Black Lines on Edge of Carpet

What are those Pesky black lines along the edge of your carpet?

Do you have dark and unsightly black lines along the edge of your carpet or underneath doors? Have you tried cleaning it yourself or even called a professional cleaner to try to remove these lines without results? The longer they have been there, the more difficult it is for anyone to remove. The following information will help you understand what the underline cause black lines on edge of carpetof black soil lines and what can be done to help avoid their development.

Lines around the edges of walls and under doors are called filtration lines or soiling. They are predominately found in the highest levels of the home where the most humidity occurs. They occur when your home HVAC system forces air into the room without proper circulation. To equalize the pressure, air flows underneath doors and walls. The carpet in this area will then act like a filter, trapping the very fine particles of dust mites, soot, and other carbon based particles which then lodges deep into the carpet fibers. The result is dark and unsightly lines that can be quite difficult to deal with as well as always finding its final resting place along your walls and under doors. These lines are very common and most homes will eventually get them. Those folks with white and lighter color carpet will see the lines first since darker carpets tend to hide them. If you burn candles, you are also putting more soot into the air and will speed up the process of filtration soiling and cause even darker lines to develop.

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Filtration soil is a term used to describe dark, grayish lines that may appear on carpet. This is not a carpet defect, but a situation in which dust and other airborne pollutants can accumulate on the carpet face fibers in areas with a concentrated flow of air over the carpet or through tiny cracks or other open areas under the carpet. The soiling condition can occur quickly, or it may develop over a period of months or years. The level of soiling is dependent upon the volume of airflow and the level of pollutants in the air. Filtration soiling has nothing to do with the quality of carpet selected. The condition will obviously appear more pronounced on lighter colored carpet than darker carpet.

Filtration soil areas may appear around baseboards, under doors, along the edges of stairs and possibly away from walls where plywood sub flooring materials have been joined.

Keeping air inside the home as clean as possible can be accomplished by reducing indoor air pollutants, such as cooking emissions, fireplace smoke, burning candles, cigarette smoke, and by the installation and regular replacement of high efficiency HVAC air filters. Where all homes and their HVAC systems are different, it is difficult to identify all the effective methods within each unique home to reduce or prevent filtration soiling, but here are some helpful suggestions that will help stop, slow or at least stabilize the continued development and/or growth of these pesky black lines:

* As much as you would like to keep those doors closed to those unused rooms…don’t. This is a main contributor of these lines under your closed door thresholds because of possible poor ventilation within those rooms while the HVAC system is in operation.

* Preventing airflow through carpet and carpet edges by sealing cracks in the sub-floor, as well as under baseboards and edges of stairs, may also reduce filtration lines and soiling problems.

* Other contributors of Filtration lines or soil may be fireplace or automobile emissions, candle soot, residue from furniture polishes, fine sand or clay particles, cooking oils, or a host of other soils or a combination of soils. Oily airborne contaminants trapped by carpet fibers will serve to attract more dry soil. Try to reduce the use of these items.

* Humidity level in the home should be less than 50%. Use a dehumidifier or air conditioner if needed. An inexpensive hygrometer can be purchased at any hardware store to keep track of humidity level in the home which is another major contributor that can accelerate this growth.

* Vacuum your carpets (especially along the baseboards), often. The frequency of vacuuming should be determined by how many pets and people live in the home (ie. 2 pets and 2 people = 4X per week, if you have a combination of 7 or more, carpets should be vacuumed daily). Always use a high efficiency filter bag and filter (HEPA)

* Filters on the heating/cooling systems should also be changed every 2-3 months with a rating of at least 1200 or higher (to filter out dust mites and dead skin cells)

* If you do like to burn candles in your home, make sure they are a ‘Soy’ wax based candle. Soy wax candles are all natural and do not emit that toxic black smoke like the traditional Paraffin wax candles do.

* Have your carpets professionally cleaned at least once a year and multiple times a year if you already have an issue with these lines. If professional carpet cleaners are there multiple times a year, they can keep those lines from forming, as well as continually working on reducing some of the built-up layers that already exist. Every time your carpets are professionally cleaned, make sure to spend that little extra charge on Carpet & Fiber protection in those rooms and areas that have the filtration problems. This will help protect the carpet from continued growth, as well as assure those new accrued layers will come off on the next professional carpet cleaning.

While no one cleaning technique may be successful in all filtration-soiling situations, recent innovations in soil- and stain-resist treatments applied to carpet have reduced the effort previously needed to remove the filtration soil. However, the complete removal of contaminants from the soiled areas can be complicated and with varied results, depending on the type of contaminant materials present, as well as how long they have been there.

For more information on filtration lines, feel Free to Contact Us or Call Carpet Dry-Tech @ 678.368.5991!

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