Carpet cleaning

[liquidlite]

I am wondering what everyone uses to bring their carpet back to life? My carpet is pretty matted down so I attempted using the rug doctor, but it didn't do as much as I expected. I am thinking about using the power washer followed by a conditioner. Any suggestions?

[cgriebs]

I used the automotive "tuff stuff", which did a pretty good job, as well as one of the other foaming carpet cleaners in a can. The cleaners foam up nicely and if you use one of those light duty scrub brushes, you can wick up the carpet fibers to bring them back to life. I kept a spackle bucket of soapy water by my side to rinse the brush and towel I was using. I'm in salt water, so I have a really tough time keeping mine clean.

Not sure you can do much about it becoming matted down - it's gonna happen in due time. After you clean/scrub, the carpet will look great - until people start to trample it.

[K_E_N]

I do mine pretty much as does cgriebs with few exceptions.
I also use automotive carpet cleaner, usually tough stuff, a carpet brush, and rinse, rinse, rinse with water from water hose. The main thing that cgriebs doesn't list doing that I do is dry my carpet with shop vac.
I used to just clean, rinse, and allow to air dry with reasonable results. A friend suggested drying with shop vac, and it made a big difference in the carpet's texture. The shop vac tends to kinda "fluff" the carpet up a bit while sucking out the water.

[jester]

There was just a topic on this. Several people said they use a power washer. I will be doing that to mine this weekend if the weather is nice.