Water has damaged your carpets. Maybe you acquired a toilet leak, maybe your water heater burst, maybe your kid left the faucet working in the sink all night.
What should you do to dry your wet floor covering to minimize damage to your carpeting and pad?
First of all, now there is some general information about carpets you need to know that applies to all of the myths .
General Information regarding Water and Carpets
Residential carpet usually includes a pad beneath it. The pad can be anywhere from 1/4 in . to almost an inches solid. The pad provides cushioning and gives your carpet that comfortable, soft feel when you walk on it.
Commercial carpet in offices and stores generally doesn't have pad underneath it.
Carpet pad absorbs drinking water like a sponge: The problem with pad under a floor covering is that it's a sponge and will hold many times it's own weight in water.
Pad is designed to cushion your ft, so that it is spongy naturally 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 water per square feet of carpeting before it is saturated. After these preliminary few ounces of water have entered the carpeting, any more water filters straight through the floor covering and in to the pad.
Water loves to travel:Drinking water doesn't stay put, it is always on the move. The rule to keep in mind is "Wet goes to Dry". Water will instantly move towards a dry building material.
Water at the guts of an area will circulation through the floor covering and across the pad to the walls. It will migrate to the edges of the room in a matter of minutes or hours based on just how much water was spilled.
When you contact the carpeting at the edge of the area, it may not even experience damp, however the pad could be saturated. This can be seen using an infrared camera. An infrared (or Thermal Imaging) camera pays to in finding the true area that the drinking water has damaged, even if you can't see or feel it.
In general I'd say that the real wet area in any flood (found with professional water damage and mold meters) is about twice the size of what the house owner reports.
An infrared camera will present how water travels under the carpeting through the pad. Actually in a 'small' flood, water can migrate through wall space and finish up 2 rooms aside within 12 hours.
Bearing the information above in mind, here are a few common myths about wet carpets and rugs and how to dry wet carpets
Myth #1. The carpeting will dry by itself
This is actually true, just like it really is true you could win the lottery with one ticket.
Yes, the carpet will eventually dry by itself. However, does it smell bad or have mold onto it by the period it is dry? How many other damage 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 VERY 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 possess about 72 hours to dry wet building materials before they start developing mold.
Even if the carpet itself dries, does that mean the pad is dry? There is quite little possibility that the pad is dried out. The pad holds more moisture than carpeting 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 floor covering is dried out, the pad is typically not dry.
Which brings us to another point. What about the wet sub-flooring? Remember that carpet is similar to a sieve, and the floor covering will pass water down to the pad very quickly. A saturated pad can then release water into the sub-floor.
Drying Sub-floors
Sub-floors are often either wood or cement.
Concrete sub floors are sponges too, except they are very sluggish sponges. They absorb drinking water surprisingly quickly, but launch it very slowly. So 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 board/press-board (little chips of timber held as well as glue) and they are wet for more than a few hours they absorb drinking water, expand, and shed their structural integrity.
When wet particle board dries it has minimal strength and you will end up stepping through your floor if you are not careful.
Plywood or OSB (Oriented Strand Board) are much more hardy options for a sub-floor than particle table. If they get wet, you can dry them, as long as they haven't been sitting wet for lengthy plenty of to warp. This falls loosely under the 72 hour rule. Another concern is dry rot which really is a bacterial deterioration that will take 21 days to manifest at lower dampness levels.
Determining if the sub-floor is certainly wet or not can only reliably be achieved with a penetrating moisture meter. Different building materials have different acceptable degrees of moisture, therefore you use the meter to tell you if the materials is acceptably dried out or not.
According to the region you live in, plywood is dry at around 20% Equivalent Wetness Content (EMC). In less than 4 days, mold can start growing on wet plywood if not dried correctly.
So, we realize that the carpet and pad are unlikely to dry quickly enough independently. But even if indeed they did, is that all you have to bother about when your carpets are wet? No, it's not.
Like I said, WET goes to DRY. What this means is the water helps to keep spreading outwards from the foundation.
On one flooded carpet job we did, the carpeting first got wet about 12 hours before we arrived. During that time the home owner used her wet vac to suck up as much water as feasible from the wet carpet - about 100 gallons.
She simply wanted us to dry out her carpets. Nevertheless, using the infrared camera and moisture meters, we discovered that her wall space were wet, in some places 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 specifically likes dark, warm places with no airflow. That describes the wall structure cavity - an ideal place for mold to grow.
So that's the problem - wet floor covering creates wet drywall that may create mold. Below can be an image of a wall after water have been position for a long period.
To conclude. Yes, the carpeting will eventually dry alone. But you'll probably possess mold and smells by enough time it is dried out, and then you'll be ripping wall space and carpeting out to fix the problem
Myth #2. You have 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' proven on the right. It is what is commonly used to clean carpets. It sprays hot water onto the carpeting and then sucks it back up again.
The wand is made to pull water out from the carpet fibers, not the pad and it does an excellent job at that. So 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 non-e of the drinking water from the pad.
So how carry out you get drinking water out of the pad thus you don't have to remove and discard the pad?
There are many of new commercial extraction tools that may remove water from the pad. Well known is usually the FlashXtractor. It is a wonderful device, probably my favorite tool. (We've no affiliation with the makers of this device, and receive no payment 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 out, there was a method called "floating the carpet" that was used to dry carpet and pad due to the poor job the wand did of extracting drinking water from the pad.
To float a carpeting, you draw up a corner of the floor covering and stick an air mover or carpet enthusiast under the floor covering to blow air beneath the floor covering and onto the pad. While this technique still works it really is slower, less effective, and often stretches the carpet to ensure that it doesn't fit properly when restretched.
Floating the carpet can be an old classes technique that's unnecessary should you have the proper tools, ie a deep extraction program such as the FlashXtractor.
To complicate matters, bear this at heart. While you can dry wet pad, it generally does not constantly 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 it will begin to stink, rot and time. In contaminated water situations you will need to remove the pad because you can't successfully decontaminate it while it is underneath the carpet. In the drinking water restoration industry, contaminated water is called Category 2 (gray water) or Category 3 (dark 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, even without floating that floor covering, but that doesn't mean you constantly should. See the answer above for details.
Myth #4. You need to lift the carpet and 'float' it using blowers
The answer to this question is in the answer to question 2 above. In summary, you don't need to float carpet for those who have a deep extraction tool and know how to use it.
Myth #5. You need to remove and discard wet carpeting.
Sometimes.
In case you have a black water situation (Category 3 water https://www.intensedebate.com/profiles/flooringprosga - contaminated water such as for example sewage, toilet leak or rising ground water), based on the industry regular IICRC S500, you have to discard the carpet. I believe this is definitely because there is no EPA authorized disinfectant for floor covering.
However, in case you have Category 2 water (gray water such as washing machine waste water, shower runoff,etc) you have to discard the pad, nevertheless, you may clean the carpet and keep it.
Category 1 water (clean water - toilet supply series, fridge ice maker, etc), and it hasn't been sitting for a lot more 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's dried. The backing is the lattice webbing on the trunk of the carpeting that holds the carpeting fibers together. It really is glued on. If it gets wet and stays wet for a long time it could separate from the carpeting fibers and begin to disintegrate.
How long is a long time? It's hard to predict - depends on the carpet, the heat, how wet it had been, etc. Normally by the time the floor covering de-laminates you've got a black water scenario anyway, so the carpet has to go.
Myth #6. Professional RUG CLEANING will dry your carpet and pad
No. Not really unless they make use of a deep extraction tool that's designed specifically to eliminate water from the pad. A normal carpet cleaning wand won't remove significant water from the floor covering pad.
Myth #7. To eliminate the wet carpeting smell, you ought to have it professionally cleaned.
Yes, with a 'mostly' attached to it. The rug cleaning machines and strategies available to most property owners aren't extremely effective. In comparison to commercial carpet cleaning equipment, the carpet cleaning machines you rent from the neighborhood supermarket are just like a moped can be to a Harley. They're the same thing, but not really.
Getting anything apart from a light smell out of a carpet requires the ruthless and suction of a commercial machine. It also requires the expertise of a trained and experienced carpet cleaner. There are various causes and solutions to different smells in a carpet and knowing what to do and when to it requires training and experience.
If baking soda and vacuuming don't work, your best wager is to call an trained and experienced carpet cleaner, preferably one which can be an IICRC certified Smell Control Technician.
Myth #8. If you dried out a flooded carpeting, you will not get yourself a moldy wet carpet smell
Depends. If a carpet is usually dried quickly and properly there will be no smell. Actually, if anything, you will have less smell because the carpet has effectively been cleaned.
If the carpet and pad are not dried quickly and correctly 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 vehicle mount carpeting extractor to dry or clean a floor covering properly
False. This is a continuing debate that I don't think will ever become resolved completely. Portable carpet cleaning devices have the advantage of brief hose runs while pickup truck mounts possess the benefit of high power.
What it comes down to is absolutely the technician holding the wand. An excellent technician on a poor machine are certain to get a better result when compared to a bad technician on an excellent machine.
Summary
If you've had more than a few gallons of water spilled on your floor covering, you're better off calling a specialist water damage firm to properly dry your house if you can afford it, or if you have insurance. As you leaned above, the issue is normally that if the carpets and rugs and wall space aren't dried quickly you could encounter a mold situation which is a lot more expensive to fix than drying the carpets.