Rug cleaning in Etterbeek

Damp and water

The town's very name comes from "beek", the stream. The Maelbeek rises in what are now Ixelles and Etterbeek and was vaulted over in 1872, precisely because the steep slopes of its basin caused sudden floods and endangered public health. The streets at the bottom of that valley are still the ones where cellars take in water.

That is exactly the setting in which wool starts to smell: stagnant damp, a rolled-up rug, darkness. Washing settles the smell, the way it is stored stops it coming back.

The rug market

The place Jourdan market is held every Sunday from 8.00 to 13.00 with 36 permanent stalls and some thirty occasional ones — the neighbourhood fixture that shapes Sunday in Etterbeek, and the place where second-hand objects and furniture change hands.

A rug bought second-hand rarely arrives clean: mechanical dusting takes out of it what no domestic vacuum cleaner will go and find.

The building stock

54% of Etterbeek's building stock predates 1919: these are the three-bay Brussels houses, often divided into flats. More than two thirds of households are tenants. The original stairwells, narrow and quarter-turning, dictate the way a rug leaves the building.

The type of floor changes everything: on an old parquet, a rug traps the mineral dust; on cold tiles, it takes up damp from underneath.