Theater time again

How about the option of do your best and thats that???

I have a theater I do, we clean the seats once a year...very similar to your situation....long time till we did them, and the guy....welllllll lets just say yea....

same thing got a bottom and threw the kitchen sink at them, with scrubs, double cleans...3, 4, and 5 X the amount of cleaner...

Finally came to the conclusion.....

A. its the fabric, it holds the oils like nothing else....
B. to many people roll through these places , spilling god knows what....lets just say when we are done, the dirty water almost makes you puke....

in the end, we do what we can, I throw Cobbs at them at around 10 oz a gallon, in a pump up...spray ahead of the guys cleaning...and they knock them out, basically PW style....

these seats are like 20 yrs old so, its like shooting a bb at a freight train...

but we do have the gerry curl spots taken care of...but the bottoms...almost looks worse when were done...lol extra clean spots, mixed with dirty

I've never done theater chairs but I still do Elk Lodges ... 70 yr olds sitting around huge card tables, spilling their booz and missing the ashtray with their cigars.... and weak bladders.
And I've cleaned a lot of filthy stairs, all with no truckmount. It's called double encap.

Especially after reading Floorguy, who you know has been there, done that, and he's saying the same thing as Milspec, THEN OBVIOUSLY there is no amount of aggressive chemistry gonna get it done. No super sucker tm gonna get it done either. Leave it all at home. Tell em they just need a lot of TLC and elbow grease for this job.

I double encap stairs with a squirt bottle a Host machine and a Shopvac. Conmes out great everytime and pretty much dry when done.

Take the high road, sympathize with THEIR problem, that they a lot of traffic, a lot of oils, and they got waaay behind.
Do surface cleaning only; encap it twice.  Use a Rug Rat on a for agitation or a drill and encap it, twice. Once after they're gone, late at night, with bristled agitation, then once again in the morning, with absorbent cotton pads, guess you'll have to use a million terry cloth towels.  My Elks Lodges have a washer/drier so I just go down the hall and wash my cotton bonnets and reuse them damp right after the spin cycle.  
Double encap always works in these situations. And you're not going down deep where all the real problems are. Stay on the surface.  And tell em you will need to clean them twice cuz they will wick, even with encap, just not as bad as hwe.  Custys love it when you tell them upfront, "you got waay behind again and that means it will take me two cleanings to get it done."  Just acknowledge that fact upfront and plan on it. Then it's pretty easy.  Like a wave of  Marines for first strike, followed by another wave of Infantry - to finish the job.  It will take extra work and you gotta be the guy who tells them you care enough to come back.  Get a young person for the 2nd trip cuz it'll kill your shoulders to do all those terry cloths yourself. The second trip puts you in the position to see it the way your customer will see it. Plus you can charge for a double setup, neither of which includes the truckmount.   SOE at 7oz/gal + a little peroxide and some smell good is all you'll need for chemical.

You guys make a strong case for encap...starting to give in, but I am stubborn and the thought of how many terry pads I would go through is daunting. Still, I come here to absorb the collective wisdom and you are making a strong case.

I will test the two-step encap method on the sample seats and see what happens.

Testing has begun and once it dries down, I will see what I got.

Tonight, I have strapped for time (4 am gets earlier as I get older), but I did test out the Pro-zyme, Citrus TLC, and S/O/E + peroxide. I can tell already that the Pro-zyme failed to impress, but the citrus tlc looks promising...not sure about its rinsing ability though.

In the morning, I will encap with bonnet as well to try the 2-step dance. I like the idea of just unleashing a few helpers with cyclo polishers in multiple teams to get this task done quickly...we shall see tomorrow.

I have had great results on heavily soiled upholstery with Kleenrite Upholstery PreSpray SN.
Does have a very strong odor with the ammonia in it.

Just finished the job....387 chairs in 5 hours with 3 helpers and my sapphire upholstery tool. My wrist is worn out and my back tight, but we made good time on this one. One sprayed, one agitated with cyclo, I wanded, and one kept the hoses from getting trapped in the rows of seats.

Before heading down there, I cleaned a test seat in my driveway. I ended up just using encap and a cyclo...bad stains remained. When I finished loading the van, I noticed that the seats looked great after drying in the sun....oxidation and UV light!!

I wasn't about to drag UV lights around the theater, but I decided to go real heavy on the peroxide. In the end, we went through 2 gallons of 27% with the encap solution. We also used Deep Green under that cyclo on the really bad seats.

It came out pretty darn good...better than it has in the past and a hell of a lot faster too. There are still some stains left behind, but they are far more faded than ever before and we still wanded the seat bottoms and most of the backs to rid the kiddie poo and other hideous things that you find in a theater seat cushion. When you see the peroxide reacting strongly on a seat, you know there was more than a little soda there.

I will go back and clean the carpets Tuesday night....forecast says Tornadoes, imagine that, more weather issues  

That's a lot of chairs in 5 hrs time. Sounds like you had a good production line going. Hope the carpet isn't as tough on you and the weather will hold off.

Thanks, the carpet looked pretty good...mostly soda spills this time. The weather will be the key!!

Still a little sore this morning, glad it is only 2x per year on this one.