Close Window

Filtration Lines

What are they?
These lines that you see any many homes today, is caused by the passing of air over the surface of the carpet to another area, and the carpet is actually filtering the air which causes these dark lines. This air includes particles from cooking, water vapor, dust, pollen, in other words, everything that is in the air of your home.

Why?
There are several reasons for this. Generally when you see filtration lines on the inside walls of your home, this is being caused by your heating and air conditioning system. When your system comes on it is trying to remove the air from your home thru an air filter, then thru the exchanger which either heats or cools the air and then returns it back to the space of your home thru your floor registers. If the system can not draw enough air thru the filter box, then it will begin to draw air from every other source it can find. Let me give you an example.  Imagine taking a straw, put one end in your mouth, then put a finger over the other end of the straw to close it off. If you begin sucking on the straw, no air or very little air is able to pass thru the straw, but if you were to take a pin and started poking holes in the sides of the straw, you would get air and the more holes you punch the more air you will get thru the straw.
Staircases are usually the worst, because the filter box is usually located below them. Locate the edge of the step next to the wall. Take your finger and push down, and in most cases you will notice a gap, between the wood floor and the wall. Under closed doors to closets, closed off bedrooms, attics, you will see dark lines, created by the passing of air under the door and the carpet filtering the air as explained earlier. You will see lines on outside walls also, but this is not usually caused by your system, and that is another topic.

What to do?
When we clean a clients carpets, who has filtration lines, we try to remove as much as we can with the regular cleaning. If a home has very mild filtration lines, we are usually very successful in removing most of the discolorization. The picture above shows an example of moderate to heavy discolorization, which will not come out with a regular cleaning process. As you notice the stain continues down the wall and around the door casing. In this example you can see that we have cleaned  half of the area, which produced great results. We consider this to be restoration cleaning, for it is very labor intensive, and time consuming. It is cheaper than replacing the carpet.

The two worst that I have seen.
Both these examples were in million dollar homes.
Example one: This was an empty home that had been on the market for 6 months. The floors underneath the carpet were 4 by 8 foot sheets of plywood, and when they were put together, there was a gap between the sheets. Imagine walking into one of the rooms, and there were lines everywhere, like a puzzle, showing the edges of the 4 by 8 sheets of plywood.
Example two: This home was 10 years old and had developed filtration lines that extended 6 inches out from the walls. Every inside wall of the home was affected.

 Close Window