Hi all, my name is Ross and I’m a carpet cleaner in Indianapolis, IN, USA. In my industry we use, or try to use, UV light for pet urine detection on carpeting. It’s a great tool to show the customer that their dog is in fact peeing everywhere, even though most people deny it.
Problem is I’ve wasted a few hundred dollars over the years on junk flashlights that just do not work. Could be my own fault because I always try the cheap ones in the $50 or less range. Well, the holy grail UV light that everybody raves about is this one which you can see here and with a little more info and closeup pics here. If I have to spend the $240 to get something that actually works I will, but I figured I’d just ask if it’s a ripoff.
If you follow the second link I posted above you can see the HWA WYS logo in the picture so I know that’s like a $15 light and I’m assuming it has some kind of drop in. Is this light really worth the money? Can I buy the components and build one myself? Why can’t I find any other light that claims to be a 7w 395nm? Is this guy full of it or what? The money isn’t a big issue because it would be a tax write off for my business, but I just can’t stand the thought of getting ripped off again.
I hope it’s cool I posted the links. Let me know if that’s a no no or whatever. If you want to see some carpet cleaners raving about that light you can click here. It’s hard to tell if the light is really any good or if they are just rationalizing a $240 expense.
Supposedly 385 is perfect for viewing pet urine, but who knows? There’s so much information and misinformation. I figured I’d ask here because there are obviously some geniuses here. I’ve been reading around on this forum the past few days and a lot of the talk is way over my head, lol.
1. Turn OFF all other lights, close blinds, curtains, etc. Make sure the area you are examining is as dark as possible. UV light, what we can see of it, is near the low end of the visible spectrum, it will be much easier to see the UV, or near UV light ~400nm, when your surroundings are completely dark. (For example, many people can't focus on the dot of a 405nm laser pointer at a distance.) The way many things fluoresce, also makes it much harder to see if your ambient surroundings are well lit.
2. Use a pair of UV blocking goggles for yourself and your potential customer, these would work well: http://www.amazon.com/Uvex-S0360X-Ultra-spec-SCT-Orange-Anti-Fog/dp/B003OBZ64M/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1359432244&sr=8-4&keywords=uvex
If this helps, great, and you'll make your customers feel like they are on CSI... if not you're out $10.
Personally I was kind of shocked at what I saw using both a ~400nm light, and a ~450nm light, combined with goggles. The 450nm one, a friend made for me, it provides a lot more ambient/visible light vs the UV light, so it's easier to use, to shock people with.
And what about the mumbo jumbo about a “heat dissipator” and a “deep reflector”? Are those really anything special or is that what the flashlight comes with?
This article says that a green laser pointer (532 nm) used with laser goggles that block that wavelength may be a good choice for detecting a lot of bodily fluids…
Hard to say if that flashlight has the Nichia ncsu033b UV LED in it. The Nichia is the best UV emitter out there. It’s peak wavelength is 365nm, but it still puts out a lot of 380nm as well. The Nichia runs about $120.00+ just for the LED. Flashlights that I know of using that LED are the Hoplite($500.00+), and the MTE ($225.00+). Compared to the UV drop-ins I have, there’s no comparison! The Nichia outputs way more light centered around the 365nm wavelength.
I have the TK566 UV 365nm, AA light, and i am very happy with its performance over other cheaper lights that my friends have.
However i feel that the 3W led would be ever more useful.
Maybe i buy the much cheaper UltraFire 3w, just to check and compare as i feel that the UV effectiveness of both brands would be very similar.
I built my own 365 nm UV led light. The only really available unit is an LedEngin led. But I can tell you one thing, even though you think urine is visible to UV, it really isn’t that visible. Any glow is very very faint.
But general bodily fluid staining is revealed by generic 395-405 nm lights as stated by the forensic paper so a cheap UV p60 module in a host run direct drive on an 18650 will offer the most performance as 365 nm leds are very dim and need additional woods glass filtering to be most effective.
That module in a host like a Solarforce L2 will perform similarly to the $240 light which in all honesty is a complete ripoff
Try peeing in the toilet and shining a UV light in it. It really doesn’t glow. My experience has been that dried urine that hasn’t been cleaned actually seems more like a dark spot under UV light than a glow.
A lot of the glowing carpet “professionals” try to convince people what is urine is actually leftover detergent from stain removal attempts. Many times carpet cleaning solutions use phosphorescent brighteners. So these end up glowing very bright under UV light. So it’s useful for your own use to find the stain but it’s misleading to show the glowing spot where previous stain removal attempts left brighteners and claiming that’s the urine.
I have lights with 365, 385, and 395 nm LEDs and did some wizz hunting in my bathroom. By far, the 395 nm light worked best. The 385 nm light has a very powerful 3W LED but did not work as well as the weaker 395 nm. The 365 nm was fairly useless.
For contrast enhancement I tried using some sunglasses with filters that block blue light, etc. I got the best results with some Ray Ban Kalichrome lenses. These have a light yellow lens (think yellow shooters glasses). The other ones I tried (Ray Ban Chromax) were probably too dark. Special orange UV blocking glasses would probably be best, but I don’t have any (yet).
So if 395nm works best, I wonder if that’s why this light I just bought doesn’t work hardly at all. It’s supposedly 385nm. Or maybe the batteries are half dead. Some of the industry “gurus” preach that 385nm is the most effective for viewing pet urine.
I don’t know man, sometimes urine lights up like a Christmas tree. Fresh urine is acidic but biodegrades into an alkaline. Maybe one fluoresces more than the other and that’s why there seems to be some discrepancy. A seasoned cleaner can tell the difference between pet urine and old detergent. You see the tell-tale signs: frayed, clawed-up carpet in doorways, yellow dribbles along baseboards and around the bottom of furniture, the odor, etc. Since optical brighteners void carpet warranties modern professional cleaning product manufacturers shun them. There are still a few hacks around using grocery store laundry detergent to clean carpet, but in those cases I assume an entire room would glow, not isolated spots. Or at least a large part of the room.
At any rate good cleaning pros understand the use of a UV light will only offer indications that urine is present and is not absolutely definitive. It’s up to us to gather all the evidence, not just rely on UV. I want to be clear that I don’t use this to whack people with extra charges bait and switch style. It’s useful in convincing, for instance, a landlord that he shouldn’t waste his money getting one of his rental homes cleaned because it’s full of urine. Many times they’ll swear there is no urine but they can’t argue with the UV light. I promise I use it for good, not evil.
Check out the quick YouTube video below. It shows a pro cleaner (a well-known, trustworthy guy on the bulletin boards) using the $240 light in question, and you can see the spots lighting up very clearly. Without having been there I can’t say whether it’s urine or not but it is impressive, especially considering the amount of ambient light. I want a light that works that well, but I don’t want to get ripped off for $240 if I can do it for $50 or even $100!
