Stains & problems

What you are trying to remove, and what kind of chemistry it responds to. Classifying a stain correctly is most of the work.

• Algae

  The green film outdoors, and NOT the same organism as the mould indoors. Where it grows is the diagnosis: shade, overhanging trees, or paving that does not drain.

• Antiperspirant residue

  Two different marks from one product. The white transfer is the product itself. The yellow one is a slow accumulation that has been oxidising in the fabric for months.

• Blood

  A protein stain, and the one where the usual instinct — hot water — is precisely wrong. Heat sets it permanently.

• Burnt-on food and carbon deposits

  Food heated until it carbonised and bonded to the surface. Time and softening do the work; scouring powder does the damage.

• Chewing gum

  Everyone says freeze it with ice. The carpet trade's own entry for gum says break up the solids and vacuum, and never mentions cold at all.

• Chocolate

  The longest treatment sequence in the carpet trade's database — five agents — because it is three kinds of soil at once.

• Coffee

  A tannin stain that behaves like red wine and unlike grease. Detergent first, then a mild acid — and the order is the finding.

• Creosote

  Not a kind of soot. A flammable tar condensed from damp, oxygen-starved wood burning — and the hardest forms do not answer to a brush at all.

• Emulsion paint

  A polymer that dried into the fibre — and the trade sequence for it is entirely aqueous, with no solvent step at all.

• Fingerprints

  Skin oils transferred by touch. A greasy soil rather than a dirty one, which is why water alone does not shift them and why they return immediately.

• Glue and adhesive

  A polymer that set where it landed. Solvent-first — and the solvent that dissolves it also dissolves the carpet's backing adhesive.

• Grass

  Four agents deep — solvent, detergent, vinegar, then ammonia — because it is pigment, sap and soil arriving together.

• Grease

  Fats and oils, which water alone cannot lift. Removed by surfactants, by heat, by solvents, or by alkalis that convert the fat into soap.

• Heat tint

  The rainbow or brown bloom on stainless steel that has been heated. Not a deposit and not dirt: the metal's own surface oxide, thickened by heat.

• Ink

  A dye carried in a solvent, so it responds to a solvent — and the trade sequence ends somewhere most household advice starts.

• Limescale

  A hard, chalky calcium carbonate deposit left by hard water. Dissolved by acids, essentially untouched by detergents.

• Lipstick and cosmetics

  Pigment suspended in wax and oil, which is why the trade sequence leads with a solvent rather than with detergent.

• Mould

  A living growth, not a stain. Killing it and removing the staining are two separate jobs, and neither addresses the moisture that caused it.

• Mud

  The one stain where the first move is mechanical and the chemistry barely matters — and where the folk advice to let it dry first is not what the trade body says.

• Oil and grease on textile

  The stain where the trade guidance switches from water to solvent — and the switch brings a warning the water route does not have.

• Perspiration

  Sweat itself has almost no smell. What you can smell is bacteria eating it — and which bacteria depends on what the garment is made of.

• Red wine

  A pigment stain from anthocyanins and tannins. Responds to oxidising bleaches rather than to detergents, and gets much harder once dried or heated.

• Rust

  Hydrated iron oxide from corroding iron or steel. Distinguish a surface deposit, which cleans off, from active corrosion of the item itself, which does not.

• Soot

  Carbon particles from incomplete combustion. Largely inert, so it is lifted dry rather than dissolved — and disturbing it dry is itself an exposure.

• Sunscreen

  Two stains in one bottle: an oily film, and a UV filter that forms a coloured complex with the iron in your water. The second one is why the mark comes out orange.

• Tarnish

  The only contaminant in this catalogue that is made of the surface it is on. Removing it always removes metal.

• Tea

  A tannin stain treated entirely without solvent — detergent, then a mild acid. The absence of a solvent step is the finding.

• Urine

  Two problems in one: a visible mark that ordinary cleaning removes, and an odour that survives it. The second is why this stain has a reputation.

• Vomit

  Mechanical first, then four agents. The one thing the trade sequence does not mention is the smell, which is the reason most people are cleaning it.

• Water marks

  What hard water leaves behind when it evaporates instead of being wiped away. A mineral film, not dirt, and the fix is at the drying stage.