After many years of design and testing, HyperWind Technology's commercial carpet cleaning division has produced a revolutionary system that is the only truly effective option available. Our patent pending technology allows even high foot traffic commercial carpet to look the way it's supposed to and last twice as long as expected.

With pressure and extreme air flow, our ultra-low moisture system removes the stains, soil and soapy residue that other systems merely bury into the bottom of the carpet.

The condition of your carpet is worsened over time mainly by your present cleaner pulling the dirt and soap into the bottom of the carpet. Commercial carpet is designed to handle massive amounts of food traffic and to keep the dirt on top. Most of the samage is caused by over wetting and a mix of harsh alkaline chemicals.

HyperWind can reverse the damage done by other antiquated systems. Our technology uses very little water and counter rotating brushes to gently lift the pile. Most carpet manufacturers recommend the use of a pile lifter at least once a year. Our system uses pile lifting brushes as part of the overall process. How little water do we use? About 30 gallons is sufficient to clean a 20 screen movie theater multiplex. Almost all the water is returned to the machine. This allows the carpet to be completely dry in a matter of minutes. By not letting the water reach the bottom, our technology leaves so little moisture, and only on the very top, that absolutely no wick back will occur. Wick back is the process of wet carpet slowly drying and stains returning to the surface to become visible again. In other words, wick back is the process that makes most carpet cleaning a waste of time and money. Have you ever wondered why carpet looks basically the same about one week after wet extraction cleaning? Wick back is the reason. Our technology eliminates this problem.

Because of the effectiveness of our technology, we are very cost competitive. The more square feet a facility has, the more competitive our prices. In many cases, our technology can reverse the damage done by other systems and, in doing so, drastically lengthen the operational life of the carpet. By comparing the price of our service to the cost of early carpet replacement, our service can be in many cases, considered free of charge. This may sound a little far fetched, but we invite anyone to do the math. Get in touch with us and we will be happy to work out the numbers with the comptroller. The cost benefit is stunning.

dennis

Dennis Fischer - Owner / Inventor

fish@hyperwind.org

Many, many moons ago, Dennis worked as a designer for a major carpet cleaning machine manufacturer that we will not mention here. Having created on of their very successful machines, he wanted to take advantage of recent technological advances, and take his ideas further. He tried to convince the company to go in a different direction and make the best machine possible. Like many old, establish companies, they were afraid of change and preferred to make slight alterations to what they had and call it new.

An inventor is never satisfied with the status quo. An inventor, once an idea has occurred, will never rest until he or she can see that idea validated. That's what happened to Dennis. His company refused to even consider a change in direction--much like IBM refused to listen to a young software designer named Bill, the company that shall not be named was afraid of a new direction. As such, the best way to validate our technology is by building a commercial carpet cleaning business.

Hawaii was the place to spend a few years field testing and further developing the prototype by cleaning hotels and condos. Why Hawaii you ask? One word, weather. Using the information gained by field testing in paradise, Dennis went to California to take the next step. Building more machines and making steady improvements until it was time to expand and begin looking at larger accounts. At this point a fellow entrepreneur named Kevin enters the picture. Looking to start a venture himself, Kevin saw the technology and understood the breakthrough potential. They formed a partnership in 2003.

In mid 2007 Dennis moved to Michigan, his home state, to start a new franchise with his brother. Although he still keeps a foot in the California operation, the Great Lakes division is expanding at a nice pace. With a much larger production facility he is now ready to build the next version of the machine. As motor technology and materials science continue to improve, so do the machines. An inventor's work is never finished.

kevin

Kevin McCluskey - Owner / COO

kevin@hyperwind.org

Kevin comes to us from that strange and beautiful place known as Florida. From the Tampa Bay area to the San Francisco Bay Area with many stops in between. Kevin has worked in many industries and brings a roundness of knowledge to the table. Having learned a great deal from his business partner Dennis about carpet cleaning, electrical engineering and materials science, he has been contributing to the developmental process as well as running the California operation.

In addition to running the California division of HyperWind Tech, Kevin keeps one foot (or at least one toe), in the hospitality industry as a consultant and occasional bartender. Interacting with the public at the bar is more a hobby at this point for Kevin, yet it provides a useful outlet for social contact and insight into "what the kids are up to these days." Getting HyperWind to a point of industry domination is of paramount importance to our COO as it is necessary for future projects. Daily life however, is also important. After all, what is the point of accomplishment if one does not take in a little joie de vivre from time to time? Walking the company mascot down to the beach fora while every day, is part of the job and is crucial for the well being of HyperWind.

ripley

Ripley - Company Mascot

Born in Los Angeles in 2003, our mascot has had a very rough life. A busy schedule of eating, sleeping, pooping and a daily walk to the beach are enough to keep any mascot busy. Yet through it all she keeps her spirits high and does the best job she can. In addition to her motivational duties, she has taken it upon herself to clearly define the territorial boundary of our home office through the use of vociferous sonic projection. This in itself requires constant vigilance and much running about. Her work output far exceeds her compensation as is the case with most start up employees, yet she does not complain.

Why Other Systems Fail

Until now there have only been two major kinds of cleaning systems: The spin bonnet and the wet extractor.

The spin bonnet works by absorbing the cleaning solution and dirt into the bonnet pad. The idea is for the bonnet to rub on the carpet pile sideways as it spins in order to create agitation and transport the dirty solution into the pad. This spinning action does not lift the carpet pile, but instead pushes it flat and can even damage it over time. In theory the system could possibly work, in practice however it would require a tractor trailer full of clean bonnets to have any kind of effectiveness in a commercial setting. That much sideways rubbing would be very bad for the carpet pile and take days. In practice what usually happens is the operator does the best he can with the clean bonnets he has, and tries to at least blur the dirt and stains to look less noticeable. Anyone who is in charge of a commercial facility, and has tried the spin bonnet method, will probably say what a disappointment the process was. The best thing one can say about the spin bonnet is that it usually does not soak the carpet too badly.

The wet extractor, sometimes misleadingly called a "steam cleaner" is responsible for the destruction of countless millions of square feet of carpet. Why do some people call the wet extractor a steam cleaner? Good question. Real steam cleans some things very well. As a marketing issue it makes sense to call it steam, and if the water is hot enough in the solution line, it will technically give off a little bit of steam. However, the actual solution being jetted into the carpet is liquid and therefore, by definition, not steam. An extractor has powerful suction but almost zero airflow. Suction can barely lift anything unless it has a good seal around what it is attempting to lift. THe only way to create a seal with an extractor wand is to have enough water in the carpet to prevent air from coming through the sides. Unless the carpet is very wet, the extractor does very little in terms of transporting anything from the carpet.

Wet extraction cleaners will often talk about "water lift" as a measurement of effectivenes. What they don't understand is that once the carpet is that wet, everything else is a moot point and a soaking wet carpet is just a big mess. Think of the scenario carefully:

  1. The carpet pile is full of water and soap.
  2. The opening of an extractor wand is pulled along on the wet carpet pile.
  3. The dirty water and soap just off the side of the wand is being pulled through the bottom of the carpet in order to be suctioned into the wand opening.
  4. There is absolutely no way to pull the dirty water from the bottom of the carpet when the surrounding pile is also wet with dirty water that is constantly being pulled to the bottom.

The syntax here is a little cumbersome, but try to visualize suction into standing water:

  • The surrounding water is also pulled into the suction area--not just the water directly underneath the point of suction.
  • At the end of the wet extraction cleaning process there is a layer of dirty, soapy water at the bottom of the carpet pile.
  • The deeper the pile, the deeper the dirty water.
  • Short pile will wick back the stains and dirt to the visble surface relatively quickly while thick pile will take longer to wick back to the top.

After a certain number of wet cleanings, the carpet pile reaches a point of being "full" (also known in the industry as a "bottomless pit"). What this means is that the carpet pile has built up layer upon layer of dirt and soap from the bottom up. When these layers reach a certain height within the pile there is no way to make any change in appearance to the carpet. Taking dirt from the top of the carpet and storing it in the bottom, is the Faustian bargain made when dealing with extraction cleaning. At some point the carpet is too full of dirt and must be replaced. Most carpet is replaced simply because it has been water damaged by an uncareful or inexperienced extraction operator or has become full of dirt from the bottom up.

Commercial carpet is designed to keep the dirt on top and handle amazing amounts of foot traffic. A wet extractor will pull the dirt that was on top into the bottom of the pile. To add insult to injury, the wet extractor will also leave a soapy, and therefore sticky, residue in the carpet that will lessen the effectiveness of regular vacuuming. Make no mistake--regular vaccuming with a quality commercial vacuum cleaner is crucial to the longevity of any carpet. A good vacuum cleaner with a high speed beater brush does a great job of removing dry soil from the top of the pile. The top of the pile is where the carpet has been designed to keep the dirt. When this dry soil is allowed to penetrate into the pile, foot traffic will become more damaging as the tiny sharp particles of dirt act like tiny saws on the individual fibers. Pulling the dry soil deep into the pile with a wet extractor only hastens the process.

Have you ever seen a carpet with wrinkled bulges? This is known as buckling, and it's caused by water either from flood damage or wet extraction cleaning. What could possess an extraction operator to use that much water? A tremendous amount of water is required to make even a temporary improvement in appearance and is considered normal practice for extraction cleaning. As the carpet becomes full of dirt and the scheduled cleanings become less and less effective, the only thing the operator knows how to do is to use more water and more soap. Many operators confuse this process with a so called "deep cleaning." The result is predictable--water damage. The phrase "deep cleaning" is often used as part of the sales pitch by extraction cleaners. What it really means is "deep burial" into the bottom of the carpet. These operators, for the most part, are not mean or dishonest; they simply don't know any better. They believe the information espoused by the manufacturers of the expensive equipment they have bought. Who would want to believe that the sixty thousand dollar truck mounted extractor, that they borrowed money for, does more harm than good?

Not much has changed in the wet extraction business in nearly half a century except the power of the suction. Modern electronices, modern vacuum motors and powerful diesel geneartors have made it possible to pull dirty water deeper into the carpet than ever before. The basic idea however has not changed in almost 50 years: soak it wet and suck it out. The best scenario anyone can hope for when using this system is to replace the carpet about every 10 years. When I say best scenario, I mean let's hope that no one slips on wet, soapy carpet and decides to get litigious or that the wet carpet becomes a home for black mold. The later one always winds up in court. For more about these points, see Loss Prevention and Safety.

You may be wondering why anyone still uses wet extraction cleaning after reading this dissertation on its many problems. The simple answer is that it has been the only game in town for far too long. Why did people used to use an abacus or a slide rule? I bet the first airplane would have been easier to build if Wilbur had a personal computer and the right software. That's the thing about old technology--it may be problematic, but if no one has brought anything better to the market, then there's nothing to do but accept the problems as part of life. It's time for the wet extractor to go the way of the abacus and the slide rule. Though in wide use today, the wet extractor is now obsolete and at the end of its time. It's never good to be the last company using obsolete technology. As with most businesses, the rule is innovate or perish. Innovation in the carpet cleaning industry is long overdue.

There are of course other machines on the market that have their niches. They are almost all aimed at the residential market because the commercial side is just too daunting a task for the complicated nature of their use. A company based in Wisconsin comes to mind. In these legal action happy times, I wil not mention the name. I can say they use counter rotating, pile lifting brushes and that's a good thing. Their process however is simply too complicated and time consuming for any large commercial application. Using their system in a large multiplex theater would take weeks for a single cleaning. This is common among the so called new machines. Most new machines are developed for the owner operator who has little interest in building a business based on commercial work. They will do some commercial work for the stability, but their real gravy comes from the residential market. By staying small and not having to deal with the storm of paperwork and taxes that come with having too many employees, the small owner can keep his or her costs down. This is why no one single carpet cleaning company has more than 2% of the total market. Due to technological restrictions there has not been any hope of paplying the economy of scale to the carpet cleaning industry until now. A wet extractor requires a young, strong back to operate. The other systems require finesse and care to do even a small amount of square footage. Taking these factors into consideration, it's no wonder that finding a person who is responsible for a large, carpeted facility and is pleased with the appearance of the carpet there, is exceedingly rare. The only explanation would be that the carpet is very new or they are using the services of HyperWind Technology's Commercial Carpet Care.

Loss Prevention and Safety

Two of the most dreaded words these days are “slips and falls”. Injured workers and customers cost American businesses hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

Its bad enough that some accidents are unavoidable, worse yet many injuries avoidable. Insurance companies prefer carpeted surfaces in the workplace when possible. Even though commercial carpet cleaning usually involves wet, soapy and unsafe conditions for days after cleaning, its preferable to hard surfaces that become an instant hazard following a liquid spill. In addition to being slippery, hard surfaces are unforgiving to the human body that has succumbed to gravity. This being the case it’s a wonder that any business would install hard surfaces such as tile in their facility. Hard surfaces do offer a design aspect that many businesses find appealing, however it is usually chosen for ease of maintenance. It is often a compromise between safety and the ability to keep highly abused areas of flooring looking acceptable on a daily basis. Because of this situation, many businesses have a mixture of carpet and tile. This mixture creates its own problem when the method used to clean the carpet leaves excess soap and water, thus creating the situation of wet shoes walking off wet carpet onto slick tile. High foot traffic businesses that have invested substantially into high quality carpet, must attempt to maintain their expensive investment by having it cleaned on a regular basis. Yet, the very process of doing so can become extremely expensive should someone fall and become injured.

There is also the potential health risk of mold and mildew growing in wet carpet. Even if no one becomes sick, it is an unpleasant smell and bad for business. If the wrong kind of mold should begin to grow along the wet floor and behind the walls, the expense of remediation could be astronomical. Many businesses have gone bankrupt from toxic mold.

Even if the dangers of slippery footing and toxic mold are avoided, wet extraction cleaning will absolutely shorten the lifespan of any carpet. That part is unavoidable. Early replacement of commercial carpet is terribly expensive, both in product cost and downtime. Imagine the cost benefit of using carpet for twenty years instead of the usual ten. That in itself would pay for regular cleaning many times over , thereby making the cleaning service that guarantees longevity free of charge in a de facto sense.

HyperWind Technology’s is happy to demonstrate our patent pending technology for Directors of Loss Prevention, Vice Presidents of Operations, Insurance company representatives or any decision maker in charge of a commercial facility with more than seven thousand square feet of carpet. Every person who has ever seen our demonstration has recognized the cost benefit very quickly.

How does our carpet cleaning technology help the environment? To answer that question we must examine the environmental impact of  the other two widely used systems on the market today.

 First is the spin bonnet. This system is not used very often in large commercial settings due to the problems detailed on the Why other systems fail page of this web site.  Still, it does have the drawback of using a large number of bonnets that require energy to manufacture and transport in large numbers, energy to launder the bonnets and the use of raw materials to manufacture large numbers of bonnets.  At least this system does not require a diesel generator to run all night. That brings us to the current main carpet cleaning system in the US.

 The wet extraction system is so environmentally un friendly, its hard to know where to begin.  Let’s use the order in which the system is used. To start with, its heavy. Very heavy depending on the variant of the machines. Although there are portable extractors that use power from the outlet, the vast majority of extractors that clean commercial locations use a truck mounted system. These usually consist of a large heavy diesel generator mounted in a truck or van, and reels of hoses. The hoses need to be very long to reach all the way from the van to the far parts of the building being water damaged…. er cleaned.  Suction hoses and solution hoses are required to be very long and thus heavy. The hoses, chemicals, generator and other equipment stack up for a heavy load that must be transported to the job site.  This heavy haul is using a relatively large amount of fuel just to get there.  Then its time to connect the solution hoses to the water source provided by the customer.  Many thousands of gallons will be used in a typical commercial job of any real size. All of this water will be mixed with detergents and pulled through the carpet only to be dumped into the sewer system.  There is a high energy cost just to use this volume of water that must be treated and pumped many miles to make it to the job site.  Water conservation and energy conservation are closely intertwined due to the energy use required to get water to the tap.

 Next comes the diesel generator running all night and these seldom have emissions control systems. Running the massive vacuum motors and high pressure pumps for the suction needed to push and pull thousands of gallons of water through the bottom of the carpet requires the diesel engine to run hard for the duration of the work. How many gallons of diesel? Its hard to tell exactly, but too many for certain. Then there is the issue of the sheer volume of soap that must be produced, stored, shipped and finally used on the job site only to be sent down the drain in large quantities along with the thousands of gallons of waste water.  This sort of cleaning is awful for the environment, in terms energy consumption, air pollution, and waste water production. Lets not forget the energy tied up in the production and transport of the new carpet to replace the ones destroyed by wet extraction cleaning.  The disposal of millions of square feet of ruined carpet is a huge issue just by itself.  Wet extraction cleaning, especially truck mounted, is harsh on our planet.

 The machines built by HyperWind Technology’s on the other hand, are light weight, energy efficient, use amazingly small amounts of water* and use biodegradable detergents and enzymes that actually benefit the sewer system.  By using electricity from the outlets to run all the equipment, our technology operates on a tiny fraction of the usual energy consumed by other cleaners and thus our carbon footprint  is on par with watching a big screen TV and flushing a toilet four or five times.  Our impact on the power bill of our customer is miniscule compared to the impact that wet extraction cleaning has to the customers water bill.  Being good to the environment by having clean, dry and longer lasting carpets must be one of the easiest ways to help mother nature.

* Twenty or thirty gallons compared to thousands of gallons for a similar size job.

Northern California Division
Kevin McCluskey
(650) 274 9384 m
kevin@hyperwind.org

Michigan Division
Dennis Fischer
(274) 360 9333 m
fish@hyperwind.org