So, how do you clean 20 year old carpet? Given that I was out of that vintage cleaning solution they used to sell, and that the carpet was probably going to be ripped out eventually, I decided to bend the rules in the instruction manual a little bit.
So I took a couple buckets of water and dumped them on the carpet, the followed up with a bit of powdered detergent, and I scrubbed the whole room down with one of those hard bristle brooms.
Yeah yeah, I know, the manual says to never, under any circumstance, under penalty of law, never ever let your carpet get soaked. It also says that if you do your ears will fall off the next day, but I figured I'd take my chances.
Then I set the machine to maximum vac, and vacuumed the carpet dry. And opened all the windows and doors in the room and left it like that the entire day.
And it actually worked pretty good. Since there was a whole lot of water, the entire carpet foamed up and the foam did it's function of trapping the dirt in, instead of letting it fall back to the bottom. I dumped the water out of the vac.... and it was pitch black. 20 years worth of dirt for you.
Not to mention that now I can actually see some texture in the carpet again. Before it was just flat as a pancake, now the fibers actually rise again.
It's a shame eventually it's gonna get ripped out... good to see my experiment worked though =D
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