Rug Cleaning in Aiken
Collection and delivery in Aiken are included. We take the rug back to the workshop, wash it properly, and bring it home.
What Aiken is built from
Winter Colony cottages laid out from the 1890s by northern racing families — the Hitchcocks and the Whitneys among them — standing alongside working horse farms, barns with living quarters above, and later houses on large lots under the canopy that earned the town its nickname. The horse district's streets are deliberately left unpaved sand so that horses can be ridden on them, and Hitchcock Woods runs right up to the edge of town.
An equestrian town in the literal sense, with a seasonal element that arrives for the winter and spring. The rugs are frequently very good ones, in houses where somebody walks in from a barn several times a day.
The Aiken problem
Barn soil is not house dirt with more of it, it is a different material entirely, and this is the one thing about Aiken that no other market on our route has to deal with. Start with the footing. Arena sand is specified angular rather than rounded, because round grains roll and a horse needs grip — so the sand coming indoors in a boot tread here is deliberately sharp, and sharp sand does not polish a wool fibre, it cuts it. Then the stall floor: urine and manure leave ammoniacal, alkaline salts behind, and alkalinity is what lifts a natural dye off wool. That is the same chemistry as a pet accident, arriving daily and on purpose. Then the oils — hoof dressing, fly spray, leather conditioner, pine tar — all of them oily or resinous, all of them transferring off boots and tack onto the floor, and an oily film is precisely what turns a load of loose sand into a bound, dark, greasy soil that no vacuum is ever going to lift. Finally there is hay and shavings chaff, which is fibrous and knits down into a pile instead of resting on top of it. The rug is being abraded, chemically attacked and glued together at the same time, and no single treatment answers all three.
If that sounds like your rug, send the form and describe what you are seeing. We will tell you whether it needs the full treatment or not.
We collect from these too
Ready when you are, Aiken
Free inspection, free collection, and a real number before anything starts.