removing grease spots from carpets?

Swarfega and a toothbrush to dissolve the grease followed by a good scrub with carpet cleaner or rent one of those carpet machines.

Get a spray can of engine degreaser. Spray liberally untill the grease is dosolved. The degreaser is then water soluble, and can be washed out with soap and water, or carpet shampoo. This works with shirts and suchlike too. I have had white shirts covered in oil and grease, and they come up spotless as long as the treatment is the first thing tried.

Alan

My wife has a little can of 'de-solveit' (i think thats the correct spelling) spray for just such occasions ;) I think it came from sainsburys, or similar supermarket. seems to remove almost anything. the only problem is then you are left with little clean spots about a stride apart... a dead givaway!

Dave

I've used Easy Start for dealing with errant grease spots and found it to be very effective......possibly not a good idea if you're a smoker though........

Regards

Philip T-E

i don't have an answer, but i did laugh as i have done that same thing at a friend's home. the carpet was a light tan or ivory color.... to this day, i won't even walk on that carpet. she still speaks to me. sammm

Swarfega used like this will do the job. We have a VAX that is wonderfull for cleaning carpets. I once managed to drop a full tin of coloured wood varnish on a light tan carpet. This may not be in the Vax manual, but I loaded it with Turps and shampoo'd the carpet. All the varnish came out. A conventional clean removed the turps from the carpet and Vax together. All is now perfect again.

John

bugbear wrote: > Does anyone have a favourite trick to remove > the grease and dirt without spreading it further > (the obvious problem if I try a solvent) and without > wrecking the carpet?

Many thanks for all the replies; one thing I need to emphasize; this is not nice new clean grease; this is decades old, loaded with black grime grease. (*)

Think old engine oil in grease form.

BugBear

(*) and not M&S grease ;-)

The engine degreaser shoudl do it.

Eucalyptus oil works for beach tar, so that might do as well...and leave a nice smell.

Alan

I don't know if it is still available but 'Thawpit' used to work well on woollen carpets. Don't forget to try it on a part that is unseen first.

If you've dabbed the worst out then you can try Wurth saBesto Brake Cleaner to carry the stain through, I've used it successfully when the grease from a bike chain got onto my fabric seats. Test it on a hidden area of the carpet first. The grease is clean, it's the bits of crud that contaminate it that makes the stain worse.

AJH

Many thanks to all who responded.

In the interests of feedback, and helping anyone else who finds this thread in the google archive...

In the end I used swarfega green gel (not the new hand washing stuff with granules) on a toothbrush to loosen the grease.

I then used a VAX vacuum clean/carpet washer to remove the swarfega and dissolved grease.

After drying, the result is excellent.

I can just about see where the marks were, but I think this is as much due to a texture change from the cleaning process as from residual dirt/grease.

BugBear

More important, would a wife notice :-)

Jim.

Obviously not as he is still alive to tell the tale :)

Alan

She has noticed, just holding it back for the perfect moment... Blunder Points are non expireable

Dave

On a related note, a couple of years ago, the cat managed to cover itself with Sadolin woodstain. I could not imagine what we could do for it so took it to the vet. Later that afternoon, we were told we could come and collect him. Expecting to find a naked hairless cat we were very surprised to find a wonderfully clean, fluffy, odourless cat. He had never looked so good. We asked how they had done it, expecting some secret paint remover. Turns out they scrubbed him in swarfega. What wonderful people - that is both the vet and the people who make swarfega.

Pete Harrison

I came home once to find our "red" setter looking unusually red. A few pounds bag of red raddle, iron ochre cement pigment, was involved.

There was a dog-height stripe around every wall. Had to re-decorate to get rid of it. Fortunately it washed out of the sofa loose covers (ah, those '70s and The Days Of Dralon) and vacuumed out of the carpet pretty well, but nothing would take it off a rough wallpaper surface.

The dog just rolled in his usual couple of cowpats for shampoo and carried on as if nothing had happened.