Rant about pre-sprays

I have been using up my chemical stores this past month of mainly the "healthier" pre-sprays that I purchased at the start of the year. The main 3 are "Slop and Gobble, "Grease Eraser", and "Procyon Extreme".

All of them are advertised as being healthier and the MSDS supports those claims. My body also supports those claims as I don't suffer chemical sensitivities to them like I did to a lot of them (Extreme Clean for example). Some of those cleaners are so bad that I end up with severe chapped lips, dry eyes, tight chest, and skin rashes on my hand and legs....not a good thing regardless of how well they may clean.

The problem is that all of these "healthier" products seem to be very inconsistent in their cleaning ability, especially on commercial carpets. I am not referring to inconsistencies between containers, I mean within the same container.

Tuesday nights cleaning of the really trashed commercial started out with "Slop and Gobble" and it was doing well in the gift shop areas and over-all I was happy, but when I had to refill my sprayer a couple of hours later, that mix didn't clean worth a damn. My sprayer was working, temperature was the same at the wand, same pressure, everything yet it didn't seem to do anything. I dumped out the mix and tried again, the next batch cleaned fairly well.

A few hours ago, I cleaned an 8,000 sqft convention room using the "Grease Eraser". I like the way this stuff smells and it did a good job cleaning the last few times that tried it on some trashed residential. This job was low soil with a scattering of spots and some drink spills. It brightened the room, but left the spots behind on each pass, even with scrubbing it didn't move most of them. I had to go back to the truck and mix up some spotter to win the fight.

Fast forward to cleaning the entry mats and hallway near the bathroom with a new batch of "Grease Eraser" from the same container....blew out the spots and cleaned in single passes.

I measured the amount of solution my hydro-force as putting out into a gallon bucket and it was correct. The only thing that I can conclude is that either the product is that inconsistent in the containers or else they are ineffective on certain types of spots. Either way, I was not happy with either one.

I haven't seen that happen as much with the Procyon, but it did happen a couple of times earlier in the year on residential carpet. Just seems really odd that this is happening. I have another trashed building to hit on Sunday night and really don't want to employ either of these products now and might have to stock up on something else. I hate to waste the pails, but these results are not giving me confidence.

Rant over, am I alone in this or are others experiencing the same thing?

I would rather carry around a spotter and take a little more time to clean the carpet than have the symptoms that you're having.

I still agree with that as well Mo, but when the night starts crossing that midnight line, it starts to get really irritating when your wand isn't do much.

I think I am going to switch to using the Hoss rotary on that job from now on. It is slower, but it might make up for the weaker chemistry and certainly would do more against all that gum.

Are you using the original hydro force or the knock off one ? If it's original hydro force, did you ever rebuild the valve or have someone rebuild it for you ?
In my experience the knock off hydro force or the rebuilt one from you know who, is really bad in handling heat, I know you don't spray the whole place but rather spray sections after sections, after your first section, your water is already hot, my knock off hydro force couldn't handle that heat and didn't draw any chemicals out of the gallon, and when you mix a new batch, I would assume by then your water temperature is already lowered and the valve starts drawing chemicals again.
To answer your question, I never had the issues you're having, different results from the same pail.
I never tried slop and gobble but I really love grease eraser, I wish the price is better though.

I always combine hot water with cold fresh when I load the sprayer so it shouldn't be excessively hot...but I don't know for certain I guess. I do go through 2 sprayer tanks on the job, so it is definitely drawing and I see lots of detergent when point blank spraying a spot.

I don't know what it is for certain. I am going to service up the sprayer and double check everything before the next building on Sunday.

I do like the Grease Eraser. It has a nice smell and seems to clean well after a little dwell time normally, but the results last week were not satisfactory for some reason. I still have a pail of it in the basement along with a little more than half in the open pail on the truck.

Maybe I should have bought another sprayer as well. I have 4 of them, but 2 no longer draw and 1 started going in reverse and fills my sprayer instead of drawing from it. So, I am down to one now....it is an original HF one, for what-ever that is worth these days.