Your best time-saving tricks

I have always felt that I did a fine job cleaning, but I also know that I need to get faster to stay competitive. I don't want to reduce the quality of the work, but there are always some little adjustments that could be helpful.

Lately, I have started using a splitter on my psi hose with one end connected to my sprayer. That way I don't have to disconnect / reconnect to spray an area. It really helps on the commercial jobs as my helper can spray the next section without me having to stop pushing the wand.

The other thing that I have finally embraced is pre-spraying larger areas. I was always worried about my spray drying up before I got the wand to it, so I would only spray about a 100 sqft at a time. Well, that was painfully slow as I would have to rest the wand to spray the next area and untangle hoses. Now, I will spray the entire area (up to about 500 sqft) prior to the wand....huge time savings and haven't run into a dried area yet.

Even tonight, I was able to reduce my cleaning time on the store fronts from 60 minutes down to 45 minutes by some equipment pre-staging (RC99 already connected to the hoses, prespray already mixed, hoses measured and staged for the job, all small items needed stored in a bucket for quick staging), spraying the entire area (300 sqft), and never letting the wand run idle at any point.

I am learning after all these years to pay more attention on getting faster as getting it clean is great, but doing it faster makes more money.

Anyone have some good tips on becoming more efficient without reducing quality?

When I clean a sofa or a piece of a sectional I will tip the entire piece forward from the back in order to clean the back. In other words I will stand behind the sofa tip it forward at a 45 degree angle and clean it while standing up, it's easy to balance with one hand and means that I don't have to crouch or kneel down to clean the back.

Nice tip eldiabloz.

I don't vacuum.

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:I don't vacuum.

LOL, what an innocent answer, ha..ha..ha...
Well, I always pre spray the whole thing and never had issues of solutions drying out, but I pulled all the hoses and pile them close to the carpets before I start pre spraying ( if I work by myself ), then I start pre spray from living room and work my way in instead of the other way around, the purpose is so that I don't have to pull the hose back and forward, plus the living room / family room is usually the dirtiest, that way the solutions have the most dwelling time, then just proceed with the cleaning.
I've tried using battery sprayer on some jobs, it works pretty well on bigger homes with not dirty carpets, otherwise hydroforce still works faster, especially when the carpets are dirty, pull 2 sets of pressure hoses, my tech pre spray and I clean.
The key is to keep that wand moving, so the person who clean do just that, clean, and the other person will pre spray, move furnitures, put blocks / tabs, pull the hoses, spot clean, make sure things are ready when needed, like stair wands, whip hoses, etc.
Then when everything is said and done and the person who clean don't need anything else, the other tech will get invoice ready and charge the customer, that way both guys are done at the same time and can wrap up faster, most jobs we're in and out between 30 - 90 minutes, that's why we do 5 - 6 jobs a day.
Right Jdam ?

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:I don't vacuum.

In a lot of cases I'd say that cost you time (keeping your filter clean and high flowing), and job quality almost always suffers.

Here's a trick that has saved me tons of time...

Walk in the house (after the walk through of course) carrying the inline sprayer and the wand. Drop the sprayer at the first room to be cleaned. Carry the wand to the farthest point in the home and set it down. On your way back out of the house spray some spot remover on the spots that look like they will give you trouble during cleaning i.e. darker spots in the traffic lanes. I hit them at about five shots from a trigger sprayer.

Here's another favorite tip of mine...

One day long ago on a job I tipped my prespray jug over some how. That spilled right in the middle of a traffic lane. When I extracted that area it took me re-spraying and re-cleaning the area around the spot of spilled prespray several times. That taught me this: one of the best spot and traffic lane removers is concentrated prespray. The perfect dilution is often the prespray right out of the inline sprayer. I just pour it right into a trigger sprayer bottle from the inline sprayer jug. Try it you can thank me later.

Good idea on the spot remover...nice tip.

I do exactly the same as Ken, great minds think alike.