Faulty equipment can cause injury, damage to customer property and even fires. Regularly inspecting your equipment will help you to prevent accidents, as it allows you to fix issues that may otherwise have gone undetected. If you keep consistent records of your checks, you can also prove that you did your due diligence if anything does go wrong. Many businesses put stickers on each item that include the date of their last inspection and the due date for their next one.
Ensuring that you and your staff are highly trained improves your ability to avoid mistakes. As well as carpet cleaning itself, your training should include hazard management and safety, making sure that everyone in your team is part of keeping the work environment safe. Training should be repeated at regular intervals. NCCA members get access to exclusive and discounted training.
Carrying out a risk assessment for each kind of job you do will help you to spot potential accidents before they happen. Your risk assessment should identify hazards, assess their severity, and then list safety procedures to prevent problems. Risk assessments should be regularly reviewed and updated, allowing you to improve your hazard prevention.
Even if an accident is caused by a misunderstanding of the law, you are likely to be liable. It's important that you research the law around liability, and if you have employees, you should have knowledge of labour laws. Staying compliant with the law is vital to avoiding legal disputes, and you can only do this if you understand it.
A subtle difference in the wording of your contract could make all the difference to the outcome of a case. Whether your contract is between you and a customer or you and an employee, the terms should be clear and enforceable. Bringing in a solicitor to check that your contracts are airtight is a strong way to protect your business from liability.
Public liability insurance is vital for any cleaning business. If anything does go wrong, your insurer will help you to manage the cost. However, you should still take steps to avoid accidents, as repeated claims could cause your insurance costs to rise. Insurance is a minimum requirement for membership of many organisations, including the NCCA.
Becoming a member of the National Carpet Cleaners Association helps you to keep improving your business. Our members gain access to training, forums and mediation services to assist with carrying out best practice. Membership also grants you a place in our carpet cleaner directory, increasing your visibility to new customers.
Most furry animals have different density coats in the warm months than they do over the winter. Each year, they have two periods of seasonal shedding, making room for their thick winter coat or their thinner summer one. The result is a large amount of loose fur around your house in the spring or autumn, which can drive pet owners mad! Here are the best ways to manage your pet's seasonal shedding this autumn.
Using a pet hair brush can help you to remove loose hairs in a controlled setting. You can then collect and dispose of all the hairs, instead of finding them all over your furniture. Depending on your pet, they may also benefit from a seasonal pamper at the pet salon to trim their coat and reduce shedding.
Households with pets should vacuum more regularly than those without pets. Once seasonal shedding starts, you may need to increase this even more. Make sure that you vacuum upholstery and pet bedding, as well as your flooring. Using an attachment specially designed for pet hair will give you the best chance of avoiding embedding.
When pet hair ends up all over your clothes and furniture, you can use a lint roller to collect it. If you don't have a lint roller to hand, you can roll some sticky tape around your hand with the adhesive facing outwards. However, you will still need to use other methods to manage the hair - this works best on small areas.
When seasonal shedding is particularly heavy, the air can be full of pet hair. Using an air purifier to collect airborne pet hair can prevent it from floating around your home, allowing you to breathe easily. This is particularly important if someone in your home has pet allergies, as purified air can help to reduce their symptoms.
The places where your pet spends the most time will be the seasonal shedding hotspots. Regularly cleaning their bedding will reduce the amount of pet hair that gets propelled into the air whenever they use their bed.
If you're sick of constantly finding hairs embedded in your furniture, you can use furniture covers during seasonal shedding. These can be removed and machine-washed, reducing the amount of manual work required to keep your home free of hair.
A professional clean can help tackle a build-up of pet hair. Whether you have a backlog of embedded hair or just want to keep seasonal shedding under control, expert hands can save you time, energy and potential disaster by deep-cleaning your home with industry-standard methods.
The National Carpet Cleaners Association (NCCA) has members all over the UK. With specialists in carpet and upholstery cleaning, our cleaners can be found in our directory. Every cleaner is insured and trained to a high standard.
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After the chaos of having kids home all summer, your house is probably in need of some attention. Back-to-school season is the perfect time for a deep clean, ready for the new year ahead. Here are our deep cleaning tips to start your academic year off right.
As kids progress through school years, they grow out of clothes and toys. A fresh year is the perfect time for sorting out old uniforms, neglected toys and out-of-date medication. This will make room for their upcoming development and new interests, but it will also make it much easier for you to deep-clean your home.
Children are particularly vulnerable to allergies, and dust can give them nasty symptoms. If you dust regularly, you probably don't notice much dust around your home. However, most households have a few places that get forgotten. Our next deep cleaning tip is to double check picture frames, light fixtures, ceiling fans and under furniture for any dust hotspots.
An overlooked deep cleaning tip is cleaning appliances. Your kettle, your coffee machine and your ice machine don't need descaling often, which is why lots of people forget to do it at all. One of the best deep cleaning tips is to get into the habit of including descaling in your deep cleaning routine, making sure that your drinks are suitable for the upcoming busy mornings before school.
After a summer away from homework, your study could probably do with reorganising. File away last year's school work, throw away dried-up pens, and sort out desk drawers. Focusing on this area creates a clean learning environment for tackling the fresh challenges of the new school year.
Curtains, cushion covers and rugs collect grime throughout the year, and should be cleaned regularly. Make sure you read the directions on each item - some may be suitable for machine washing, while others may need to be hand-washed. You should also make sure that you have a place suitable for drying soft furnishings after cleaning them, and this is likely to be the last point in the year when washing can be dried outside.
Deep cleaning your carpet gets rid of built-up dirt that vacuuming can't reach. This is especially important if you have babies and toddlers, who spend a lot of time on the floor, or pets, who shed dander this time of year. One deep cleaning tip is to hire a professional carpet cleaner for expertly cleaned flooring, whether your carpet is in great condition or has a few stains you would rather hide.
A professional cleaner can take care of your deep cleaning for you, saving you time and energy. Every cleaner in the National Carpet Cleaners Association (NCCA) directory is insured and specially trained in carpet cleaning. We have cleaners located all over the UK.
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Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone. It's common for people to book suppliers and services using their phone, so it's important that your system is compatible with mobile devices. Here are our top tips for making sure that your booking system is mobile-friendly.
There are many companies who specialise in creating online booking systems. Using one of these minimises the amount of work required to set up your booking system. As experts in booking systems, many of these companies have built-in mobile-compatible versions.
Customers are more likely to abandon a potential booking if they come up against any issues or don't understand your system. Make sure you use concise language and use clear buttons for navigation. Any options (such as services and add-ons) should be explained clearly so that customers know what they are selecting. Simplicity will also ensure that your system loads quickly, keeping customers engaged.
With such a wide variety of devices available, your website should be usable across many different screen sizes. This includes small smartphone screens, but also bigger tablet screens. Remember that people will be tapping on buttons with their fingers, so fields should be large enough to avoid accidental selections. A key phrase to look out for is ‘responsive design’ as these templates will auto-adjust to make sure that the system is readable for smaller devices, but not comically large on tablets.
The only way to be absolutely certain that your booking system works on mobile is to try it out. Follow the whole process as if you were a customer - start from your homepage, and make sure you can easily make a booking. You should test out multiple different scenarios, putting yourself in the shoes of as many types of customers as possible.
By using an online booking system, you can also automate other aspects of the booking process. For example, you could send customers an appointment reminder via text or email, helping them to prepare their home or business for your arrival. You can include reminders of any important information, such as keeping pets away or moving furniture elsewhere.
Once you have your booking system set up, you should ensure that it's easy to get to. Ideally, every page on your website should have at least one link to the booking system. You should also make sure that these links are both visible and usable via mobile. For example, many sidebars do not show up correctly on mobile, which means you'll need to include these links elsewhere in the page.
For more tips and tricks for your carpet business, join the National Carpet Cleaners Association. Membership grants you access to forums, training and a mediation service, helping to support your business’s growth. Our members also appear in our directory, allowing new customers to find you easily.
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When a disaster happens, it can be tempting to rely on a quick internet search for advice. However, DIY carpet cleaning is often fraught with risks. Read on to find out how DIY carpet cleaning measures up to a professional clean, and when you should call in the experts.
Many DIY carpet cleaning methods online are untested and unreliable. You may find yourself using a method that is at best ineffective, but at worst, makes the problem worse and damages your carpet. Choosing an accredited cleaner gives you peace of mind that your problem will be handled in a way that benefits your carpet.
Many online methods encourage you to leave concoctions soaking overnight to cleanse your stains. However, most stains are much easier to clean if you act quickly. Wasting time on an unreliable DIY carpet cleaning method can make you miss out on the Ideal window for tackling a stain. It also takes time out of your busy life to carry out a method that may not even work.
Many at-home cleaning methods are designed to be cheap. However, using an inexpensive household item is only cost-effective if it actually works. Risking an unreliable method may result in wasting money and resources, and then still require a professional cleaner’s help. Skipping straight to a professional cleaner avoids unnecessary expenses.
DIY carpet cleaning methods often require you to manually scrub, brush or work product into your carpet. This can be a lot of physical labour, especially if you are cleaning an entire room. Professional cleaners have their own industrial equipment, making it much less effort for them and even less effort for you.
One of the worst fates for a carpet is water damage. Not only can it disrupt the integrity of the carpet, but it also leads to mould and terrible smells. Using an amateur DIY carpet cleaning method that saturates your carpet, or using liquid and then not drying it correctly, can be fatal for your carpet. Professional cleaners are experienced in assessing how much moisture to use, and have a variety of low-moisture cleaning methods in their arsenals.
If your carpet is still within its warranty period, you should be careful how you clean it. DIY carpet cleaning techniques may void your warranty, making you miss out on that protection. Hiring a professional carpet cleaner ensures that your carpet is cleaned properly, and you don't miss out on your warranty benefits. A quality carpet cleaner will also be insured, providing an extra layer of safety.
Hiring a professional carpet cleaner ensures that your time, effort and resources are used efficiently. For a reliable carpet cleaner, search the National Carpet Cleaners Association directory of accredited cleaners. Our insured cleaners can be found all over the UK, and are trained in tackling a wide range of carpet and upholstery.
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You might associate seasonal allergies with warmer months, but many people experience them in autumn. Symptoms can range from mild to seriously disruptive, so it's important not to ignore the signs. Here are a few autumnal allergens to look out for, along with our top tips for managing allergens in your home.
As the weather cools and moisture builds up inside your home, mould spores multiply faster. This leads to mould growth, which can cause poor health in everyone, not just people with allergies. If left unchecked, the problem will increase faster and faster. Even outside the home, you may come across mould in woodlands and rotting leaves.
You probably have dust mites living in your home year-round, but they thrive the most in autumn and winter. Many people are allergic to the proteins in their droppings - if someone says they have a dust allergy, they probably mean they are allergic to dust mites. These microscopic creatures consume tiny skin flakes, so they love to live in bedsheets and carpets.
We usually associate pollen release with spring, but different plants produce pollen at different stages of the year. Weed pollen is at its highest in the autumn, so people with this kind of hay fever will suffer the most during autumn. Ragweed is the most common pollen to be allergic to in autumn, but nettles, dock weeds and sorrel are among the host of autumn pollen allergens.
People with pet allergies are allergic to them year-round, but symptoms may be lessened in warmer months by having windows open. As the weather gets colder and households shut windows more, people with allergies are constantly breathing in a cocktail of autumn allergens, including pet dander.
These symptoms can all be consequences of unmanaged seasonal allergies:
These tips will help you minimise the amount of allergens found in your home and prevent a reaction from occurring. For more help managing the symptoms, remember to always consult with a medical professional.
Regularly deep cleaning your carpets and upholstery prevents allergens from building up in your home. Breathe easy this autumn and use a National Carpet Cleaners Association (NCCA) accredited cleaner. All of our accredited cleaners meet the highest standards of training, experience and insurance you deserve and can be found in our directory.