Hello! Thanks for checking out our 1st Blog post. I thought a good way to begin is to educate you on something that you can do as a Facility Supervisor, Office Manager or Home Owner, to extend the life of your investment in carpet. No I’m not going to talk about the importance of regularly scheduled carpet cleaning, daily vacuuming or anything related to commercial carpet cleaning. By and large, we find that our Clients do a GREAT job in those areas. What I wanted to discuss is something I notice often when I am out in the field, meeting new prospective clients — Chair Mats!
I should clarify that a LACK of chair mats is what we’re talking about here. How is this important to you? Many of you I know have the best of intentions when allowing us at Beyer’s to maintain your carpet’s appearance. But it seems that more and more we are running into Offices, Cubicle areas and Call Centers that forget to put down the relatively small investment in chair mats. Why are chair mats so important? Notice in the photo’s below, which were taken today, the lightening of this carpet’s color in the center. That is the result of not employing a chair mat at a work desk. In the After photo the carpet, while cleaner, still bears some discoloration. The carpet is permanently damaged unfortunately.
When you place a 180 pound man onto an office chair and he gets to rolling around on the carpet, it wears that carpet down VERY fast. That 180 pounds is focused onto 5 wheels, each of which has maybe 1 square inch of contact with the carpet. The resulting downward force is very great indeed. Any and all soil (dirt from the driveway, crumbs from lunch, eraser shavings from the pencil, etc…) is summarily ground into the tuft bundles of the carpet. In time these soils become suffused to the fibers. The more abrasive soils quickly begin cutting into the fibers and wearing them down. This type of carpet wear can’t be “cleaned” away and is permanent, and your left with an area of carpet that sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb. A simple chair mat eliminates this issue.
We can’t tell you how many times over the past 20 years that we have seen prospective clients decide that instead of hiring us to try to salvage what’s left of their carpet, they instead send it to an early grave and invest tens of thousands of dollars into new carpet. Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE the look of new carpet! It is of course easier for us to maintain and adds life to a previously stale working environment. It’s just sad to see it happen way too soon. The amount of $ it costs to replace is STAGGERING when compared with the purchase of chair mats. I hope any of you out there who haven’t yet gotten around to it yet, will go online and purchase these carpet-savers soon!
Thanks for stopping by and reading my first post! I hope it helps you to understand the importance of chair mats in an office environment. Please stop by often, as I plan on posting other helpful carpet care tips along with the occasional Before & After pictures as well.
Written by, Derek Beyer