Topic: For those of you with carpet in the hallways, how do you prevent your hallways from looking like 9 different kinds of ass?

A good shampoo company every few months

Pads come with a price. So does hardwood. Choose wisely.

Rip it up and stain the concrete. The property we lived at was a midrise and had stained concrete. It looked amazing.

We had to replace within 2 years...it was horrible
We replaced with the carpet tiles with a darker pattern and put wood floors around elevators

20/30 mil vinyl plank

Carpet squares make it easy to replace areas with stains that won’t come out. But hallway carpet is always a pain.

We have carpet squares that were glued down. When pulling up to replace it took chunks of concrete or whatever was beneath it. When we (maintenance, not I )put new ones down it looked worse. Having it cleaned every other month is costly. The smell is horrific in the summers. We are student housing.

I am in the exact situation!! Also student housing! We bought a carpet cleaner that we use literally every other day, but it’s a never ending battle it seems!

I asked for one! Very much needed. Try telling them to pour out any liquids before tossing in the trash. Or the puppy that has done the peepee dance for 12 hrs and doesn’t make it outside. Ugh the battles are endless.

Spot shampooing is part of our cleaning contract and we heavily shampoo quarterly

Always had tiled carpet installed for easy and quick replacements if need be.
Treated and scotch guarded the carpet tiles after each install and cleans.
Had my maintenance or in-house janitorial staff carpet clean the hallways on a weekly basis.

1 floor a week

Get on a carpet cleaning schedule. We do one building a month alternating on a circle schedule.

Professionals on a regular schedle. Bought a smaller carpet cleaner for the shop so we spot shampoo as needed. I love dogs!!! But there owners wait to long to take them out and they pee in the hallways. Yeah, its challenging.

Install dark walk of mats at entrances. Also, carpet tiles are the way to go so you can pop in new tiles at any time.

Professionally cleaned quarterly w/spot cleaning in between. Also added mats on every floor in front of elevators. After 6 years we ripped up and added vinyl plank. This is even worse! Now, we have every floor scrubbed once a week. The office also vac mops every single day.

Agree pro quarterly, snd mine have their own commercial grade machines they use for to keep them from the condition you mention… A large number of renters are horrifyingly unable to control their often willful vandalism of common carpet with everything imaginable and then not picking up after themselves. They could at least calling their rental office. Too many years in this game to expect different from our customers. So we adapt, that’s what we do in property management. The fact that you are seeking solutions is testament to that.

I have 64 residential floors in a dual high-rise that’s 4 years old now. I budget for full carpet cleaning 2x/yr and thankfully, haven’t had to replace one yet. Also, recommend encapsulation as it heavily reduces hall humidity…and invest in your own commercial carpet machine for spot treatments.

I spent 10+ years running multi-family cleaning company. Here are some things that helped:
The key is the process and frequency.
Have a cleaner or groundskeeper check the floors every morning. Create a rotating schedule for cleaning the carpet. All carpet should be done quarterly if possible.
For large properties, I would add a couple hours to the cleaner schedule for carpet cleaning. A couple floors a day (or week) and touching any spills or high traffic areas along the way.
This will do 2 things - keep your building fresh and operate as a sentry guard for your halls. Residents are more careful if they see cleaning and hate being seen as the one that trashed the hallway.

Floor mats at entryways.

No trashcans in the hallways or by elevators- makes residents think twice before coming or going with food or drink on the go

Invest in a commercial carpet cleaner or extractor. It will save you $$$ in the long run.

Vacuum once a week and clean them once a year.

We removed the carpet and put down plank

Carpet tiles are great if over concrete or newer wood. We have buildings with older wood subfloors needing wood overlayment before carpet tiles could be installed which just isn’t an affordable option for us. We are removing the entry way planking, installing walk off carpet, vinyl on the stairs and commercial carpet in the hallway. Fingers crossed in 5-7 years only the hallway carpet has to be replaced. Planning on scheduled carpet cleanings every 6 months by our vendor and spot cleaning in between.

We have carpet tiles that we replace when needed. But we also have the carpets cleaned on a monthly basis on every level by our carpet cleaning company. It definitely helps and they use a pet deterrent on the carpet each time they clean it.

Go to Walmart and find a product in the automotive section called Super Clean. It cleans spots and dirt from carpet. I used it in a high rise in Dallas that had plum colored carpets in the hallways. It also cleans walls, ovens, and bathtubs too. Amazing stuff. I

Cleaners vacuum and spot clean daily as needed; full cleaning of the elevator and hallway carpeting when needed?

The key is to have dark hallways; then no one can see the flooring.

Number one thing is to NEVER use any kind of shampoo/detergent/cleanser on carpet. You can never get it all out & the residue attracts more dirt like a magnet. Use a service like zerorez.com
or an enzymatic cleaner. Even just using straight vinegar in place of shampoo will remove residue from previous shampooings & sanitize at the same time. (Vinegar also works great in the rinse cycle of your washing machine instead of fabric softener. That's all a fabric softener does - remove soap residue.)

In house carpet cleaning machine and the darker the better. About to replace 4 year old carpet that needed it 2 years ago. Pain in the booty

We vacuum every day and have them steam cleaned once a week. Thankfully we’re in the process of removing the carpet and replacing with LVP. So much easier to walk around with a steam mop to keep the hallways sparkling clean

We have a couple Hyla vacuums they are professional grade and have water filters so nothing escapes. You can see all of the sand, dirt, and hair in the water when you empty it. There are 8 floors and we all take turns. Takes about an hour. And yes the steam cleaning is contracted out to a local company (Chem-Dry) that actually uses a dry cleaning method so it’s better than traditional steam cleaning. We do have a cleaning crew that comes in to clean the lobby and fitness rooms daily but they wanted way too much to do the vacuuming for us. I honestly don’t mind. It gets me away from my desk and walking around the building