In today’s video, I’m flying over one of my favorite fibers for carpet, nylon! We talk a little about the history of nylon, the types, the generations of nylon. We go into the care and maintenance of nylon carpet, both the DIY and professional stuff you need to know. We fly over what to look for when buying new nylon carpet. And there is a big warning out there when it comes to DIY spot and stain removal!

Let me know what you think, any comments or questions are welcome!

Show transcript:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to another exciting edition of Flying Under the Rug with me, Dave Grigsby, the Flying Rug Guy, brought to you by Zerorez® of Idaho. Insanely clean carpets are just a phone call away. Give them a call! If you’re in Boise at 208-383-1000, 208-383-1000. And if you’re in Idaho Falls or Eastern Idaho, give them a call at 208-427-3133 or go to zerorezidaho.com and schedule your carpet cleaning online. And if you’re in another part of the country or Canada or England, give them a hit at zerorez.com and find your local Zerorez® service provider.

Okay, today we are going to be flying over one of my favorite fibers, nylon. Nylon is awesome. It’s what I’ve got in my house and I love it. Okay, so in our last video, the one about wool, we were talking about wool being the gold standard of fibers. Nylon is the gold standard of synthetic fibers. Now, I know there’s going to be people that are going to argue with me on that, but I’m right. Nylon is a synthetic fiber. That means it’s extruded from a polyamide polymer base. That means it’s plastic. It was developed by DuPont in the 1930s and we’ll see that they also developed polyester. So DuPont does plastic, or did plastic. There are two types of nylon. There’s type six and type 6,6 nylon. And we’re going to talk about why that’s important.

Types of Nylon:

The two types of nylon, type six, it’s a single monomer. That means there’s one little tiny molecule chain in the fibers and so they’ll they’ll add those together and and stack them. It’s slightly softer than type 6,6. It’s a more elastic so you can stretch it out and it’ll spring back a little bit better. It’s easier to dye and I will say that for sure. It is way easier to dye type six nylon than it is to dye type 6,6 nylon. It’s more absorbent. It absorbs more moisture and because of that, it’s a little more susceptible to to differential expansion. If you’re a professional carpet cleaner, type six nylon is going to take longer to dry. If you’re a homeowner and you’ve had your carpets cleaned and you’ve got type six, it’s going to take longer to dry. It absorbs more water. Therefore, it takes longer for that evaporation to happen. It does have a melting point of 220° centigrade and that means that it’s a little bit more flexible and when we you get those furniture marks in there the the fibers start to untwist a little bit. Getting really good heat on that, in a carpet cleaning for example, can help to restore that. It’s also easier to recycle because of that small monomer chain, makes it a lot easier to recycle. So, that’s kind of a cool thing about type six nylon. Type 6,6 nylon has a double monomer. So, it’s got two of those little molecules put together. It’s more resilient. It’s a little bit stiffer. It’s not quite as soft. It’s a little bit harder. And that also makes it harder to dye. Means it doesn’t fade as easily, but it does it is harder to dye. And it’s got a melting point of about 265°. Usually where we see type 6,6 is going to be in higher-end residential or commercial carpets. Okay.

Generations of Nylon:

First Generation:

There are five generations of nylon fibers at least when it comes to carpet cleaning and carpet installation, that kind of stuff. The first one we don’t see anymore, but we’re going to go over it anyway because it’s kind of fun. In the is the first generation. This was made in the 1950s and the 1960s. Super durable. I’ve cleaned carpet in from the 1950s and that carpet was still in great shape. That stuff is amazingly durable. Some of the problems though, it is prone to staining and to fading because it would lose its color or it would accept colors really easy, accept dyes really, really easily. It also magnified dirt. Now, you remember when we were talking about wool fibers? Wool hides dirt, but look at nylon. This is what a nylon fiber would do. It actually magnifies that dirt. It’s clear. It’s round. It’s a tube. And it just magnified that dirt. Made it look so much dirtier than it actually was. And it had a static buildup. Uh those of us that grew up in pre 2000s, we used to run across the carpet and and try and drag our feet and get that static electricity build up and then go find our siblings or our parents and try and shock them and and see what was going on with that. So that and make a joke and it was it was lots of fun.

Second Generation:

In the second generation of nylon, so this was in the 1970s, they introduced two different things. The first thing was what’s called bulk continuous filament. Continuous filament means it’s really long. Wool fibers and other natural fibers are all staple fibers. That means they’re short. That means they’re 6 to 8 in in length. When those get twisted together, then it can cause shedding problems. It can cause fuzzing. We’ll see that on newer carpets, newer rugs that haven’t had that that fuzzing, that shedding yet. And it’ll look like like the carpet is fuzzy on the top of it. And that’s just because it’s shedding. It’s new carpet and it’s losing those filaments.

The other thing that they introduced was what is called the modified cross-section. And so you’ll see these are a couple of different styles that you might see. This one, the the triangular one, that’s called a delta formation. And that’s a little bit more common these days. That’s kind of what what most of the fibers are moving to. But that breaks up the cross-section. It breaks up the reflection. And so here you can see looking through some of these these fibers, these filaments that are shaped this way, it breaks up the reflection. It hides the soil a little bit better. It is still susceptible to staining and to static buildup.

Third Generation:

In the 1980s, 1990s, they came up with the third generation of nylon. And in the third generation of nylon, let me go back a slide here. They introduced the anti-static filament. It’s a little piece of carbon that helps to reduce that static buildup. And so, we didn’t get that quite so much anymore. and that’s actually a really important thing because fires can start because of static electricity. So reducing that static buildup is , was actually a really big deal.

Fourth Generation:

Okay. In the 1990s and the 2000s, the fourth generation of nylon fiber came out and they introduced solution dying. Most of the time when they dye carpet, they dye it by either in a big vat, a big just big vat of dye, and they they run the the clear carpet fibers through this big vat or they’ll print dye it. And that’s what they do more most often today is they’ll print dye these carpet fibers and it’s like sending the carpet through a gigantic inkjet printer. Solution dying they take dye and they are pigments actually and they put them directly into the vat of the polymer. And so the poly the fiber itself is that color. Think of it kind of like looking at a carrot, cutting a carrot or an orange or a beet, something that’s got color all the way through it. That’s a solution dyed fiber. If it’s an acid dyed fiber or an alkaline dyed fiber, the color is on the outside of the fiber and kind of like um like an apple or a radish or something like that where the color is on the outside only and on the inside it’ll be clear. It helped improve color fastness and stain and fade resistance. Solution dyed nylons are amazing.

They also added chemical treatments to the nylon fibers. This would be like Scotch Guard and Stain Master, Teflon. Those are kind of the big names that are out there. But it’s a coating that goes on top of the fiber that helps to reduce soiling, makes it so that soils don’t stick to the carpet fibers so that when you vacuum, they’ll come out easier. If something gets spilled on the carpet, they clean it cleans up way way easier. Some of the problems with the treatments, they do wear off over time.

Fifth Generation:

And so in the fifth generation nylon fibers that came those came out in the 2000s they also introduced molecular engineering for stain and fade resistance. So that stain resistance is built in better. It still wears off. It’s still not as permanent, at least not as much as the manufacturers say. I’m the one that sees it 10 years, 15 years after it gets installed, 5 years after it gets installed. I can tell you that stuff does wear off over time. And yes, I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying that, but I said it anyway. Okay. They also added what are called acid die resistors. If you look at a nylon fiber underneath a microscope, it looks kind of like Swiss cheese. It’s got lots of little holes in it. Those holes get filled up with dye and that’s what dyes the carpet. So, instead of allowing those holes to remain open, and then if Kool-Aid or or red wine or something gets spilled on the carpet, they’ve got these pieces of clear dye. Those are the acid dye resistors that fill in those holes so that the carpet won’t accept any more dye and that’s been a really awesome thing.

Pros of Nylon:

Okay, some of the pros of nylon. Nylon is really durable. We like to say in the industry, it’ll ugly out before it wears out. It’s kind of like those avocado green refrigerators. They’re durable. They’ll last forever and you’ll need to replace it because you want to change the look of it. you’ll just get sick of it before it’s actually time to replace it, before it actually needs to be replaced. Nylon carpet can be very, very similar to that. Again, you’re going to get what you pay for. It’s resilient. It’s elastic. It’s strong. It’ll bounce back on you. You can stretch it out and
it’ll spring back. And it’s strong. It doesn’t scratch super easily.

It is stain resistant when it’s treated. If it’s not treated, it will stain and it will stain fast. So, when your carpet cleaner says, “Do you want to get a fiber protector put on?” Yeah. Yeah, you do. Unless you want to have to deal with stains later on. So, get that fiber protector put on, and that’ll help protect your carpet. It’s color fast. It doesn’t bleed. You can you can get it wet. You don’t have to worry about the colors bleeding all over the place. If you’ve got a nice oriental rug, wool oriental rug, and it gets wet, those color, you’ve watched it happen. Those those colors will bleed out all over the place. nylon, you’re not going to have to worry about that.

Nylon may also spring back after being crushed by furniture. So, we’ve had several incidents where where I’ve come in and I’ve cleaned the carpet and they’ve got furniture marks and the the furniture marks come out right after cleaning and other times when they haven’t. And customers often ask me, why why isn’t this happening? It happened in my old house when I when I had the carpets cleaned, everything cleaned up great and and the furniture marks came out. Why isn’t it happening in this carpet? This carpet is a polyester. Polyester crushes and it breaks down and doesn’t spring back as easily. So, making sure that if you’ve got lots of big furniture you’re planning on moving, getting a nice nylon carpet can really, really help with that. Or if you like to move your furniture around, rearrange things, getting a nylon carpet can really, really help with that.

Cons of Nylon:

Okay. Some of the cons with nylon. Nylon stains easily. Remember when we talk about absorbent, if anything is absorbent, it’s going to stain easily. Acid dyes, those are the dyes that we find in fruit drinks. Kool-Aid, Jell-O, red wine, particularly the more budget friendly red wines are going to have dyes in them. Decaffeinated coffee has these dyes in it. Those can stain the carpet. They’re the same dyes that are used in the carpet. Um, so we want to make sure that we’re trying to keep keep those dyes off the carpet or protect the carpet.

It’s also olophilic. That means olio meaning oil and phillic meaning like or love means that it absorbs oil. So it is an oil. It’s plastic and plastic  is made out of oil. It’s made out of petroleum. So oil-based stains can also occur very easily. Now the definition of a stain means it requires a chemical treatment to remove the color. So oil can stain it and it can become permanent. Acid dyes can stain it and it can become permanent. Any some of the other things like turmeric, mustard, curry, those kinds of things can permanently stain your carpet or at least stain and be very very difficult to remove.

Nylon is also very chemically sensitive, especially to high alkalines. And it’s not so much the nylon, it’s not the fiber that’s so chemical resistant, it’s the dyes that are chemical or chemical sensitive. And so having strong alkalines, if you accidentally spill bleach on it, hypocchlorous or not hypocchlorous acid, sodium hypochlorite, laundry bleach can bleach carpet and bleach those dyes and get rid of those dyes uh almost immediately. Strong acids can also cause this. Toilet bowl cleaner can bleach your carpet. So, it’s not affecting the carpet, it’s affecting the dyes in the carpet. Most of the time, those are repairable.

it’s also absorbent. Again, that means it stains easily and it’s going to stay damp for a long time if you get it wet.

When looking to buy:

Okay. When you’re looking to buy a carpet, customers will ask me this all the time. What kind of carpet should I buy? I like nylon personally. When I’m looking at a nylon carpet, it I mean, talk to your your your carpet cleaning or your carpet sales professional. But nylon is really what’s going to last a long time. So, if you’re wanting to keep your carpet and keep it looking nice for a long period of time, get a nylon. If you’re throwing it into a rental property and it’s going to be cheap and it’s going to get destroyed anyway, get a polyester. Get something cheap that you can replace and you’re not going to feel too bad about it. But if you want to keep it looking nice for a long period of time, get a good nylon carpet. You’re going to look at the twist. That’s the how how many twists are in that that individual yarn. The higher the twist rate, the stronger that fiber is going to be. The longer it’s going to last for you. You want the fibers to be really close together. You don’t want them splayed out. You want them to be nice and close together. That’s called density. You want a high density carpet for for longevity. Again, if you’re looking to just throw it away in a year, get the cheap stuff. Don’t don’t spend the money on on good carpet. Some of the things to consider if you’re looking at a six versus a 6,6 nylons are going to fade.

If you’ve got it next to a sliding glass door in a couple of years, you’re going to have a white stripe right next to that sliding glass door, usually right underneath where the blinds go. So, you’ll have this white stripe. One of the bad things about type six nylon. So, if you’ve got a lot of windows or big open spaces, you’ve got south facing windows, get a type 66 nylon. Getting a solution dyed nylon would be even better. That’s going to be more expensive, but in the long run, it’ll be better for you and better for your carpet. High high-traffic commercial, definitely go for the the 6,6 nylon. Let’s see.

Solution Dyed vs. Print Dyed

Solution dyed versus print dyed. Solution dyed is harder but not impossible to stain. It’s less likely to fade and but printed is easier to replace/repair. You can’t you’re never going to match it. If you have to replace a room of carpet, you’re never going to match match the stuff. If you have to replace your hallway or your stairs, you’re never going to match the bedrooms uh with your dyes. But it’s a lot easier to match it if you have a print dyed nylon versus a solution dyed nylon because the batches are never going to be exactly the same. Print dyed is also typically going to be a little bit less less expensive.

Home Maintenance:

Okay. Maintaining your nylon carpet, vacuum it regularly, daily in the traffic areas, two to three times a week and what can be seen and one time a week underneath the furniture. Like move the furniture and vacuum underneath it. That’s really what’s necessary uh in order to maintain your carpet properly. because I know that that’s not going to happen. I I mean I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I can count on two hands the number of people that I know and believe vacuum on a daily basis uh because their carpets are absolutely immaculate. Actually, I’d be happy if you vacuumed once a week, but um yeah, the the general rule of thumb is once one time per week per person or pet in the house. If you’ve got, you know, you, a spouse, a couple of kids, and maybe a dog or three dogs, you’re going to be vacuuming seven times a week. Um, because you want to vacuum once per person or pet in the house, okay? And vacuum slowly. That’s the biggest thing that I see with people in their vacuuming. They want to they want to rush through it. Take time, meditate while you’re vacuuming, listen to your podcast, listen to your music, whatever. Um, but make it slow overlapping passes and you want to do seven of them for every area. You want to make sure you’re getting as much of that dirt and dust and grit and all that kind of stuff out of your carpet. If you do that, your carpet’s going to look lot cleaner a whole lot longer.

And then you want to change directions. So, you don’t want to just vacuum one direction. And you want to I like to go north, south, east, west, maybe north, south, north, west, southeast, whatever. So, you want to make sure you’re you’re changing your directions around a little bit to make sure that you’re getting lots of good good coverage with that vacuum.

You want to clean up your spots and spills as soon as possible. So, if the dog throws up or pees or something like that, you do want to get to it as fast as you can. I always recommend I always recommend going first with water and a shopvac. Just plain water and get a cheap little shopvac. Um I used to say $20. They’re now about $40. Uh you can find them at Home Depot or Walmart or uh Amazon and stuff, though Amazon’s prices are are really high for for little shopvacs. Just get a small little vacuum that you you keep in the house. And if something happens, vacuum it up. suck it up with that shop back and then pour a little bit of water around the spot and then vac suck that up with the vacuum.

Use a neutral detergent if necessary to rinse that treated area out. Look for the the certification that says carpet and rug institute on it.

BIG WARNING!

Now, one thing I will say, I have seen carpet and rug institute uh home spot removers on in the shelves and if they say the word “oxi” in them, stay the heck away from them. They are going to destroy your carpet. You are going to get bleach spots. Maybe not immediately, but they are going to happen. So, stay away from words. Anything that says the word oxi in it. Stay away from it. Um those are those are bleaches. Oxi stands for um oxidizer or oxygen oxidizer. Oxidizers are bleach. Sodium hypocchlorite, also known as chlorine laundry bleach, is a bleach. And that’s what it’s going to do. it’s going to destroy the color in your carpet. So, stay away from those.

Professional Maintenance:

Okay. Um, when you get your carpets professionally cleaned, which you should do at least once a year, I like to clean mine at least twice a year. I wash my socks more than once a year, so I want to clean my carpets more than once a year as well. Um, more often in the high traffic if there is a lot of high traffic. So, if you’re a business, I’ve got restaurants that I clean every couple of weeks just because they’ve got so much traffic going through there and lots of oil, lots of grease and stuff. So, we want to make sure that we’re we’re getting in there. We’re cleaning that regularly.

If you’re a homeowner or uh even if you’re a renter, like tenants say, “Oh, I’m renting. I don’t need to get my carpets cleaned.” You’re living in this stuff. This is dirt. Like, it’s gross. Get it cleaned. Um you don’t want to live in your dirty socks, so get your carpets clean, too. Um, it’s not just about keeping the carpet looking good. It’s for your own personal health. Um, make sure that it’s it you’re getting it cleaned and cleaning it pretty regularly. And not just for the aesthetics, for the health of the the carpet, for the health of you, uh, your home, your family. Get it cleaned regularly.

Your technician should be trained and certified by the IICRC. Now, this is not a guarantee that they’re they know everything about cleaning carpet and all that, but at least they’ve had some training. And training is a big thing. That’s one of the reasons I’m doing this these videos is to help train people on how to take care of their their stuff, how to help how to live a better life. Training helps with all of that.

Cleaning Methods:

Cleaning should be hot water extraction or encapsulation with a counter-rotating brush. Stay away from the rotating pad cleaners. Those things will destroy your carpets. Now, if you’re uh a low pile commercial company and that’s what they’re doing just to maintain it, that’s okay. But if you’re a residential customer, if you’re looking to get your house clean, stay away from those pads. They they’re they’re going to hurt your carpet.

Uh and they don’t really clean. They they leave a residue. I mean, it’s like putting shampoo in your hair and then wiping it with a towel. It’s just not going to work very well. Um so, make sure that you’re you’re doing it right.

Hot water extraction is absolutely the best way to clean carpets. Water extraction second best.

Encapsulation, uh, in my opinion, would be the third best way of maintaining your carpet. That encapsulation, you want to make sure you’re doing it regularly and rinsing it with a hot water extraction uh, every so often. So, about you can get about two or three encapsulation cleans for every hot water extraction that you’re going to need to be doing.

Fiber Protectors:

Okay. One other thing, fiber protectors. We talked a little bit about the the coating that goes on top of those not those fibers to help protect it against soil, against stains. Um, they’re typically fluorochemicals. Teflon, I know that’s a bad word, especially right now. We’re getting all these I mean, I I see it daily. You know, everybody’s got all these microplastics. Well, yeah, I’m not eating my carpet and I’m not licking my carpet. So, you want to get a fluorochemical. There are water-based, there are solvent based fluorochemicals out there. Um, either one is fine. water-based doesn’t smell as bad, uh, but it doesn’t dry quite as quickly. Um, it’s also needs to make sure that it’s it’s mixed correctly. If you’ve got a water-based, uh, fiber protector being put on, those should be reapplied at least annually. Uh, heavy traffic areas like family rooms, master bedrooms, um, I like to do those twice a year, uh, just to to make sure that I keep that protection on there.

Carpet protection will degrade or carpet performance will degrade over time. And if instead of getting a nice big sharp dip, at least getting it cleaned, doing your proper vacuuming, getting it protected, it’ll keep that that that decline really really really slow um and nice and even uh instead of all at once. Um I can usually tell the age of a carpet just by looking at it um because I know if it’s been and if especially if it hasn’t been maintained.

I can tell within within about a year and a half. I can I can pinpoint how old a carpet is by looking at the degradation of it. So, keep that up. Try and fool me the next time I’m in your house. Try and fool me with how old your carpet is. Uh, one last thing, stay away from silicone-based fiber protectors. Those are the ones that you see for like tents, um, tent waterproofing. Those attract soil and your carpets will get dirtier faster. So, hope that helps.

Conclusion:

Hope that that gives you some good information about one of my again favorite fibers, nylon. Uh hope you enjoyed this little fly over. If you found this information helpful, if you’d like to hear more, get more detail, uh there’s still way more detail that we can go into just on nylon, but again, this is just a fly over. So, um drop me a line, drop me drop me a comment, uh share this video with your carpet cleaning professionals, see what they have to say, and let me know what you what you think. Thank you again for uh this episode of Flying Under the Rug. We’ll see you next time.