Water has damaged your carpets. Maybe you experienced a toilet leak, maybe your hot water heater burst, maybe your kid left the faucet running in the sink all night.
What in the event you do to dry your wet carpet to minimize harm to your carpet and pad?
First of all, generally there is some general details about carpets you should know that applies to all of the myths .
General Information about Water and Carpets
Residential carpet usually includes a pad beneath it. The pad could be anywhere from 1/4 in . to almost an inch solid. The pad provides cushioning and provides your carpet that comfortable, soft feel when you walk onto it.
Commercial carpet in offices and stores generally doesn't have pad underneath it.
Carpet pad absorbs water like a sponge: The issue with pad under a floor covering is that it is a sponge and may hold many times it's own excess weight in water.
Pad is designed to cushion your foot, so that it is spongy by nature and will soak up water like the washing sponge in your kitchen sink.
Carpet doesn't stop or hold much water:
Although your carpet may feel extremely solid under your feet, it offers hardly any resistance to water passing through it.
Carpet is actually like a sieve to water. An average carpet will not hold lots of ounces of drinking water per square feet of carpet before it really is saturated. After these initial few ounces of water possess entered the carpet, any further water filters direct through the carpet and into the pad.
Water likes to travel:Drinking water doesn't stay place, it is always on the move. The rule to remember is "Wet goes to Dry". Water will immediately move towards http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Georgia a dry building material.
Water at the guts of an area will circulation through the carpeting and across the pad to the walls. It'll migrate to the edges of the area in a matter of a few minutes or http://troygltm079.huicopper.com/5-real-life-lessons-about-flooring-augusta hours depending on just how much water was spilled.
When you contact the carpet at the edge of the room, it may not even feel damp, but the pad could be saturated. This could be noticed using an infrared surveillance camera. An infrared (or Thermal Imaging) camera is useful in finding the real area that the water has damaged, even if you can't see or experience it.
In general I'd say that the real wet area in any flood (found with professional water damage and mold meters) is approximately twice the size of what the home owner reports.
An infrared camera will present how water travels under the floor covering through the pad. Actually in a 'small' flood, drinking water can migrate through walls and end up 2 rooms aside within 12 hours.
Bearing the information above in mind, here are a few common myths about wet carpets and how to dry wet carpets
Myth #1. The carpeting will dry by itself
This is really true, just like it is true you could win the lottery with one ticket.
Yes, the carpet can eventually dry by itself. However, does it smell poor or have mold onto it by the time it is dry? What other damage will occur while the carpet dries alone?
Unless you reside in someplace like Arizona or the desert where you have temperature and low humidity, there is quite small chance that the carpet and pad will dry before mold starts developing or bacteria start creating that wet carpet, damp smell. Typically you have about 72 hours to dry wet building components before they start growing mold.
Even if the carpeting itself dries, does which means that the pad is dried out? There is very little chance that the pad is definitely dry. The pad holds even more moisture than floor covering and is prevented from easily releasing the moisture because of the floor covering above it and the sub-floor below it. Therefore even if your carpet is dried out, the pad is probably not dry.
Which brings us to another point. What about the wet sub-ground? Remember that carpet is similar to a sieve, and the carpet will pass water right down to the pad rapidly. A saturated pad may then release water in to the sub-floor.
Drying Sub-floors
Sub-floors are often either wood or concrete.
Cement sub floors are sponges too, except they are extremely sluggish sponges. They absorb water surprisingly quickly, but launch it very slowly. Therefore even if the carpeting and pad are dried quickly, the cement sub-floor could still release moisture for weeks.
Wood sub-floors hold drinking water too. If they're manufactured from chip-board/particle table/press-board (small chips of solid wood held as well as glue) and they are wet for more than a few hours they absorb water, expand, and get rid of their structural integrity.
When wet particle panel 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 table. If they get wet, you can dried out them, so long as they haven't been sitting wet for long more than enough to warp. This falls loosely under the 72 hour guideline. Another concern is dried out rot which is a bacterial deterioration that will take 21 days to manifest at lower dampness levels.
Determining whether the sub-floor is definitely wet or not can only reliably be achieved with a penetrating dampness meter. Different building materials have different acceptable levels of moisture, therefore you use the meter to let you know if the materials is acceptably dried out or not.
Depending on the region you live in, plywood is dried out at around 20% Comparative Moisture Content (EMC). In as little as 4 days, mold can start developing on wet plywood if not dried correctly.
So, we realize that the carpeting and pad are unlikely to dry quickly enough by themselves. But even if indeed they did, is that you have to bother about when your carpets and rugs are wet? No, it isn't.
Like I said, WET goes to DRY. This implies the water maintains spreading outwards from the source.
On one flooded carpet work we did, the floor covering initial got wet about 12 hours before we arrived. During that time the house owner used her wet vac to suck up as very much water as feasible from the wet carpet - about 100 gallons.
She simply wanted us to dry out her carpets. Nevertheless, using the infrared surveillance camera and moisture meters, we found that her walls were wet, occasionally to nearly 12" above the carpeting.
Wet drywall, is that a problem?
The problem with wet drywall may be the usual 72 hour problem.
In as little as 72 hours mold can start growing on that wet dried out wall. Mold especially likes dark, warm areas without airflow. That describes the wall structure cavity - the perfect place for mold to grow.
So that is the problem - wet carpeting creates wet drywall that may create mold. Below is usually an image of a wall structure after water have been position for a long time.
To conclude. Yes, the carpet will eventually dry alone. But you'll more than likely possess mold and smells by enough time it is dry, 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 exists a myth that you can't remove water from a wet pad, despite having commercial extraction equipment. Individuals who state this are talking about the standard carpet cleaning 'wand' demonstrated on the right. It is what's commonly used to clean carpets. It sprays warm water onto the floor covering and then sucks it right back up again.
The wand is made to pull water from the carpet fibers, not the pad and it does a good job at that. If you have water damage on commercial carpet without a pad, the wand is a good tool to use.
However, on residential carpet with a pad, it extracts almost non-e of the drinking water from the pad.
So how carry out you get drinking water from the pad so you don't have to remove and discard the pad?
There are numerous of new commercial extraction tools which will remove water from the pad. Well known is normally the FlashXtractor. It really is a wonderful piece of equipment, probably my favorite tool. (We have no affiliation with the makers of this tool, 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 like the FlashXtractor came away, there was a technique known as "floating the carpet" that was used to dry carpet and pad due to the poor job the wand did of extracting water from the pad.
To float a carpeting, you draw up a part of the carpeting and stick an surroundings mover or carpet lover under the floor covering to blow air under the floor covering and onto the pad. While this technique still works it really is slower, much less effective, and frequently stretches the carpet so that it doesn't fit properly when restretched.
Floating the carpet can be an old classes technique that is unnecessary should you have the proper tools, ie a deep extraction tool like the FlashXtractor.
To complicate issues, bear this in mind. While you can dried out wet pad, it doesn't always mean you should.
If you have contaminated drinking water in the pad you can dry it, but you will be leaving at least some contamination in the pad and over it will start to stink, time and rot. In contaminated water circumstances you will have to remove the pad because you can't effectively decontaminate it while it is underneath the floor covering. In the water restoration industry, contaminated water is named Category 2 (gray drinking water) or Category 3 (dark water).
Myth #3. You can't dry 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, actually without floating that carpet, but it doesn't mean you generally 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 response to question 2 above. To conclude, you don't have to float carpet should you have a deep extraction device and learn how to use it.
Myth #5. You need to remove and discard wet floor covering.
Sometimes.
In case you have a black water scenario (Category 3 water - contaminated drinking water such as for example sewage, toilet leak or growing ground water), based on the industry standard IICRC S500, you have to discard the floor covering. I believe this is definitely because there is no EPA authorized disinfectant for carpeting.
However, should 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 water (clean water - toilet source range, fridge ice maker, etc), and it was not sitting for a lot more than 48 hours, then you can certainly extract the drinking water and keep the carpet and pad.
The other reason water damage and mold restoration technicians sometimes believe they should discard wet carpet is since the backing of the carpet will de-laminate when it is dried. The backing may be the lattice webbing on the trunk of the carpet that holds the floor covering fibers together. It is glued on. If it gets wet and stays wet for a long period it can separate from the floor covering fibers and begin to disintegrate.
How long is a long time? It's hard to predict - depends upon the carpet, the heat range, how wet it was, etc. Normally by the time the carpet de-laminates there is a black water scenario anyway, therefore the carpet must go.
Myth #6. Professional RUG CLEANING will dry your floor covering and pad
No. Not unless they use a deep extraction device that's designed specifically to eliminate water from the pad. A regular carpet cleaning wand will not remove significant drinking water from the carpeting pad.
Myth #7. To remove the wet carpeting smell, you ought to have it professionally cleaned.
Yes, with a 'mainly' attached to it. The rug cleaning machines and strategies available to most property owners aren't very effective. In comparison to commercial carpet cleaning equipment, the rug cleaning machines you lease from the local supermarket are such as a moped can be to a Harley. They're a similar thing, but not really.
Getting anything apart from a light smell out of a carpet requires the ruthless and suction of a industrial machine. It also requires the expertise of a trained and experienced floor covering cleaner. There are plenty of causes and solutions to different smells in a carpeting and knowing how to proceed and when to it needs training and experience.
If baking soda and vacuuming don't function, your best wager is to call an trained and experienced floor covering cleaner, preferably one which is also an IICRC certified Smell Control Technician.
Myth #8. If you dried out a flooded floor covering, you will not get a moldy wet carpet smell
Depends. If a carpet is usually dried quickly and correctly you will see no smell. In fact, if anything, there will be less smell since the carpet has effectively been cleaned.
If the carpet and pad are not dried quickly and correctly you will probably have trouble with lingering musky smells and mold.
See myth #2 for additional information.
Myth #9. You need to use a vehicle mount floor covering extractor to dry or clean a carpeting properly
False. This is a continuing debate that I don't think will ever end up being resolved completely. Portable carpet cleaning machines have the benefit of short hose runs while pickup truck mounts possess the advantage of high power.
What it comes down to is really the technician holding the wand. An excellent technician on a bad machine are certain to get a better result than a bad specialist on a good machine.
Summary
If you've had lots of gallons of water spilled on your floor covering, you're better off calling a specialist water damage business to properly dry your house if you can afford it, or in case you have insurance. As you leaned above, the problem is that if the carpets and rugs and walls aren't dried quickly you could encounter a mold circumstance which is much more expensive to fix than drying the carpets.