Water has damaged your carpets. Maybe you had a toilet leak, maybe your hot water heater burst, maybe your kid left the faucet working in the sink all night.
What should you do to dry your wet carpeting to minimize damage to your carpeting and pad?
First of all, there is some general information regarding carpets you need to know that applies to all the myths .
General Information regarding Water and Carpets
Residential carpet usually includes a pad beneath it. The pad can be anywhere from 1/4 inches to almost an inch thick. The pad provides cushioning and provides your carpet that comfy, soft feel when you walk on it.
Industrial carpet in offices and stores generally does not have pad underneath it.
Carpet pad absorbs drinking water such as a sponge: The issue with pad under a carpet is that it is a sponge and will hold many times it's own weight in water.
Pad is designed to cushion your ft, so it is spongy by nature and will soak up water like the cleaning sponge in your kitchen sink.
Carpet doesn't end or hold much drinking water:
Although your carpet may feel very solid under your feet, it offers very little resistance to water passing through it.
Carpet is actually like a sieve to water. A typical carpet will not hold more than a few ounces of drinking water per square feet of carpet before it really is saturated. After these initial few ounces of water have entered the carpeting, any more water filters right through the floor covering and in to the pad.
Water likes to travel:Water doesn't stay place, it is always on the road. The rule to keep in mind is "Wet goes to Dry". Water will automatically move towards a dry building material.
Water at the guts of a room will circulation through the carpet and over the pad to the walls. It will migrate to the edges of the area in just a matter of mins or hours based on just how much water was spilled.
When you touch the carpeting at the edge of the area, it might not even feel damp, however the pad could be saturated. This can be noticed using an infrared video camera. An infrared (or Thermal Imaging) camera pays to in finding the real area that the drinking water has damaged, even if you can't see or feel it.
In general I'd say that the actual wet area in virtually any flood (found with professional water damage and mold meters) is approximately twice how big is what the house owner reports.
An infrared camera will display how water travels under the carpet through the pad. Also in a 'small' flood, water can migrate through wall space and which flooring types are best in an office end up 2 rooms away within 12 hours.
Bearing the information above in brain, here are some common myths about wet carpets and rugs and how exactly to dry wet carpets
Myth #1. The floor covering will dry alone
This is actually true, just like it is true that you could win the lottery with one ticket.
Yes, the carpet will eventually dry by itself. However, will it smell poor or have mold on it by the period it is dry? How many other harm will occur as the carpet dries by itself?
Unless you live in someplace like Arizona or the desert where you have high temperature and low humidity, there is quite small chance that the carpet and pad will dried out before mold starts developing or bacteria start creating that wet carpet, damp smell. Typically you have about 72 hours to dry wet building materials before they start growing mold.
Even if the carpet itself dries, does which means that the pad is dry? There is very little opportunity that the pad is usually dry. The pad holds even more moisture than floor covering and is prevented from quickly releasing the moisture because of the floor covering above it and the sub-floor below it. So even if your carpet is dried out, the pad is typically not dry.
Which brings us to some other point. How about the wet sub-floor? Remember that carpet is like a sieve, and the carpet will pass water down to the pad rapidly. A saturated pad can then release water in to the sub-floor.
Drying Sub-floors
Sub-floors are usually either wood or cement.
Cement sub floors are sponges too, except they are very slow sponges. They absorb drinking water surprisingly quickly, but launch it very slowly. So even if the carpet and pad are dried quickly, the cement sub-floor could still discharge moisture for weeks.
Wood sub-floors hold water too. If they're made of chip-board/particle table/press-board (small chips of hardwood held as well as glue) plus they are wet for more than a few hours they absorb water, expand, and reduce their structural integrity.
When wet particle plank dries it has minimal strength and you will find yourself stepping through your floor if you're not careful.
Plywood or OSB (Oriented Strand Board) are much more hardy choices for a sub-flooring than particle board. If they obtain wet, you can dry them, provided that they haven't been sitting wet for lengthy enough to warp. This falls loosely under the 72 hour rule. Another concern is dried out rot which is a bacterial deterioration that takes 21 days to manifest at lower wetness levels.
Determining if the sub-ground is normally wet or not can only reliably be done with a penetrating dampness meter. Different building components have different acceptable degrees of moisture, so you use the meter to let you know if the material is acceptably dry or not.
Depending on the region you live in, plywood is dry at around 20% Comparative Wetness Content (EMC). In as little as 4 days, mold can start growing on wet plywood if not really dried correctly.
So, we realize that the carpeting and pad are unlikely to dry quickly enough independently. But even if they did, is that you have to bother about when your carpets are wet? No, it isn't.
Like I said, WET goes to DRY. This implies the water helps to keep spreading outwards from the source.
On one flooded carpet job we did, the floor covering initial got wet about 12 hours before we arrived. Throughout that time the home owner used her wet vac to suck up as much water as possible from the wet carpeting - about 100 gallons.
She simply wanted us to dry out her carpets. Nevertheless, using the infrared video camera and wetness meters, we found that her walls were wet, occasionally to almost 12" above the carpeting.
Wet drywall, is a problem?
The problem with wet drywall may be the usual 72 hour problem.
In less than 72 hours mold can start developing on that wet dry wall. Mold especially likes dark, warm areas without airflow. That describes the wall structure cavity - an ideal place for mold to grow.
So that's the problem - wet carpet creates wet drywall which can create mold. Below is normally a picture of a wall after water had been standing up for a long period.
In summary. Yes, the floor covering will eventually dry by itself. But you'll probably have got mold and smells by enough time it is dried out, and then you'll be ripping wall space and carpet out to fix the problem
Myth #2. You need to remove the wet pad underneath your carpet
There is a myth that you can't remove water from a wet pad, even with commercial extraction equipment. People who state this are discussing the standard carpet cleaning 'wand' proven on the proper. It is what is commonly used to clean carpets and rugs. It sprays hot water onto the carpet and then sucks it back up again.
The wand is made to pull water out from the carpet fibers, not the pad and it can a good job at that. If you have water damage on commercial carpet without a pad, the wand is an excellent tool to use.
However, on residential carpet with a pad, it extracts almost none of the drinking water from the pad.
So how do you get drinking water out from the pad so you don't have to remove and discard the pad?
There are many of new commercial extraction tools that will remove water from the pad. Well known is normally the FlashXtractor. It really is a wonderful device, probably my favorite tool. (We have no affiliation with the makers of this device, and receive no settlement for mentioning it)
The FlashXtractor will pull buckets of water out a carpet that has been wand extracted to death!
Before tools just like the FlashXtractor came away, there was a method called "floating the carpet" which was used to dry carpet and pad because of the poor job the wand did of extracting water from the pad.
To float a floor covering, you pull up a corner of the carpeting and stick an air mover or carpet lover under the carpet to blow air beneath the floor covering and onto the pad. While this technique still works it is slower, less effective, and frequently stretches the carpet so that it doesn't fit properly when restretched.
Floating the carpet is an old school technique that is unnecessary for those who have the proper tools, ie a deep extraction tool like the FlashXtractor.
To complicate issues, bear this at heart. While you can dry wet pad, it generally does not usually mean you should.
For those who have contaminated water in the pad you can dry it, but you'll be leaving at least some contamination in the pad and over rot, it will begin to stink and time. In contaminated water circumstances you will have to take away the pad because you can't efficiently decontaminate it although it is underneath the floor covering. In the drinking water restoration industry, contaminated drinking water is called Category 2 (gray water) or Category 3 (black water).
Myth #3. You can't dried out a wet pad under a carpet
The truth to the myth is the same as for the question above. Basically, you can dried out a wet pad, also without floating that carpeting, but that doesn't mean you usually should. See the answer above for information.
Myth #4. You have to lift the carpeting and 'float' it using blowers
The response to this question is in the answer to question 2 above. To conclude, you don't need to float carpet for those who have a deep extraction tool and learn how to use it.
Myth #5. You have to remove and discard wet carpeting.
Sometimes.
If you have a black water scenario (Category 3 drinking water - contaminated water such as sewage, toilet leak or rising ground water), based on the industry standard IICRC S500, you have to discard the floor covering. I believe this is definitely because there is absolutely no EPA registered disinfectant for carpeting.
However, when you have Category 2 water (gray drinking water such as for example washing machine waste drinking water, shower runoff,etc) you have to discard the pad, but you may clean the carpet and keep it.
Category 1 drinking water (clean water - toilet source collection, fridge ice maker, etc), and it was not sitting for more http://edition.cnn.com/search/?text=Georgia than 48 hours, then you can extract the drinking water and keep the carpet and pad.
The other reason water damage restoration technicians sometimes believe they should discard wet carpet is because the backing of the carpet will de-laminate when it is dried. The backing is the lattice webbing on the trunk of the floor covering that holds the carpet fibers together. It really is glued on. If it gets wet and remains wet for a long period it could separate from the carpet fibers and start to disintegrate.
How long is a long time? It's hard to predict - depends on the carpet, the temperature, how wet it had been, etc. Normally by the time the floor covering de-laminates there is a black water circumstance anyway, so the carpet has to go.
Myth #6. Professional Carpet Cleaning will dry your floor covering and pad
No. Not unless they make use of a deep extraction device that is designed specifically to remove drinking water from the pad. A regular carpet cleaning wand won't remove significant water from the floor covering pad.
Myth #7. To remove the wet floor covering smell, you ought to have it professionally cleaned.
Yes, with a 'mainly' mounted on it. The rug cleaning machines and methods available to most property owners aren't very effective. In comparison to commercial carpet cleaning equipment, the carpet cleaning machines you rent from the neighborhood supermarket are like a moped is definitely to a Harley. They're a similar thing, but not really.
Getting anything other than a light smell out of a carpet requires the high pressure and suction of a commercial machine. It also requires the expertise of a trained and experienced carpeting cleaner. There are numerous causes and answers to different smells in a carpet and knowing how to proceed and when to it needs training and experience.
If baking soda and vacuuming don't function, your best bet is to call an trained and experienced carpeting cleaner, preferably one which is also an IICRC certified Smell Control Technician.
Myth #8. In the event that you dry a flooded carpet, you will not get yourself a moldy wet carpet smell
Depends. If a carpet is dried quickly and correctly you will see no smell. Actually, if anything, you will see less smell because the carpet has successfully been cleaned.
If the carpet and pad aren't dried quickly and properly you will probably have a problem with lingering musky smells and mold.
See myth #2 for additional information.
Myth #9. You need to use a pickup truck mount carpeting extractor to dried out or clean a floor covering properly
False. This is an ongoing debate that I don't believe will ever be resolved completely. Portable rug cleaning machines have the advantage of short hose runs while truck mounts have the benefit of high power.
What it boils down to is really the technician holding the wand. An excellent technician on a bad machine will get a better result when compared to a bad technician on a good machine.
Summary
If you've had lots of gallons of water spilled on your carpeting, you're better off calling a professional water damage firm to properly dry your house if you can afford it, or should you have insurance. As you leaned above, the issue is definitely that if the carpets and walls aren't dried quickly you could face a mold situation which is much more expensive to repair than drying the carpets and rugs.