Now synthetic bonnets will wear differently, so as for this discussion, we will be taking a look at bonnets that contain or are made with natural fibers – in this case cotton. When you wash and dry your cloths at home, many made of cotton, like tee shirts and blue jeans, you will notice that after they are dried you have to clean out the dryer’s lint trap. Your cotton bonnets will also wear and loose material over time.

I weighed individual bonnets from a case of 17.5” ProCotton IronMan bonnets. Using the average weight per bonnet that was 10.88 ounces it gives us a starting point. After about 10 washings they now might weigh 10.2 or 10.4 ounces or about a 5% loss in material. The carpet cleaning machine type and its weight, the distance covered by each of the bonnet’s sides, did it clean 40 square feet in a filthy restaurant or 700 s.f. in an apartment hallway? The amount of moisture used and the carpet’s fiber type will all play a roll in this discussion. The point is to consider when it is time to add new recruits into your fleet of bonnets.

Based on my usage, machine type and cleaning I’m calculating a 5 to 6% fiber loss per every 10 cleanings. Why is this important? As the bonnets age and lose material, they will also at some point start to lose their “brand new” cleaning ability. So now you have an important new client you want to impress, so do you grab your bonnet with 30 wash cycles on it or a brand new bonnet that will show the greatest contrast from the dirty side as you flip it over to show them the clean side and what you just accomplished for them. The same would be true for a service call that had a very dirty carpet. Save your aged bonnets for the moderate soils and introduce your new bonnets to the more heavily soiled cleanings.

by John H. Klucznik, Founder of Bonnet Pro and Key Floor Care

Just like tires on your car, as the threads wear, at some point your performance will gradually start to diminish until the product’s life has been used up. The same is true for your bonnets. Get rid of the very old and worn ones and introduce some fresh new bonnets into your fleet to help keep your cleaning performance at its peak. This makes your jobs a little easier as the newer the bonnet, the more soils it can hold and remove. This saves you time and yields the best cleaning results for your valued customers and clients.