Almost everyone has heard of or performed the dry down test. You know, the one where the manufacturer tells you to pour some undiluted chemical into a concaved glass full-strength. This test is shear brilliance from a marketing point of view. It shows off a particular feature of their product. How it won’t leave a sticky residue that promotes rapid resoiling. However, there are many problems with this test in its current protocol.

First, you never use your chemical full-strength, do you? You never leave a coating of chemical on the carpet fiber an 1/8” to a 1/4” thick like in the bottom of a glass. This is dozens to hundreds of times thicker than what would remain on a carpet fiber after cleaning. Here’s an exaggerated example, but I think you will get my point. Go outside and stand up a broom or shovel against the wall. Now take your garden hose, pressure washer, fire truck or whatever you want that sprays and spray the handle of the broom or shovel. You can spray a gallon or a thousand gallons on the handle it won’t make a difference. How much will stay on the handle? In other words, how thick will the liquid coating be? The answer: Not very thick. Gravity and surface tension will make sure of this. Now let’s look at a carpet fiber – in many cases, thinner than a human hair. How much of your encap will adhere to the vertical fiber? The answer: A very thin microlayer. So why do a test that uses chemical full-strength up to a 1/4” thick in a glass when in the real world you never get anywhere close to that. Why use a test designed to market a feature, not the reality of real world usage of the product?

Take the product you currently use and mix it to the maximum manufacturer’s dilution. Adding in the chemical called water will change the test and the results. The encaps that dry down and self-shatter at full-strength will behave differently. Even some of the encaps that were sticky at full-strength will dry down nicely with water added in the proper cleaning dilution. Different encaps will take varying amounts of time to dry out as their formulas vary and their thickness is much greater on/in glass than on carpet. But note, depending on the thickness and the chemical, it may take up to a few days to completely dry out, especially depending on room humidity.

Don’t be fooled people! Go a step further and get a piece of carpet. I used nylon. Mix up several different solutions to manufacturer’s recommended cleaning dilutions and apply an equal amount of each to the carpet. Let dry and place this carpet in front of your door or under your desk for a couple of weeks.

Water hardness and ph varies across the country, so I use Dasani bottled water. When you try The Proper Dry Down Test you can get the exact results I got using the same exact quality of water. I also used clear desert plates for this test. Five to ten drops of properly mixed solution spread on the plate’s center will give you a much thinner and more accurate result. The thinner, the better. Let dry over night. Does it dry completely or smear when touched? Sprinkle on some dry soil – will it stick to it when dry? Is it clear, slightly clouded or very clouded? This will affect the brightness of the cleaned carpet. On dry cleaned carpet, glide your hand over its surface. The carpet should feel like a cotton shirt out of the dryer. In other words, there should be no resistance when you glide your hand over the fibers. It should just feel smooth and soft, not sticky. This proper dry down test will give you more real world info than the marketing-designed dry down test.