The thumper machine

If there were any ants lurking in the carpets or under the flooring, hopefully they have now vacated the building with blinding headaches.
Rug Doctors are available to hire and a good way of keeping your carpets clean and fresh.
The way they work is to bash the carpet dirt into submission with a soapy solution and whisk it away up the tubes into a waste reservoir.
We had intended to do them last year, but with Covid on the up then, nowhere was hiring them out so it was another job put on the back burner and the To Do list.

We have two outlets here in town that hire them, and last time used the Co-op. It was a simple enough procedure, you could hire for the day or half day, though the carpet cleaner was extra, so we bought a big bottle and paid our £28 for 24 hours.
We had very little furniture then so it was relatively easy to do the entire house in a morning, but obviously no refund!

Today we went up to the Co-op and made enquiries. Plenty of machines available for £22.99 a day, but although they had the sprays for upholstery and curtains, they did not have the carpet cleaner, so a bit pointless hiring something with nothing to put in it.
We therefore went to the other outlet, and apparently you have to book the machines there. Ah.
They had two, but neither were booked out until tomorrow, plus they had plenty of carpet cleaner, so we were onto a winner. Hurrah!
The rental price was the same, though the cleaner an extra pound compared to the empty shelf in the Co-op, but for £35 and three hours work, we have cleaned the carpets and they have come up a treat.
We filled the tank about eight times to do the entire job, and the water we emptied away was black. This was definitely not dye from the grey carpet, but an accumulation of dirt over the three years since our last deep clean. We use a sweeper now every day, but hoover two or three times a week.
We did not see one solitary ant, dead or alive, in the water tipped away.

We cleaned the machine and sanitised it to the best of our ability before returning it just after 1 pm.
We were both hungry and my plans for lunch would have taken about an hour, so we went to the bakery where I bought a tuna and red onion salad roll for me and Hubby had a sausage roll which he had with baked beans when we got home.  We also treated ourselves to a cake for all our hard work, and are now relaxing for the rest of the day. To be honest, it’s too hot to do any cooking anyway.

The washing which was done early and put outside on the line has dried perfectly.
Yep,a good day’s work.

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