Grease all over the carpet - argh

timmyflash

Live in a flat in London and now have grease all over the beige living room carpet...

Was trying to be careful - obviously not careful enough.

I need a new carpet anyway, but any tips to stop this happening? Big bit of plastic down if i need to do anything to the bike?

Any magic carpet you can just wipe grease off? Or should i just get a black carpet?

PeteinSQ

Depending on quite how bad things are you can use citrus degreaser to clean the worst of this off the carpet.

keef66

I'm lucky in having a garage to do most of my fettling, but at christmas I had to sort son's bike in the kitchen cos it was just too cold. Spread out old sheets etc on the floor, but when I flamboyantly turned the thing upside down, about a pint of bright orange water shot out of the frame and redecorated the fridge.

So I'd reccommend plastic sheeting and absorbent dust sheets or similar. And don't wave the bike about too vigorously. And make sure your wife's 2 rooms away watching something engrossing on the telly.

andy_wrx

keef66 wrote:

And make sure your wife's 2 rooms away watching something engrossing on the telly.

Or out.

But they do have a habit of coming back and within 23 milliseconds will find the oily mark you missed on the lightswitch, the sink, the doorhandle, wherever.

Uncanny how they home into it...

timmyflash

Cheers pal, will give the citrus degreaser a go as a test before new carpet, then get some plastic sheets. Grease went through the dust sheets!

Roger_This

There's an outdoor equivalent, as I just discovered - degreaser on the lawn. Gave the bike a good clean-up at the weekend but now have a large brown patch where the grass used to be

MichaelW

Occasionally I bring in pieces of oily gunk on the soles of my shoes and tread them into the carpet. The easiest way to clean them is with Swarfega hand cleanser. Rub some into the grease and sponge off the dirt.

Manchester Black Cat

Will one of them professional carpet cleaners get grease out? Got a nasty patch on my beige carpet in rented accomodation... looking at losing my deposit if I don't get it out

cheehee

timmyflash wrote:

I need a new carpet anyway, but any tips to stop this happening? Big bit of plastic down if i need to do anything to the bike?

I've really racked my brain, thought long and hard about this, you know eyes bulging, veins in head bursting, hardcore thinking.

What I've come up with, is thus, but bear with me now it's out there..........When working on your bike indoors with a beige carpet.............put some old sheets down to protect the carpet

Maybe Barry Scott will be along soon with some better advice.......

Cheehee

ilikecycling

Increase the life of your carpets by rolling them up and keeping them in the garage.

timmyflash

cheehee wrote:

timmyflash wrote:

I need a new carpet anyway, but any tips to stop this happening? Big bit of plastic down if i need to do anything to the bike?

I've really racked my brain, thought long and hard about this, you know eyes bulging, veins in head bursting, hardcore thinking.

What I've come up with, is thus, but bear with me now it's out there..........When working on your bike indoors with a beige carpet.............put some old sheets down to protect the carpet

Maybe Barry Scott will be along soon with some better advice.......

Cheehee

yeah yeah.. I guess it was a more a question of how do i get the inevitable stains out! Put vanish on all the blotches before and it just put small crop circles of brilliant white all over the place.. No garage is a motherfunker

cheehee

timmyflash wrote:

yeah yeah.. I guess it was a more a question of how do i get the inevitable stains out! Put vanish on all the blotches before and it just put small crop circles of brilliant white all over the place.. No garage is a motherfunker

I know chief. I've don't have a garage and it is a right, royal pain it the arse.

How about some rubber matting on the carpet.

To get the stains out, maybe call a carpet place up they might know..............??

Thankfully my cycling related stains come out in the wash :oops:

Cheehee

crankycrank

Manchester Black Cat wrote:

Will one of them professional carpet cleaners get grease out? Got a nasty patch on my beige carpet in rented accomodation... looking at losing my deposit if I don't get it out

Yes. If you can just hire out the steam cleaning machine and do it yourself it's not too expensive. I usually just pre-treat the worst spots with some 10:1 diluted orange cleaner(or something similar) and a little scrubbing with a brush before attacking with the steam cleaner. Always test a small spot first to make sure it doesn't ruin the colour though. Laundry soap works OK in the machine if you don't want to buy the special steam detergent. I've found this works incredibly well at getting all the grease stains out. It's best to go over the entire carpet with just plain water 1 or 2 times afterwards to rinse out any soap residue which tends to attract more dirt when dry. 8)

andyrr

Spray-on carpet cleaner works pretty well - we had ours professionally cleaned a while ago and the guy left us a can of cleaner. I've used it a few times and it works very well, can hardly tell there was a nasty mark before but these were relatively small to strt with, bigger ones would probably mean there is some sort of mark left, even just a slight shading difference as the carpet dye gets taken out.
Vanish products seem to work well, I'd give one of their carpet cleaning things a shot.

Best thing is to be strict about not wearing the same shoes you wear outside, espec the garage etc, in the house - numerous times I've thought my shoes were clean then walked on carpets onyl to find nasty oily dirty splogdges on the carpet.