The water that I am dumping out is beyond filthy. Is all of that dirty water really coming from the dirt in my carpet? I shampoo the carpets about every 6 months, and we don't even wear shoes in the house.
As said try vacuuming more often,make sure your vacuum cleaner is clean,in other words the filter is clean or your just blowing the dust back into the room,with less suction
ABSOLUTELY!!! I bought my own, the water is just as dirty! We vacuum. But we usually only clean the surface. My mom had a vacuum that had lights on it that told when the area you were going over was clean. She had dogs, high traffic. I don't know if that light ever went out. Most people vacuum the surface, the shampooer goes to the bottom where most of the dirt and sand goes.
Teekie just the dust that accumulates over a six month period is a lot. If the water is that dirty I would suggest vacuuming more often, be sure the bag in your vacuum is empty or clean when using it. I would also suggest maybe using a different brand of carpet cleaner you may not be getting the carpet as clean as you think are if you are steam cleaning every six months. The very best of luck to you.
If the waste tank is clean, then you fill it up with dirt, you bet. I've been cleaning carpets about 5 years now. At the rate things are going, I will have cleaned my 1,000,000th sq ft sometime in October. Since most of this is hot water extraction and I use about 1 gallon per 25-30 sq ft, I have already seen well over 30,000 gallons of waste water and it NEVER ceases to amaze me how much filth and odor is in the water. I rinse the waste tank out a little between each job and completely at the end of the day because the stench from the vacuum fan exhaust (which is very high on a commercial machine) absolutely will gag you. If I do a dog urine job, the rest of the day customers complain about the odor because it has only been rinsed a little. Carpets, rugs and other household textiles are great filters and they absorb so much. People with hardwood floors think this is cleaner, not true, same dirt, less to trap it. Your carpet is doing its job. I professionally clean carpet for several customers every 90 days due to their allergy problems. While you just cleaned your carpet, I guaranty if I went over it again, I'd get even more. Then again, if I did it last week, then again this week, it would still get a lot of dirt out. If you want to get better effectiveness in vacuuming, get a CRI certified Gold vacuum cleaner. This will make vacuuming more productive, vacuum every 2-3 days too.
You're probably renting a steam cleaner. Most companies don't rent actual commercial carpet shampooers, as they're very expensive and can be difficult to use; they can tear carpet up. Most people use the two terms interchangeably. (Sorry, semantics.) Yes, it's the dirt from your carpet. However, it doesn't take more than a spoonful or two of dirt to make a gallon of water look really gross and filthy. I have a steam cleaner, and I steam-clean my carpets every two to three weeks. But then I have cats, and I am constantly tracking in dirt from my garden as well. A month ago, however, a tornado took off my roof and dumped hundreds of gallons of water on my carpet. Ironically, I had spent an hour steam-cleaning that very carpet that morning, adding enzymes to make the carpet smell good. Yes, it's really the dirt from your carpet. There may be a little residual crap in the tub from the last person who rented it (which is why I bought my own steam-cleaner), but nearly all of is from your carpets.
