniture can go back the same evening. Damp days with the windows shut take longer, and a ground floor room with a bay dries slowest.

Will hard water leave marks in my carpet?

It can if the machine is filled from a hard tap and nothing is done about it: a faint white bloom appears as the pile dries. We soften the water we use to stop that.

Can you do the stairs and the landing?

Yes. Each flight is £41 and the landing is always a separate £9, so a single flight with its landing comes to £50. Mention a loft flight when you ring and we’ll add it in.