American hooked rug with wool loops and jute mesh foundation.

…and some more contemporary European latch hook, embroidery, and needlepoint rugs.

Portuguese needlepoint rugs woven on jute foundation.

But lately jute has become the cheap and plentiful fiber of choice for many rugs we see coming out of India (the world’s #1 jute grower) and other countries. If you go into any of the more popular home furnishing stores today, from Pottery Barn to Restoration Hardware to Crate & Barrel, you are going to find rugs with jute in them as face fibers or as the backing material.

Jute backed rugs are commonplace in today's home furnishing stores.

The pluses are that it’s cheap, it’s quick to grow, and it’s environmentally friendly because it’s biodegradable.

The minuses (you just KNEW there would be minuses!) are that it is an extremely difficult fiber to handle if you do not know anything about it beforehand, and problems are very tough to correct.

Here are the three major challenges with jute.

Jute Browns & Yellows Like No Other Fiber Out There.

If you are a professional carpet cleaner who has ever had to tackle installed wall-to-wall wool carpet, which happened to be woven on a JUTE backing, then you know how absolutely dangerous this situation can be.

Get that jute even a little too wet, and the white wool can turn shades of coffee brown.

Jute gets brown and yellow when it’s wet. It releases oils that brown. So, when the way to get rugs clean is to WASH them, this can create a technical nightmare.

Cotton rug with some jute weft threads that like to brown with spills.

Something as heavily soiled as this rayon and jute rug needs to be washed to clean thoroughly, but both fibers like to yellow when wet, so what is a cleaner to do?

Spills and spotting attempts do not go over well with these rayon and jute rugs.

Jute Holds Odor Like No Other Fiber Out There.

Jute is super absorbent, and can hold on to odor causing contaminants like pet urine even throughout multiple washings.

The label says 100% polypropylene, but these weft threads are all hefty JUTE fibers.

Rug labels tend to only list what the face fibers of a rug are. So a hand woven rug may say “100% wool” even though the warps and wefts of the foundation are all usually cotton.

With synthetic rugs, you will see “100% polypropylene” (or acrylic, nylon, polyester) – but most have heavy jute weft threads in their foundation. This makes removing odors like pet urine from these rugs very difficult because you have to try to remove the source of the problem, and it is often absorbed into the middle of these innermost fibers.

If there are pets in the home that are not trained, jute would not be a good choice… unless you just plan to get cheap rugs on the floor that are jute, and just buy new ones when they get badly contaminated.

Jute Will Rot And Get Brittle Like No Other Fiber Out There.

Jute will dry rot faster than other fibers.

Unfortunately rug cleaners discover this fact when they are inspecting rugs with some age to them that have been woven on jute. Over time it just disintegrates, and these sometimes very wonderfully woven textiles just fall apart.

Chainstitch needlepoint rug woven on a jute scrim that is cracking and splitting along the edges where it's folded.

Sometimes spills will make the jute rot quicker in specific areas:

Silk parachute cord shag rug, an area weak with age has split open because the burlap jute foundation is rotted in this area.

When the jute throughout a piece has become brittle with rot or age, there is nothing that can be done to salvage it. It’s as if your skeleton began to crumble apart, you cannot support something with no strength left in it.

A remnant of a chainstitch embroidery needlepoint rug. The stitching was done on a jute foundation which is splitting and deteriorating. Beautiful textile just falling apart. =(

If you do not catch this deterioration BEFORE the cleaning process begins, you could literally have the rug fall apart on you unexpectedly.

All the edges of this jute backing are breaking and unraveling.

Tips On Cleaning Jute Rugs

BROWNING/YELLOWING: If the rug looks like it already shows signs of a cellulose browning problem, you may opt to only surface clean the rug to expose the jute backing to as little moisture as possible.

Jute foundation is already showing strong signs of yellowing on the back of this Stark wool rug.

You could also clean with a dry compound or low-moisture bonnet cleaning method.*

(* – I personally am not a fan of dry compound or of encapsulation cleaning of rugs, because I do not feel they truly “clean” the rugs. I would rather see someone surface clean with an upholstery tool to try to clean the rug without getting the backing very wet instead of these other choices. That said, when the rug has a serious browning problem and moderate soiling, your dry compound or encap methods may be the only viable option.)

If you fully wash a rug with jute because it needs a thorough cleaning, then having an acid rinse can help lessen some of that cellulose browning.

Also, sometimes if you dry the rug flat and face down (fuzzy side down) on a CLEAN surface, and put some high speed air movers on it to dry, you can  often make the wicking of the browning problem move to the back side of the rug instead of up on the front side of the rug.

I love the Airpaths to speed dry rugs!

ODOR REMOVAL: If the odor is strong in a rug with a jute fiber foundation, and the rug is polypropylene, then you can use some of the new oxidizers on the market to remove the odor, such as OSR or Oxcelerate. (Be VERY careful to NOT use this on wool rugs – only synthetic, and of course test first.)

BRITTLE FIBERS: Unfortunately, when the jute foundation fibers are splitting and crumbling away, there is not much you can do.

Spanish wool rug with jute foundation wefts that have rotted and have no strength left to hold the corner together anymore.

With smaller decorative hooked and needlepoint rugs woven on jute, especially the older ones, it may be time to prepare them for hanging in order to keep the foot traffic from tearing the rug apart completely. You have to see how much strength is left in the jute fibers to allow it to be hung because the weight of itself may be too much for even that.

=

With jute, the main protection again getting caught having to pay to replace a rug is to be obsessive compulsive about your pre-wash inspection process.

Look for jute, and when you find it, go over those 3 major concerns: browning, odor, and brittleness. Discuss the options with the owner BEFORE the cleaning, and don’t be afraid to turn away a job if it looks like it could end up becoming a rug disaster.

Hope these tips and warnings help you.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. If you are looking for rug training, as of 4/12 there are a handful of spots left in my upcoming Rug Secrets “Get Started” course. You can find the details at Rug Secrets Course.

Some were rugs that were improperly stored by their owners for years and made a meal for bugs that, unbeknownst to the owners, had hitched a ride to the storage unit.

Total moth devastation. Most of the knots of the rug were eaten away in storage.

Others were rugs that have been down on the floor for years without being moved or vacuumed, and moths and carpet beetles made a meal in undisturbed areas under furniture.

End of rug under a sofa became a meal for carpet beetles.

Because there does not seem to be a website that clearly lays out how to handle bug infested rugs, or even how to properly store rugs, (a Google search just sent me back to a few posts I’ve made in the past on these subjects) I thought I’d lay out a “how to” post that I hope will be useful to rug cleaners and rug owners.

As a disclaimer – (as you know everyone from litigious California is highly skilled in disclaimers!) – I am NOT a pest control specialist. I am a rug specialist.

These tips are what we’ve learned over the years, and what we’ve experienced in handling a number of wool rugs in storage to see how to keep them safe over years. If you require more in-depth education on specifically killing pests, then please reach out to a pest control professional.

(Here was one page I found on getting rid of carpet beetles that might be useful to you. It is ultimately a sales pitch for their products, but it still has some good data on the little buggers. I’m always wary when anyone says their product is “completely safe” while it also kills things… so take everything with a grain of salt.)

Okay, here we go!

RUG STORAGE TIPS

If you are placing a rug into storage, here are the preparation guidelines for proper care of the textiles if they are natural fiber (wool, silk, cotton).

1) Wash the rug thoroughly.

Washing not only removes potential bug hitchhikers in the rug fibers, but it removes all of the soil and contaminants from the foundation fibers of the rug as well. Compacted, ground in soil in a rug over time can dry out cotton foundation warps and wefts in a rug and lead to dry rot.

If you’ve ever seen an old rug that can crack in some areas when you roll it, then you know what dry rot looks like when caused from too much soil in the base or past improper cleaning (by carpet cleaning machines surface cleaning them instead of true rug washing) that has left too much soapy residue in the fibers. This is one of the reasons why rugs are never cleaned in the home.

A proper rug washing facility will also have “insect repellents” that can be used as a final application on the rug, front and back, that will leave the rug “not tasty” to bugs so they will go elsewhere. At our facility we use Repel by Masterblend, which is approved for use on wool and also approved for use in California. Other states will have access to many more choices than we do in our hyper-sensitive state.

2) Roll and wrap in Tyvek paper.

Folding rugs is something you will see done in many rug galleries in order to conserve space, but can cause undue stress on the foundation fibers of rugs over time. (You can lessen this stress by folding the rugs with the fuzzy pile OUTWARD which allows the foundation fibers to bend less, but it also gets the rugs dusty easier so I rarely see it done this way.)

Ideally rugs should be completely cleaned, insect repelled, and then rolled for long term storage. You roll the rug from the bottom end first to create a tight roll.

(To know which end is the bottom end, pet your rug and see which direction when you pet is going WITH the nap, and which is going AGAINST it. When you are petting WITH the grain it takes you to the bottom end. This is the end where the weaving began. Roll from this end.)

With silk rugs, or more fragile older wool rugs, you can roll the rug with the pile pointing outward to allow for less strain on the foundation. Also big shaggy rugs roll tighter with the long shaggy fibers pointing outward as well.

Most rugs can be safely rolled normally with pile inward. Then you need to wrap the rug in PAPER, not plastic.

Some people use brown Kraft paper. To me that punctures too easily and tears, and with rodents that might be too easy a target. We use it for short term wrapping, but not long term storage.

We like to use Tyvek paper for long term storage which is tear resistant, water resistant, but also still allows the rug to “breathe,” unlike plastic wrap which does not.

Wrap natural fiber rugs in PAPER - either brown kraft or white tyvek.

Wool and plastic should NEVER be combined in storage. Wool has a natural high moisture content (this is why it is flame resistant, it self-extinguishes with flame), so this means if wrapped in plastic and with no airflow, the fibers can “sweat” and create a problem in storage.

If you have ever gotten a rug out from storage that smelled musty and moldy, this is why. Improperly wrapping wool rugs in plastic can create odor problems, or worse, actual mildew problems if the rug was not properly cleaned and then not placed in a climate controlled storage area.

3) Elevate when storing.  Don’t stack heavy items on top of them.

Keeping rugs off the floor allows you to easily see if there are any potential problems with rodents more easily in a storage unit, and since storage facilities seems to often be built in low lying regions, if there are floods keeping the rugs elevated can keep them safer. Not stacking heavy items on top of them can keep strain from causing foundation damage to the rug.

4) Check the rug annually.

If possible, check your rugs in storage once a year to make sure the packaging is secure. If the rug was professionally cleaned, and the insect repellent applied, you can extend your check up of opening up the rug packaging, but it may need to be reapplied after 2 or 3 years.

If you have used Tyvek paper it can be unwrapped and the same paper reused because it is tear resistant. Clear packing tape works best with the Tyvek paper.

THIS RUG HAS BUGS! (What do I do?)

If you find a rug that was improperly stored is infested with moths or carpet beetles, or one that has been on the floor unmoved for too long that is being eaten away, here are the steps to take.

1) Evaluate the damage, make a decision, and get a waiver.

Sometimes the damage – especially from a rug storage infestation where bugs have been left alone for years to feast on rug fibers – is too great. You have to way the costs of cleaning if the rug is not salvageable.

If disposal is the only option, refuse to take the rug into your facility. Have the owner write on the work order, or by email if the owner is not at your location, to properly dispose of the contaminated rug.

Sometimes the infestation is concentrated on one area and there could be a possibility of either reweaving lost fibers, or perhaps cutting the rug to make it smaller but still usable.

You need to weigh the cost of reweaving, patching, reducing, or simply disposal. This is damage from a rug placed under a heavy chest and left undisturbed.

If that is the case, that the owner wants the rug “saved,” then get approval to decontaminate and wash the rug, and evaluate for repair options after that wash work is done.

Often the washing will release more wool knots and create “bald” areas in the rug, so make a note on the invoice of the potential additional visible damage, and photograph the rug to show its state when it came in. (Best to photograph outside so you are not knocking moth larvae or worms into your facility.)

It needs to be clearly understood that any additional damage occurring from washing you cannot possibly be held responsible for. Most bugs eat from the innermost fibers outward, so a cleaner cannot know what the rug can take.

If the rug is woven on a wool foundation (like the prior rug photo) then the damage is complete holes because the bugs eat the wool face fibers AND the foundation warps and wefts.

Many rugs are woven on cotton foundations, so the bugs just eat the wool fibers and the cotton is left in tact, and the rug structurally sound, just looking bald.

Kashan rug moth damage under a chair, bugs ate the wool but left the white cotton warps and the gray cotton wefts alone.

Sometimes the damage is only visible on the back, but with the actual back of these knots gone, it is possible that the front fibers will pull loose and wash away, even if you are very gentle with your cleaning.

Kerman rug back corner eaten by bugs. Blue knots are gone from the back, with cotton foundation visible. These areas may become bald on the front as well after the cleaning.

2) Remove what you can. Protect other contents.

Bringing an infested rug into your rug cleaning facility is a danger, so you need to control the situation.

Wool eating bugs do NOT like direct sunlight or persistent airflow. This is why they attack rugs in storage, or in a home they like to make their meal in clothes in a dark undisturbed coat closet, or eating the corner of the rug under the sofa or behind the drapes.

They also find rugs up on walls as hangings tasty if they are never taken down for dusting.

If the rug coming into your facility has minor bug activity, just a few visible moth casings or larvae worms, then take the rug outside into direct sunlight.

Moderate moth activity in one section on the back of this rug. Moth casings/cocoons look like "sticky lint" - they have not made a meal of this rug yet.

Both the larvae and the caterpillars are fragile, and setting them in a few hours of sunlight (both sides of the rug) can often be all you need to protect the situation. Take a stiff bristle brush and brush away the larvae and worms (outside) from both sides of the rug to physically remove them.

If the damage is more extensive then you need to take more aggressive measures.

Serious bug activity, the rug needs to be contained.

In order to protect your facility, place the infested rug in a heavy plastic bag, and place a lot of mothballs in the bag. Seal it tight.

Moth ball fumes are toxic, so take care to wear gloves and other appropriate protection. These can be purchased at your local drugstore. You need the toxicity of the fumes of the moth balls or crystals to get high enough inside the bag to essentially kill the bugs inside. I would suggest a week sealed, longer if you feel it is necessary.

When the week is up, take care when opening the bag so that you do not breathe the air coming from the bag. Remove the rug in a protected area (or outside), and brush away the larvae and worms – which should not be moving anymore – get them away from the rug as much as you can.

3) Treat with approved products and fully wash.

Check your state to see which carpet and rug products are approved for use in removing bugs like carpet beetles, moths, fleas, or even bed bugs for that matter. I really like the Microban line of products for this, all approved by the EPA and approved for use on textiles, but unfortunately not approved by California’s EPA so we cannot use some of them in our state. I’ve used several in my out of state training workshops though, with great success.

Go to your local professional cleaning supply house to see what is available to you. (These are professional cleaning products and are not available to consumers.)

Ideally you will wash the rug and apply the approved product as directed to ensure that any eggs or other bugs hidden deep inside the rug cannot come back to create a problem for the rug in the future, especially if it is going back into storage.

Because we are limited with our choices in CA, we like to soak the rug in a strong vinegar mix, wash thoroughly, and then give a final application of the Repel product mentioned before. I like Repel because it does not smell like mothballs, and it is not a pesticide but a repellent.

With investment or antique textiles where the application of “chemicals” that leave any residue is not wanted, pests are handled by placing them in a deep freeze to essentially “crack” the eggs (which can lay dormant for years until conditions are more favorable) and ensure all bugs are dead.

Not everyone has access to a deep freeze freezer, especially for larger rugs, but that is your other option.

4) Treat and clean the home before the rugs are returned.

If the infestation occurred with a rug being used in the home, then there are bugs back home to be taken care of.

If the rug owner truly does not want to risk more damage to their rug, then they need to clean the home before it is returned back. A pest control professional should come in to treat all surfaces, and once all bugs are killed off, follow up with a professional cleaning company to remove any of the pesticide residues.

I know many say they are “safe” pesticides, but why even take the risk. I would suggest, as my own personal opinion, to clean after the pest control efforts anyway whether it is sprayed on or fumigated.

Floors, furniture, fabrics, carpeting – it all needs to be cleaned.

5) Quarterly textile inspection. (DUST and DISTURB!)

Rugs should be regularly vacuumed to prevent dust and grit from working its way into the foundation of a rug. Weekly vacuuming is a must for rugs under consistent foot traffic. You do not need a heavy beater bar vacuum, you just want to “lift up” the settling dust that gets on the tips (the same dust that settled on your hard floors and needs to be swept up weekly). Just a quick “sweeping” of the tops of the fibers is all you need.

But quarterly rug owners should be more invasive with their dusting, and with the upholstery attachment on their vacuum – or if they have a canister vacuum – pull back the corners of rugs and vacuum the floor underneath and the back of the rug corners.

Carpet beetles and moths like to settle around the edges of rugs, and usually will eat from the backside of the rug where it’s dark and undisturbed.

A quarterly “dust and disturb” routine will keep them from finding the rug a nice place to sit. They want to place their eggs in a safe spot to have a meal as they grow.

If you disturb them, they will move somewhere else.

Rugs under regular foot traffic should be washed every 18-24 months. If the foot traffic is heavy (or there are pets and kids on the rug a lot) then once a year is recommended. If the rug gets light or no traffic and is regularly vacuumed, then closer to 3 years is not unreasonable.

Rugs that are regularly washed rarely have bug problems, because nothing is more DISTURBING to bugs than having the rug rolled up and taken on a trip for a full service wash.

I hope you find these tips useful, and please let me know in the comments if you have any more questions.

Happy Rug Cleaning!

- Lisa

P.S. If you are a professional cleaner looking for rug care training, but you are not ready to spend thousands on an advanced course quite yet, then take a look at my upcoming Rug Secrets online course. It might be exactly what you are looking for to enhance your rug cleaning skills.

Click here => Rug Secrets “Get Started System”