"Great post Mary, I have many customers coming to me with smelly rugs. And I always have to tell them about the way they make the rugs and the latex used. I love the map you have as the background of your Blog. Keep up the good work Mary, I'm looking forward to the next installment.
With warm regards Captain Rug Wash"
Here is my response:
Thanks for reading my blog, I just popped over and viewed yours Andi. I hope that your Rugcare.TV is going well.
I have had a few tufted rugs come in last week that I could smell right away and when I mentioned it to the client they said that they couldn't smell it. Which to me seemed hard to believe since I was a few feet away and could smell the latex glue off gassing. In defense of the clients I have to say that when you get used to a smell in your home it is hard to notice it.
When one lady came in to pick up her clean tufted rug and she said that she did notice there wasn't a funny smell any more when she sat in her favorite chair. It was because the rug was not there. She asked about what kind of rugs she should buy and I showed her that any rug where you can see the pattern on the back is best and where in Victoria BC she can go to find good rugs to buy.
It would be nice if there were regulations enforced about the quality of materials companies used to make hand tufted rugs, but there is not...yet. If we as consumers would let rug galleries and manufactures know that we want quality area rugs then hopefully they would stop selling and making poor quality rugs.
Now not all hand tufted rugs have a bad smell and shed, but there are too many out there that the good ones get missed. I have written many blog post and a website page about how to check to see if the tufted/designer rug is the one you want to buy is good. This is my checklist when buying rugs:
- First make a claw with your fingers and scratch the rug in a circle and tug on the fibers, this will give you an indication if the rug will shed a little or a lot. All wool rugs will shed a bit, but if you can make a small fur ball of fibers you may want to keep looking.
- Second bend the front of the rug back so you can see the bottom of the fibers and smell, yes smell, the rug. This will let you know if the rug has an odour from the latex glue. Also smell the back of the rug too to get a full sense of any pre-existing smells.
- The last thing to check for is if the rug is crunchy sounding. To check this bend the corners up and down to listen for a cracking sound from the latex glue. Some glues dry out quickly and make the rug crunchy sounding. This may cause the rug to leave fine white dust on your floor. This dust is the glue breaking down and it never stops.
Getting a tufted rug cleaned with any of these problems, shedding, smell or white dust, does not fix or stop them from happening again. When your tufted rug has any issues, it will always have these issues. That is why it is so important to really look, smell and touch the rug you want to buy. This goes for new rugs and second hand rugs.
You wouldn't buy a car without test driving it, or try on a new pair of shoes first so why buy an area rug without testing it too?
Here's to fresh smelling rugs, RugloverMary
