What's your rinse

OneBlueSummer wrote:Some of the chemicals in the fluoride mixture do cause cancer.. just like lots of other weird man made things some inject and eat. It's a fact jack. Cancer is not hereditary.  Even though some things like allergies and joints and metabolism and muscle mass and adhd are. Even heart attacks are mostly "hereditary" simply because of life habits not because of a missing dna chain...

Tell that to the 10s of thousands (probably more) of women who have breast cancer in their line...

or the men who have prostate cancer in their line...


and it has nothing to do with a "MISSING" chain.....

your missing the point...

I believe that yes some outside factors can "cause" cancer....BUT only if your DNA profile is susceptible to it...

guess what millions of people have fluoride in their water....yet millions of people are not getting cancer from it... maybe what .5-1% if that POSSIBLY got it from that....maybe from canned foods...

ohhh how many 100s of millions of people eat canned food??? how many MAYBE got it from it??

in the sun...oh snapp we are all going to get skin cancer...

see the line of thinking...

eldiabloz wrote:My wife will tell you that fluoride is poison. She claims it's responsible for more cancers than are known.

Fluoride was certainly used as a poison in Nazi Germany by adding it to the water supply of their prisoner camps. They weren't doing it to fight cavities, that much is true.

Then again, it doesn't mean that all usages of it are posionous. Look at blood thinners which save millions of people from dying every year from blood clots. It was originally used as a rat poison to encourage the rodent to suffer massive hemorrhaging.

Goomer wrote:Interesting background Milspec.

In your opinion,  what water characteristics would benefit most from, or require an acid rinse,  and which would benefit most from an emulsifying rinse?

Let me answer this with a few points about water first.

1. Water is a bad cleaner by itself
2. Water is a bad emulsifier by itself.


When you wash your hands, do you just use water? No, you know that you need to use soap with that water to clean your hands. You also know that the old bar soap will not clean your hands if covered in grease and oils...for that you need the dish washing soap or even shampoo. The only thing that water provides is the transport mechanism to deliver the cleaning agents as well as removal of the soils that have been suspended by your prespray. So, just like a 6-lane freeway carries more than a country road, the greater the flow and gpm equals the greater cleaning potential.

As for the types of water, you have basically 5 types according to your area and situation.

1. Naturally soft water
2. Softened water
3. Deionized water
4. Engineered water
5. Hard Water

Naturally soft water is a neutral ph water that is low in mineral contents from calcium and lime. It still contains dissolved solids and ions which protect your metals from corrosion, but it doesn't leave any scale deposits. This type of water allows you to run a plain water rinse which will leave your carpet in a neutral state after proper flushing. You do not need an acid rinse unless maybe when cleaning wool which would prefer the slightly more acidic state. You could also use an emulsifier with this type of water to break down and keep the grease suspended while you extract. The only drawback is that this kind of water isn't located in all regions of the country.

Softened water starts out as hard water before the calcium and lime is removed by a resin tank. This water will still hold other material which will naturally reduce corrosion and will have been altered from a neutral ph to a far greater alkaline ph (often close to 9 ph) by the resin salts. This is very important to remember as you will be rinsing a high ph prespray with a high ph rinse with no hope of leaving the carpet at a neutral state. When carpet is left at a neutral ph, it will resist re-soiling and be in a more "restored" condition like it was when it was new.

For softened water then, you really must use an acid rinse to off-set the softening process if you want to get the best results. You can also use an emulsifier on those grease pits here as well, but should address the ph level after you have completed the extraction process with a second rinse on the acid side.

Deionized water. This is water that often uses at least 2 tanks (one removes acid base and one does alkaline), but can also use several more to remove all ions from the water. This provides you with a "pure" water free of nearly all dissolved solids while remaining a neutral ph. This provides a great vehicle for cleaning as it leaves no residue, maintains a neutral ph, and is free of solids that can reduce the effectiveness of other agents.

The only down side to di water is that some of those ions were valuable to your machine. Phosphates and silica for example are naturally anti-corrosives for metals such as copper, iron, and aluminum. Without those things, water can be very corrosive to metals so your tanks, pumps, coils, etc. would be at risk. To counter that issue, you need to add an anti-corrosive to protect your equipment and that reduces some of the "pureness" of the water. Still, you could use an emulsifier or an acid with good results due to the neutral ph and relative purity of the water.

The next group are the engineered waters like the lye or ozone waters. One of the reasons I had been working with the ozone water is because it is a neutral ph water that naturally delivers both an emulsifier for grease and an oxidizer for organic stains and bacteria. It is also self-neutralizing back into water and leaves zero residue. As a rinse, it could be a huge benefit to the cleaning process, but thus far the practical side has eluded me due to pressure and dwell time restrictions. It might still be a few years away for this industry, but it is close.

Last is the hard water and should not be used at all in my opinion. This water is still neutral when purified, but contains so much dissolved solids that it will react with all cleaning agents. It will destroy copper and brass and scale just about every metal that you have in your machine. It will also leave tons of residue in the carpet, because of the high mineral content (especially calcium and lime)....remember the last time you found a carpet full of talc-based carpet powder? Same thing with the hard water...water doesn't dissolve stone real well and will leave it all behind turning carpets crusty.

Funny thing is that many cleaners are still using hard water and it baffles me as to why. Even those that hook up to the customer's spigot don't know if the house has soft water or not. Truth is, most around here do, but not to the spigot which is used to water the lawn....salts would kill the grass. To use this water is just sabotaging your entire cleaning process.

In summary:

1. Natural water can utilize any rinse type with good results, but is limited by regions
2. Softened water really needs an acid rinse to be effective...emulsifier optional on grease pits followed by acid rinse
3. Deionized water is an excellent solution base, but needs anti-corrosion agents. Any rinse is fine.
4. Engineered water wouldn't need a rinse agent unless the grease load was severe...still in the works.
5. You can move more on a 6-lane freeway, so don't skimp on the water...high flow and flush, flush, flush.
6. Hard water has no value in the cleaning process
7. Knowing the ph of your water is just as important as knowing the cleaning agents (before softening mine is 14!)

Dont forget water by its self is a great solvent..

also dont forget that when using the thought of washing hands, that you are in fact using ONLY water to rinse clean, no added rinse agents... When using Softwater it has that "slippery feel" which is more of a moisturizing effect, not so much residue....

Hard water works fine...sure sure a few more chems, but rinses fine...NEVER had a problem with resoiling issues when i used it, and now with soft water still no issues....resoiling comes form not using that 6 lane highway....

Hard water takes its toll on equipment, is the worst part...takes time, but when its there it really causes issues in quick time

Good additions and I agree with flushing the c%$p out of it.

I should have mentioned that the hardness provides different degrees of negatives. In my area that 14 is a disaster to use without softening. Milder hardness would not have such severe negatives, but I still think using hard water is a mistake over-all.

Good point on the solvent aspect, but I was trying to avoid all the polarity aspects with water. It is a solvent...actually a universal solvent because so many things will dissolve in it, but that doesn't include many organic things like Fats. Fats are a large part of the soil issue in many carpets, especially commercial.

well yea, given time, it will break down fats...lots of time lol..

and to be correct it doesnt dissolve....it bonds......tomatoe, tomato

well it does dissolve the solids but....        

All true...wise old owl.

Every time I start thinking about topics like this, I always think that there is an opportunity to really get into the science of cleaning....then I realize that the reason I couldn't find my keys today was that I left them hanging in the door knob all night...