The Right Way to Remove Odors from your Home

The most common odors we are asked to eliminate are urine , vomit , feces or mold and mildew . The simple act of cleaning the carpets or upholstery will not always be enough.

Urine from pets requires much more than cleaning. If you have ever had a pet you know that sooner or later you will have an accident. Try as you might to clean and treat it, inevitably there is an odor left behind. As light as it might be, on humid or rainy days it can become almost unbearable.

There are several techniques used by carpet cleaners to solve the problem with varying degrees of success.

One such technique is to spray the affected area with fragrances. This will cover up the odor for a short time, maybe a day or two but it does not eliminate the odor.

The next technique is to spray a disinfectant on the affected area. This works better than fragrances for things like mold and mildew odors but is not a permanent solution for urine odors or other organic odors like feces or vomit. Sanitizers and disinfectants create an envelope around the problem to lock the odor in, but the envelope will eventually break down thus allowing the odor to return.

The main reason urine odors are so pervasive is urine salts. Water in the urine evaporates but the salts remain. In winter months with our heating systems on humidity levels drop considerably. Urine salts basically go dormant not unlike mold and mildew during times of low humidity and dry air. But much like mold and mildew as spring approaches and warmer temps eliminate the need for heat and the rainy season begins to saturate the air with humidity or in mid-summer when temps and humidity rises to extreme levels so does mold and mildew and those nasty urine odors.