Truckmount or Not?

[John]

I'm interested in getting into carpet cleaning. I don't have alot of extra money to play with but do want good equipment as I can. I have been looking at the truck mounts and portables and the protables are more in line with what I need to spend but does it look professional to the homeowner? You can go down to U-Haul and rent something that looks very similar to most portables I've seen. All of the guys around here advertise Powerful Truck Mounted Units which would lead one to think the portables might not be any good. I have used a portable before but never a truck unit. Is this something that a homeowner will pass on your service for a truck mount guy? Could a guy make his own truck unit? I found an instant water heater that runs off of 220v that is made for a entire house. It cost 475.00 at Lowes. Alot of new houses around here use them to save space in the home. I have a 10,000 watt generator already. I'm not sure that would be enough as I forgot to read on the heater about max draw. I have a 100 gallon recovery tank, white plastic tank from farm supply store. I don't know what I would do about a vac pump or feed pump. Is this as easy as it sounds to build?

Donald:
You have ask a bunch of great questions so I will try to tackle them one at a time.

1.) First, does the home owner really care whether or not you use a truckmount? The answer to this depends on the customers past experience with carpet cleaners. If they have had a great, caring technician that cleaned with a high powered portable, that customer will never consider a truckmount of that much importance. On the flip side, if the customer has had a poor experience with a portable cleaned, follow by a great truckmount clean, you know that truckmount is always going to be what the customer looks for. If you took a poll from people that call on the phone and ask carpet cleaning companies "how much do you charge for carpet cleaning?", you will find that fewer that 25% of customers know what a 'truckmount' is. This number is steadily climbing as the percentage of truckmount used in the field has increased substantially over the last five years. If I am hiring employees to perform the work for me, a truckmount can help make up for the lack of care an employee has for the customers. The strongest portables are still half as strong as the smallest truckmount. I can assure you though that even a small low pressure portable can make a nasty carpet look like a truckmount has cleaned it if the technician prescrubs the carpet first with a rotary floor machine, takes enough time to make sure that he post spot cleans any remaining stains, re-rinses, grooms, and blow dries. It all a mater of speed. Truckmount cleans will be faster on most jobs. It is not uncommon for a two manned crew with a truckmounted system and blow threw a house in 40 minutes, while the careful one man operator with a portable, scrubber, injection sprayer, and a Grandi Groomer with take 2 and a half hours to detail a entire home.

2.) Can you build your own truckmount? Yes, you can. But it takes alot of research and development, if you don't have all the bugs worked out. I used to build truckmounts from 1981 through 1991, and it is an overwhelming project to do it right. In fact if you new everything about what part you would need, to the best places to purchase every part, you could save about $3,000 or more. Building you first truckmount will take you about a year of your spare time, and after you finish redesigning the unit and rebuilding it a few times you could have just purchased a professionally built one in the first place. I would not recommend this coarse of action.

3.) Can you use the hardware store heater to clean carpet. No, these heaters are designed for low pressure. (Usually only 100 psi.) Secondly the whole house heater requires 14,000 watts of power in order to heat the water fast enough to take the cold 40 to 65 degrees water to 200 degrees as if passes through. The maximum amount of wattage you can plug into in a house is 6000 watts at the electric drier or water heater outlet and 10,000 watts out of the stove or range plug. Because of these issues, you would have to use the customers hot water first, then run it though this hardware store heater, then to you pressure pump, then out to you cleaning wand. This creates another problem, the head of pressure pumps are only designed for incoming water temperatures up to 140 degrees. That's only 20 degrees hotter than what is comes out of the tap any way. The high pressure heaters, like the Volcano 6000 watt and the Volcano 9000 watt, are made out of stainless steel and can be used at pressures up to 1000 psi so they can be mounted after the pump.

4.) Should you consider using your generator? No, most homes have an electric drier outlet (many types on electrical converters are available to convert this outlet into four 120 volt outlets) as well as many other circuits in the kitchen and utility/laundry room. This takes you too far from the carpet. The maximum hose length of a dual 3 stage extractor is 75 ft. (see past message board post) This will be a few feet short from reaching the back bed room on the second floor. So, if you have to take the equipment into the customers home any way, just use their juice.

5.) Will the plastic water tank hold a vacuum strong enough to clean carpets? No, the only way it will, is you have to weld metal brackets on the inside of the tank. All carpet cleaning vacuum pumps (centrifugal and positive displacement) will suck you tank into mangled mess and can place kinks in the side of the tank. You can use a stainless or aluminum tank to create the vacuum in and use an automatic pump out system that pumps the sludge into the plastic storage tank as long as the water is filtered before if passes through the transfer pump.

You can view some of our pumps at http://groups.msn.com/Steambritecom/steambriteequipment.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID= 21
and
http://groups.msn.com/Steambritecom/steambriteequipment.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID= 117



I don't have 220 plug in my house. What do you do when you run into this area that doesn't have a 220 oulet? Do you ofer training videos to show the best way to clean? When you say the smallest truck unit is twice as powerful wouldn't it need to be to pull through the longer house? Would that really make them about the same? Some of the models feature auto-dump. Where do they dump at? I live in SW Missouri and am having a hard time finding someone that sells the systems around here so I can at least look at them. How do I tell if my market area needs another guy doing this? I see a few ads in the yellow pages that say 4 rooms for 99.00. I can guess that means a few are doing it for 60.00. I would guess. Just like anything I'm sure some guys like working for free. What rotary floor machine do you reccomend? I can understand the productivity of a truck mount but think a portable is all my budget will allow at this time. I guess I don't completely understand the external heater. It goes between the unit and the wand? Thanks for the reply.


Ken:
NO 220? RUN IT WITHOUT THE HEATER ON NEVER CLEAN WITH ONLY ONE VAC MOTOR ON. We are working on making training videos at this time . this project is going to take awhile to complete. although longer hose runs does effect the air flow/vacuum it does not noticeably effect the pressure or flow rate of the water delivery system.

Also the suction is still noticeably better at the wand on a small truckmount than with a large high performance portable. run dump hose to: Toilet; Yard(may not be legal); garbage disposer; utility sink; or other access to sanitary sewer. there's always room for one more carpet cleaner especially if you provide first class service. I would rather be the highest price in the book, but worth the difference then scrambling to be the cheapest and not have time to, or be able to afford to do a great job.

Hild HS 300RPM is my pick best price and 300 instead of 175 RPM is easier to hold on to when using a carpet brush and does a better job faster when bonnetting, stripping hard floors, or buffing. If you have the customers to keep a 5 plus job a day machine busy then go for the T/M. If your just building a customer base and can keep up with the load doing 3 jobs or less a day then you might want to consider a portable for now. You can do just as good a job with a portable, it will just take longer.

An external heater has a solution line with a male Q/C fitting that plugs into the extractor in the same place you normally plug the solution line to the wand, and it also has a female Q/C fitting into which you plug the solution line to the wand and there you go 'Joe'!