Anyone used one of those chemical carpet cleaning companies?

[Takenoprisoners]

We have a dog-urine stain on the carpet which is just not coming out. It happened when we were away on holiday - had a house-sitter and think the dog peed and it had dried in before sitter noticed and tried to attack the stain with dettol and water (arrgghh!!). Have tried rinsing and sponging out area many times, and also tried my steam cleaner on it, but the stain seems to have set.

Needless to say, it's an expensive carpet, in one of the biggest rooms in the house, and the stain is right in the middle of the floor! I am beside myself!

Do these miracle-promising, carpet-cleaning companies work? How much should I expect to pay for spot-cleaning of a dog-pee-sized stain? Any advice gratefully received - thanks!

In my experience, carpet cleaning companies won't come out just to spot clean (or if they do, it'll cost a fortune) - it would be better to ask for a quote for cleaning the whole carpet. Plus, if you clean the whole carpet and there is some fading, it won't notice, whereas it will if you spot clean it. I have found that a rented carpet cleaner (most dry cleaners and some DIY shops rent them) are just as good. That certainly worked when our dog peed in dd's bedroom - it took me weeks to find it, as he'd managed to get partly behind some drawers (well, he is a tiny dog).

Thanks, Roskva - might try the rented carpet cleaner option. Do you know if they're any different from domestic steam cleaners? Mine blasts out high-powered steam - no chemicals, just water - so I'm wondering what these hired contraptions do? TIA.

The one I hired used a special detergent for cleaning carpets - you fill it with a specified amount of hot water and detergent, the machine blasts it into the carpet, then you put the machine into a kind of reverse function which sucks the water out of the carpet; then you fill the machine with cold water without detergent to rinse. I rinsed the carpet a couple of times to make sure the detergent was out. You have to be careful if you have a pure wool carpet as some wool carpets can shrink. It took a couple of hours in all, and then we put dd in the travel cot in our room to give the carpet overnight to dry.

I think commercial carpet cleaning companies use a bigger version of the same kind of machine, so they can do the job faster.

That's useful to know - I wondered if they actually sucked anything out, and it sounds like it's worth a try. Thanks!

Actually, the carpet cleaning companies nowadays are using absolutely non-toxic and safe for any children and pets products. I'm not sure about all but mostly. You can check out my favourite contractor's website. I've been using them for years and I can't say one bad word for them. The prices are quite high but for that region, I think it's normal.
1stcarpetcleaning.co.uk/
PS: I don't own this company and I'm not advertising it. Delete the link, but not the comment if it's representing a problem to post a link.

Have you tried an enzyme cleaner? Worked well on the toddler pee accident stain when I missed the wet patch.

Simple Solution is the one I have from pets at home, but there are various different ones.