As the general manager of Servpro of Ahwatukee & South Tempe in Arizona, a branch of Servpro, the national fire and water cleanup and restoration company, James Cummings has a lot of experience restoring different types of materials, including carpets. Here is Servpro’s guide to the most common types of carpet damage.
Pilling
After carpeting has been subjected to foot traffic, moving of furniture, vacuuming, and other forms of mechanical agitation, you may observe fuzzing as loose fiber ends in the pile work themselves out. When an entire fiber is removed, it is called shedding or fluffing. In some cases, only one end of the fiber is worked out; in others, it is tightly twisted or entangled in the tuft. When this situation occurs in local areas, the long fibers become entangled and form a pill.
Pilling is common and is not a problem when the pills break or are pulled out by the vacuum as they form. However, a strong elastic fiber such as nylon will resist this breaking. This results in small spider-like pills over the entire surface of the carpet, perhaps more concentrated in the areas of greatest foot-traffic.
These pills can generally be removed by lifting the main ball portion of the pill with your thumb and forefinger, and using scissors to cut the fiber which holds the pill onto the carpet. Take care not to pull any excess fiber from the carpet, which may damage the pile when cutting.
Ripples
Carpeting, like most other textiles, is made under tension. Tension is necessary so that the loom or other machine will function properly, producing uniform fabric. But carpeting differs from many textiles in that the backing can be composed of several layers which are not made of preshrunk fabric. So moisture, which produces swelling, may result from humidity, spills, or improper cleaning methods.
Rippling can also develop if two adjacent areas are not manufactured under the same identical tension. This will also happen if the tension of the second backing is not uniform with the primary rug backing. Dragging heavy furniture across the carpet can also cause rippling. Ripples can also be caused by improper installation of a carpet.
Shading
Sometimes there is an apparent color difference between different areas of the same carpet, which is caused by normal wear and tear.
Shading is a characteristic of all cut-pile carpet. It is not a manufacturing defect. The physical cause is the difference between the luster of the ends and sides of fibers. The sides of fibers reflect more light and are brighter and lighter in color than the ends, which absorb more light and are duller and darker in color.
You can do little to prevent or correct shading, but you can slow it down by vacuuming or brushing the pile in one direction during daily or weekly maintenance.
Static
Do you snap, crackle, and pop after walking across your carpet? That would be static formed by the friction of your shoes against the fibers in the carpet. Usually enough humidity is in the air to carry off the static charge as it is formed. But when the weather turns dry and the humidity is low—watch out/
The ability to generate a static charge at low humidity varies from carpet to carpet. Some new carpets have anti-static agents built into the fiber. Others use fine metal wires or even conductive latex within the carpet to carry off the static. Anti-static protection of this type usually lasts as long as your carpet.
If your carpet has none of these innovations and bites back in dry weather, you could try to increase humidity or use an anti-static agent to spray the face of the carpet. Your local store likely has many products of this type. These products, however, generally become less effective after a period of time. A Servpro franchise professional can apply an anti-static agent to your carpet that will last through an entire heating season.
Furniture Depressions
Furniture legs can cause depressions in your carpet if they stay in one position too long. If you move your furniture around, the depressions will spring up in time, but often it can take weeks or even months.
