02 — Method
This is hot-water extraction sized for upholstery, not a steam mop and not a shampoo machine. The tool lays down a measured amount of solution and lifts it back in the same pass.
We read the care label if it is still under the cushion. W can take water. S wants solvent and a specialist. WS can take either, carefully. X means we stop and say so. If the label is gone, a drop goes on a hidden seam. Dye that moves ends the visit on that panel.
Tel Aviv seats hold a particular grit: promenade sand, crumbs, dog hair from HaYarkon. Water on top of that grit makes mud. The first pass is dry. Crevices along the deck get a crevice tool before anyone thinks about solution.
Everyday soil gets a plant-derived pre-spray, worked in with a soft brush, then extracted. Protein — milk, formula, urine — gets an enzyme dwell, and only on that spot. Coffee, tea, and red wine are tannins. They get their own treatment. Enzyme and tannin treatment do not share a pass. Hummus oil is blotted and treated as oil before any water, or the ring grows.
The wand moves with the weave, slow enough for the recovery side to keep up. A three-seat uses about 1.2 litres. You will see a damp track. If a cushion is dripping, something has gone wrong and we stop. Down and feather cushions are extracted on the cover only, never flooded.
Pile fabrics are brushed with the nap. Cushions stand on edge. If you have a fan, we aim it. We leave a time you can sit: often the same evening inland in winter, often two to four hours on the coastal plain in August, longer if the foam was already tired and humid.
| Shampoo machine | Household steam | Avir extraction | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where the water goes | Into the cushion | Onto the face of the cloth | Mostly back into the tank |
| Sand | Works it deeper | Leaves it underneath | Lifted in the dry pass first |
| Scent | Often a fragrance | Hot, wet cloth | Almost none once dry |
| Sit again | Often next day | Unpredictable | Same evening on most linen |
A stain that has already taken the dye out will not “come out.” Sun-fade along a Rothschild window is fade, not soil. A mattress torn open to black foam can be cleaned on the ticking only. We do not perfume over a smell whose source is the foam itself. If the first pass shows the foam is the source, we say so and quote a second visit only when it is worth doing.
The tank
The bottles are simple on purpose. Everyday pre-spray is plant-derived and fragrance-light. Enzyme and tannin treatments stay in separate bottles and are used only on the spot that needs them. Rinse water is the last pass, so the fibre does not dry with residue that will attract the next layer of dust.