I’ve had Stanley Steemer out a few times this year, and each time they’ve dumped their leftover cleaning solution in the same spot on my lawn. That area now has yellowing grass and a recent soil test showed unusually high sodium levels.
I looked into some of their cleaning agents and saw ingredients like sodium polyacrylate and sodium salts. Could this runoff be building up sodium in the soil over time?
Has anyone else run into this after professional carpet cleaning? Curious if this is a known issue or just a coincidence.
by DallasLawnGuy
19 Comments
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As you said, just because they’re authorized to do it and it’s “eco friendly” doesn’t mean they should dump it in your lawn.
I’d introduce them to your lawyer. You’re not the first person’s yard they’ve damaged or ruined.
Why do you get your carpet cleaned so frequently?
Why don’t you introduce Stanley steemer to your utility sink?
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Did you give them permission to do this?
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Who tf gets their carpets professionally cleaned “every few months”?
Get a new company to clean your carpet
“Eco friendly”???? My ass. They are dumping the dirty carpet water all over your lawn…..which includes the chemicals they used to clean your carpet. Who knows what was all deep into those carpet fibers….poop, pee, throw up, dead skin cells, fingernails, toenails. I mean the list is endless.
That shit is supposed to be flushed into your toilet.
20 years ago I worked for a very large carpet cleaning company and we always came back to the shop to dump this waste. “Eco friendly” is a joke. Crazy…
I know a thing or two about grass and soil science…
But I don’t need to make use of any of that knowledge in order to tell you that its definitely killing your grass.
But i will anyways:
– yea, Sodium is bad for grass. If any higher level of sodium can be in any way tied to a specific portion of grass that’s doing worse than others… Then sodium is definitely playing a role. **Pay close attention to how I worded that…** Think of it like grubs, seeing grubs doesn’t necessarily mean you have a grub problem. But seeing grubs in an area with dead grass DOES mean you have a grub problem. Sodium is the same way, as little as 200ppm of sodium can cause problems, but sometimes as high as 1,000ppm may not cause problems… There’s a lot of other factors involved. (P.s. forget you ever learned the phrase “base saturation”. The entire concept of base saturation is… Flawed, to say the least. Its especially useless for turf)
– it’s not just the raw ingredients from the cleaning solution that are a concern… Its also everything in your carpet. Which can be an INSANELY long list of things, which isn’t worth digging into, but long story short, there’s all sorts of crazy synthetic molecules in there that could do all sorts of crazy things to soil and grass.
– even knowing the cleaning solution ingredients doesn’t mean that’s for sure the same stuff that’s getting dumped. There’s a lot of chemistry that happens between their tanks, your carpet, and the soil. And I sure as shit don’t know it 🤷♂️
Recs:
– wetting agents. Particularly the “infiltration” type wetting agents, like sixteen 90. Whatever crap is in your soil, that’ll help flush it out.
– deep and infrequent watering will also help flush it out… It would have likely also helped prevent it from being an issue in the first place.
– aeration always helps in regards to leaching things (spike or core is fine)
Lastly, u/dallaslawnguy… 🖕, for screenshotting one of my comments and using it in a video to make some broader point… Atleast i think it was video, idk, someone sent me a screenshot. The point I made was valid… Mowing any type of grass higher WILL make it more resilient to urine damage. Taller grass is healthier. Always. Period… The word “taller/higher” is relative… Meaning, higher than it was previously.
I’m inclined to believe you but this video doesn’t help. It’s not clear what part of your lawn is ruined vs what part they “dumped” their cleaning agent into?? If it’s really a big deal I’d be collecting more info then “maybe it was the carpet cleaners?”.
Yeah F that, no contractor better not dump garbage on my lawn, even if that garbage comes from my house.
Damn Stanley steemer out here salting the earth lol
In Texas the max for small claims is high and the filing fee is low. Just throwing that out there.
Man as a plumber I’m always super paranoid when I service folks houses like flushing tank/tankless heaters. Never grass man. Aim for the bushes
Call them and ask for their SDS sheets on all their cleaning products. Not just from the ones used at your house but from the previous customer as well. Also, ask why they wouldn’t run a dump line into the closest toilet or utility sink to their van.
I worked for this garbo ass company for about 4 years. They told us that what we dumped into the grass would make it grow better but in their same breath would say it’s “against the EPA” to dump anywhere but into a fixture in the home.
Fuck Stanley Steemer.