One of the biggest issues people have when it comes to carpet cleaning is pet stain & odor removal remediation. Today, there are many urine pre-treater’s on the market that say they help with the  removal of pet urine, but do they actually work? And how effective are they?
First and foremost, UPT’s (Urine Pre-Treater’s) are used to eliminate pet urine.
Pet urine is composed of bacteria, nitrogen, ammonia, hormones, and uric acid. As the urine gradually begins to break down, the ammonia concentration increases, and the uric acid will create that lingering awful, nasty odor, even after you’ve cleaned it up. Especially when the air is humid, this smell can be extremely overwhelming. With humidity, the uric acid salts cause the uric acid crystals to reform. As the pet urine decomposes further , it releases thiols that make the odor worse. Thiols, which are also referred to as mercaptan, is any of a class of organic chemical compounds similar to alcohols and phenol’s, but containing a sulfur atom in place of the oxygen atom. Thiols are the components in skunk spray that make it extremely potent and a pain in the butt to remove!
Urine Pre-Treater’s are slightly acidic detergents that help disintegrate and aid in the removal process of dog and cat urine deposits from carpets. Urine Pre- Treater’s help dissolve the urine salts and related contamination, and also impede the production of ammonia build up. When you’re cleaning up pet urine, you never want to use any type of cleaner that contains ammonia because your animal could possibly smell the traces of ammonia, and this will allow your pet to continue urinating in the same area.
The acids in the urine pre-treaters will help break down the multiple compounds in pet urine. Acids greatly help in the clean up process since they essentially dissolve the bacteria, ammonia, and uric acid.
Detergents are water soluble cleansing agents that fuse with dirt and impurities to make them more soluble, but they differ from soaps by not forming a scum with the salts of hard water.  The most principal elements in detergents are chemicals called “surfactants” (or surface active agents).
Overall, you would expect Urine Pre-Treater’s to be successful, but that is hardly the case. There are many different variables that dictate whether or not UPT’s are completely 100% effective.
Urine Pre- Treater’s are approximately 25-30% effective with treatment. The technician must have patience and diligence when applying the product and extracting the UPT.
What Determines The Effectiveness of a Urine Pre-Treater?
  • It depends upon the severity of the pet odor problem. How long did the owner allow the urine to sit? Were any other stain removers used?
  • Exactly how much pet urine is in the carpet?
  • The effectiveness relies greatly upon the experience of the technician. How experienced is the carpet cleaning technician with using a UPT? When using a Urine Pre-Treater if you do not know how to use them correctly, it can potentially worsen the problem. If the technician doesn’t do an adequate job extracting the UPT, it can spread the surface area of the urine into a bigger spot. This can possibly make a bigger permanent stain on your carpet, and leave behind bacteria, along with that rank odor.

Make sure you hire a professional carpet cleaning company that specializes in dealing with pet stain and odor removal, since these companies have more knowledge and experience cleaning with UPT’s.