What does "Dry Cleaning" mean?

[Donald]

There are different things that "dry cleaning means."
What does it mean in clothes cleaning, what it means in upholstery cleaning and what it means in carpet cleaning?
The first thing we think of is to 'dry clean my clothes.' This involves the use of a perk-ethane or solvent blend of petroleum products. Many clothes dry cleaners use a small amount of water in the solvent to improve cleaning results. Clothing is tumbled in the solvent mixture and then the solvent is cleaned and reused again and again. Why do they have to add water to the mix? Conduct an experiment. Take a glass of formulated Dry Cleaner and a glass of water and drop a sugar cube in each one. After a few hours the water will completely dissolves the sugar and at the end of the day the dry cleaners will still have the sugar cube sitting in the bottom of the glass. Solvents like Dry Cleaner do not have the ability to dissolve sugar or salt based stains. Without a little water added they would never be able to remove the drink spill stain from the clothes. The dry cleaning fluid does a better job with removing tar, oil, grease, while water cleaners do a better job on removing sugar and salt based marks.
Ok, now let us talk about upholstery cleaning. Natural fibers like cotton like to adsorb water, synthetic fibers like nylon like solvents. If I clean a cotton sofa with too much water then it might take too long to dry and water mark. If I use too much dry cleaner, I might soften the latex sprayed on the back of the fabric and soften the latex that is providing strength and stability to the fabric. The best way to clean upholstery is to use a little of both. On cotton fabric, a light prespray of a dry cleaner and then rinse with in internal spray upholstery tool using a neutral based cleaner. Buff fabric with a cotton towel as needed and repeat as needed. The application of the dry cleaner on the cotton first helps provide an oil barrier to push the water away from the fabric. This way you get both oil and water based marks removed and the fabric will dry fast. The internal spray upholstery tool does a great job controlling the water on the fabric. Conduct this experiment. Take a bucket of water, pour a quart of motor oil in it. The oil floats to the top. Pass your hand through the oil and place at the bottom of the bucket. As your hand passes through the oil the oil will stick to the skin and push the water away from the skin even at the bottom of the bucket. Now remove your hand and what you have is motor oil on the skin with water droplets on top of this.
On synthetic fabrics, do the reverse. Prespray you neutral water based cleaner on the fabric first, then spray a light coat of dry cleaners, agitate the two of them together, then rinse off with the internal spray hand tool. With all upholstery cleaning never let it dry on it own. Always force it dry. This means place in the sun, under a ceiling fan, use a hair blow drier, or use a carpet air mover.
On carpet the term 'dry cleaning' does not refer to the use of the solvents used in clothes cleaning or upholstery cleaning. Rather it means the carpet is dries in about an hour. The term does not refer to what is used to clean the carpets rather how fast it dries! If I where to clean your carpets with the same dry cleaning fluid that is used to clean upholstery and clothes it would create an indoor air quality issue and soften the latex that is helping hold the carpet together and it would not remove salt or sugar based spots. Here are a few ways a carpet can be dry cleaned or dried in one hour. You can steam clean or perform a standard hot water extraction and blow dry the carpet with air movers as you rinse off each half of a room (sometimes referred to as DriVapor). You can use an adsorbent powder method. You can used a dry crystal encapsulation method (some times referred to as dry foam or en-cap cleaning). You can use the encapsulation method and adsorbent powder together method. You can use spin bonnet method. You can use spin bonnet and en-cap method together. You can use any of the above methods and blow dry the carpet with an air mover. What do all these methods have in common? Answer, water. Water is the universal solvent. It is not really dry cleaning rather just dry-er cleaning.

Each method can have an entire article written about them or you can just watch our DVD set.

Links:
I condense 6 hours of training in a must need to know package.

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/training-pack-covers-basics-cleaner-needs-know-p-9965.html

and
Dry Cleaning fluid

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/shazaam-cleaning-solution-gallon-p-270.html

and
Neutral PH cleaner

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/shazaam-kryptonite-gallon-p-209.html

and
Learn more about the different types of upholstery tools

http://www.steam-brite.com/forum/showthread.php?t=43&highlight=internal+spray

and
Air mover with kick stand for upholstery and carpet drying

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/shazaam-dristorm-2200-mover-p-8860.html

and
Dry carpets and upholstery faster than ever before with a four vacuum motor portable

http://www.steam-brite.com/store/portable_electric_truckmount_shazaam-goliath-quad-42vacs-cleaining-with-14000-heater-1750-watt-heaterauto-fill-flood-pumper-complete-heat-p-10786.html

[shamim11004]

HI

The article was really very helpful.I actually didnt know about this earlier.So thanks and nice post about explaning the topic.

[Christopher]

irst, let's take a look at the differences between traditional and organic dry-cleaning. The former uses a chemical called perchloroethylene (or "perc"), which has known toxicity; exposure to high concentrations can, for instance, cause central nervous system effects such as dizziness and headaches. There is some controversy as to whether harmful residue is left on clothes. There is also concern about its environmental impact. So while perc is an effective cleaner, there has been a search for safer, gentler, more environmentally friendly cleaning methods.

Enter the organic dry-cleaning process. There is no government regulation about what constitutes organic or "green" dry-cleaning, so be wary as the words are sometimes used inappropriately. My two preferred organic methods are professional wet-cleaning, which uses safe compounds, and liquid carbon dioxide cleaning. Avoid the Solvair method, as it uses glycol, a compound suspected of having negative health effects. Some of the other so-called "green" methods use hydrocarbons, which are petroleum-based and therefore may add to greenhouse gases.

[vikismith]

Dry cleaning is any cleaning process for clothing and textiles using a chemical solvent other than water. The solvent used is typically tetrachloroethylene (perchloroethylene), abbreviated "perc" in the industry and "dry-cleaning fluid" by the public.

[SabinaJems]

Dry cleaning removes dirt and other stains from clothes without using water. Despite its name, commercial dry cleaning is not actually a "dry" process. Clothes are immersed in a solvent, usually perchlorethylene , instead of in water. These solvents are especially good at removing oil- and grease-based stains, but they have some drawbacks. For instance, the solvents used can make you sick if you're exposed to them constantly.
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[Shane231]

This is a really interesting article about dry cleaning which you show us the different among clothes, upholstery and carpet dry cleaning.

[Brigitta]

Informative article.Thanks for taking the effort to explain it in detail

[RenayRamey]

Nice article, helped a lot