Bigger houses, longer stairs
Castleknock is mostly settled family housing: detached and semi-detached homes in established estates around the village and near the Phoenix Park, and newer roads out towards Carpenterstown, Diswellstown and Porterstown. The houses are often bigger than average, with wide halls, a stairs with a half-landing or a return, and four or five bedrooms off a long landing.
That means more carpet, and often better carpet. Many owners here chose wool or wool-rich carpet for the stairs and bedrooms, and it's worth looking after properly. You can watch a short clip from a Castleknock carpet job on this page.
Wool and wool-rich carpets
Wool-rich carpet, usually wool with a little nylon added for strength, is resilient and naturally good at hiding soil. That's a mixed blessing: it can be dirtier than it looks, and the grit in it is wearing the pile all the same.
It also behaves differently when wet. Wool holds more water than synthetics, doesn't like strongly alkaline products or very hot solution, and on older carpets can sit on a jute backing that marks if it's soaked. So we use a wool-safe solution at a sensible temperature, keep the moisture controlled, and extract thoroughly. Air movers go on the landing and in the bigger rooms.
Thick wool on a thick underlay is the slowest carpet to dry. Allow the afternoon, and into the evening on a cold, damp day. Synthetic carpets in the bedrooms usually dry well within a few hours.
Half-landings, winders and returns
A stairs with a turn has awkward parts: winders (the wedge-shaped steps on the turn), a half-landing, and sometimes a return with a short second flight. Winders take the most wear on the narrow inside edge, because everyone cuts the corner. We clean them by hand like every other step, working down from the top landing, with the hand tool getting into the corners where the carpet meets the skirting and the spindles.
spotless.ieRooms people use less
Dining rooms, front rooms and guest bedrooms don't get much foot traffic, but they still need attention now and then. Dust settles, sun fades the area by the window, and moths like quiet wool carpet under furniture that's rarely moved. A clean lifts the settled dust and brightens the colour. It can't bring back colour the sun has taken, because fading is a change in the dye rather than dirt.
If you have a heavy dining table, we can clean around it, or you can have it moved before we arrive. Chairs we'll move ourselves.
Send the stairs, the landing and the rooms Photos of each carpet, including the turn of the stairs, are enough for a fixed price, usually the same day.
Planning a whole-house clean
In a larger Castleknock house, every carpet in one visit can take most of the day. A few things make it easier:
- clear small items off the floors, and from under the beds if you'd like those areas done
- tell us about anything fragile or valuable in the rooms
- if you're decorating, book the carpet clean after the painters, not before
- expect the stairs to be out of use for a while, which is why we do it last
- keep pets in the kitchen or garden until the carpets are dry
Children's spills and pet marks are the usual spot work. Fresh ones come out well; old pet urine that has reached the underlay may leave a smell in damp weather, and we'll say so from the photos rather than on the day. More on drying is in the carpet drying time guide.
Downsizing and selling
When a family has grown up and moved out, a big Castleknock house often goes on the market, and the carpets are part of how it shows. The best order is to clear what isn't going with you, finish any painting or repairs, and then have the carpets cleaned in the emptier rooms a few days before the estate agent's photographer comes.
Wool carpets in good condition can look close to new after a clean, which is worth a lot in photos and at viewings. Stairs carpet worn at the nosings, or bedroom carpet faded by years of sun, won't change, and the agent may advise replacing it instead. We'll give you our honest view from the photos. If there's furniture to go first, our house clearance page for Castleknock explains how that works.
Castleknock and the roads around it
We cover all of Castleknock, plus Carpenterstown, Diswellstown, Porterstown and Laurel Lodge. Neighbouring Ashtown and Blanchardstown have their own pages, and the Dublin 15 overview links to the rest. For sofas, see sofa cleaning in Castleknock; for rugs, rug cleaning.
Fully insured and fully trained: Ciprian completed Prochem's carpet-cleaning course in 2018. See the Dublin carpet cleaning page for the full method.
