Water has damaged your carpets. Perhaps you experienced a toilet leak, maybe your water heater burst, probably your kid left the faucet working in the sink for hours.
What should you do to dry your wet floor covering to minimize damage to your carpet and pad?
First of all, right now there is some general information about carpets you should know that applies to all of the myths .
General Information regarding Water and Carpets
Residential carpet usually has a pad beneath it. The pad can be anywhere from 1/4 inches to almost an inch heavy. The pad provides cushioning and provides your carpet that comfy, soft feel when you walk onto it.
Industrial carpet in offices and stores generally doesn't have pad underneath it.
Carpet pad absorbs water like a sponge: The problem with pad under a carpeting is that it's a sponge and will hold many times it's own fat in water.
Pad is designed to cushion your foot, so that 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 water:
Although your carpet may feel very solid under your feet, it offers very little resistance to water passing through it.
Carpet is actually such as a sieve to water. A typical carpet will not hold more than a few ounces of water per square foot of carpeting before it is saturated. After these preliminary few ounces of water possess entered the floor covering, any further water filters direct through the carpeting and in to the pad.
Water likes to travel:Water doesn't stay place, it is always on the move. The rule to keep in mind is "Wet would go to Dry". Water will instantly move towards a dry building material.
Water at the guts of an area will movement through the floor covering and over the pad to the wall space. It'll migrate to the edges of the room in a matter of mins or hours based on how much water was spilled.
When you touch the carpet at the edge of the room, it may not even feel damp, but the pad could possibly be saturated. This can be seen using an infrared camera. An infrared (or Thermal Imaging) camera is useful in finding the true area that the water has damaged, even though you can't see or experience it.
In general I would say that the real wet area in virtually any flood (found with professional water damage and mold meters) is approximately twice how big is what the home owner reports.
An infrared camera will display how water travels beneath the carpeting through the pad. Also in a 'small' flood, water can migrate through walls and finish up 2 rooms away within 12 hours.
Bearing the info above in mind, here are a few common myths about wet carpets and rugs and how exactly to dry wet carpets
Myth #1. The carpet will dry alone
This is actually true, just like it really 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 on it by the period it is dry? What other harm will occur as 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 possess about 72 hours to dry wet building materials before they start developing mold.
Even if the carpet itself dries, does which means that the pad is dried out? There is very little possibility that the pad is usually dry. The pad holds more moisture than carpeting and is avoided from quickly releasing the moisture because of the floor covering above it and the sub-floor below it. So even if your carpet is dry, the pad is typically not dry.
Which brings us to some other point. How about the wet sub-ground? Remember that carpet is similar to a sieve, and the carpeting will pass water down to the pad rapidly. A saturated pad can then release water into the sub-floor.
Drying Sub-floors
Sub-floors are often either wood or concrete.
Cement sub floors are sponges too, except they are extremely slow sponges. They absorb drinking water surprisingly quickly, but release it very slowly. So even if the carpet and pad are dried quickly, the cement sub-floor could still release moisture for weeks.
Wood sub-floors hold water too. If they're manufactured from chip-board/particle table/press-board (little chips of timber held as well as glue) plus they are wet for more than a few hours they absorb drinking https://en.search.wordpress.com/?src=organic&q=Vinyl Plank Flooring water, expand, and lose their structural integrity.
When wet particle plank dries it has almost no strength and you may end up stepping through your floor if you're not careful.
Plywood or OSB (Oriented Strand Board) are a lot more hardy selections for a sub-ground than particle plank. If they get wet, you can dried out them, provided that they haven't been sitting wet for lengthy plenty of to warp. This falls loosely beneath the 72 hour guideline. Another concern is dried out rot which really is a bacterial deterioration that takes 21 times to manifest at lower wetness levels.
Determining if the sub-ground is normally wet or not can only just reliably be achieved with a penetrating dampness meter. Different building components have different acceptable degrees of moisture, therefore you utilize the meter to let you know if the materials is acceptably dried out or not.
Depending on the region your home is in, plywood is dried out at around 20% Equivalent Wetness Content (EMC). In less than 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 independently. But even if indeed they did, is that you have to concern yourself with when your carpets are wet? No, it isn't.
Like I said, WET would go to DRY. What this means is the water retains spreading outwards from the foundation.
On one flooded carpet job we did, the floor covering first got wet about 12 hours before we arrived. During that time the home owner utilized her wet vac to suck up as much water as feasible from the wet carpet - about 100 gallons.
She just wanted us to dry out her carpets. However, using the infrared camera and wetness meters, we discovered that her wall space were wet, in some places to almost 12" above the floor covering.
Wet drywall, is that a problem?
The problem with wet drywall may be the usual 72 hour problem.
In less than 72 hours mold can start growing on that wet dry wall. Mold specifically likes dark, warm areas without airflow. That describes the wall structure cavity - an ideal place for mold to grow.
So that is the problem - wet carpeting creates wet drywall which can create mold. Below is certainly an image of a wall after water have been standing up for a long time.
To summarize. Yes, the carpet will eventually dry alone. But you'll more than likely have got mold and smells by enough time it is dried out, and then you will be ripping walls and carpeting out to fix the problem
Myth #2. You need to take away 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. People who state this are discussing the standard carpet cleaning 'wand' proven on the right. It is what's commonly used to completely clean carpets and rugs. It sprays warm water onto the floor covering and then sucks it right back up again.
The wand is designed to pull water out from the carpet fibers, not the pad and it does a good job at that. So if you have water damage and mold on commercial carpet with out a pad, the wand is an excellent tool to use.
However, on residential carpet with a pad, it extracts almost non-e of the water from the pad.
So how do you get water from the pad thus you need not remove and discard the pad?
There are a number of fresh 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've no affiliation with the manufacturers of this device, and receive no compensation 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 due to the poor job the wand did of extracting drinking water from the pad.
To float a carpet, you pull up a part of the carpet and stick an air mover or carpet enthusiast under the carpet to blow air under the carpet and onto the pad. While this method still works it really is slower, much less effective, and frequently stretches the carpet so that it doesn't fit correctly when restretched.
Floating the carpet is an old classes technique that is unnecessary for those who have the proper tools, ie a deep extraction program like the FlashXtractor.
To complicate matters, bear this in mind. While you can dried out wet pad, it generally does not usually mean you should.
When you have contaminated drinking water in the pad you may dry it, but you will be leaving at least some contamination in the pad and over rot, it will begin to stink and time. In contaminated water situations you will have to remove the pad because you can't effectively decontaminate it while 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 this myth is the same as for the question above. Basically, you can dried out a wet pad, even without floating that carpeting, but it doesn't mean you often should. Start to see the answer above for details.
Myth #4. You have to lift the carpeting and 'float' it using blowers
The answer to this question is in the answer to question 2 above. To conclude, you don't need to float carpet in case you have a deep extraction tool and know how to use it.
Myth #5. You have to remove and discard wet floor covering.
Sometimes.
For those who have a black water circumstance (Category 3 drinking water - contaminated water such as for example sewage, toilet leak or growing ground water), based on the industry regular IICRC S500, you need to discard the floor covering. I believe this is usually because there is no EPA authorized disinfectant for carpet.
However, for those who have Category 2 water (gray drinking water such as for example washing machine waste water, shower runoff,etc) you need to discard the pad, nevertheless, you can clean the carpet and keep it.
Category 1 water (clean water - toilet supply series, fridge ice maker, etc), and it was not sitting for a lot more than 48 hours, then you can certainly extract the water and keep carefully 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 is the lattice webbing on the back of the carpeting that holds the carpet fibers together. It really is glued on. If it gets wet and stays wet https://flooringpros.yolasite.com/ for a long period it could separate from the floor covering fibers and start to disintegrate.
How long is a long time? It's hard to predict - depends on the carpet, the heat, how wet it was, etc. Normally by enough time the carpet de-laminates you've got a black water circumstance anyway, so the carpet must go.
Myth #6. Professional Carpet Cleaning will dry your carpet and pad
No. Not really unless they use a deep extraction device that's designed specifically to eliminate drinking water from the pad. A regular carpet cleaning wand will not remove significant drinking water from the carpet pad.
Myth #7. To remove the wet carpet smell, you ought to have it professionally cleaned.
Yes, with a 'mostly' mounted on it. The rug cleaning machines and methods available to most property owners aren't extremely effective. Compared to commercial rug cleaning equipment, the carpet cleaning machines you rent from the local supermarket are such as a moped can be to a Harley. They're the same thing, but not really.
Getting anything other than a light smell out of a carpet requires the ruthless and suction of a commercial machine. It also requires the knowledge of a tuned and experienced carpeting cleaner. There are many causes and answers to different smells in a floor covering and knowing how to proceed and when to it needs training and experience.
If baking soda and vacuuming don't work, your best bet is to call an trained and experienced carpet cleaner, preferably one that is also an IICRC certified Odor Control Technician.
Myth #8. If you dry a flooded carpeting, you will not get a moldy wet carpet smell
Depends. If a floor covering is normally dried quickly and properly you will see no smell. Actually, if anything, there will be less smell because the carpet has successfully 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 more details.
Myth #9. You have to use a vehicle mount carpet extractor to dry or clean a carpet properly
False. This is a continuing debate that I don't believe will ever end up being resolved completely. Portable rug cleaning devices have the benefit of brief hose runs while pickup truck mounts possess the benefit of high power.
What it comes down to is actually the technician holding the wand. A good technician on a poor machine will get a better result when compared to a bad technician on a good machine.
Summary
If you've had more than a few gallons of water spilled on your carpeting, you're better off calling a specialist water damage business to properly dry your home when you can afford it, or when you have insurance. As you leaned above, the problem is definitely that if the carpets and wall space aren't dried quickly you could face a mold circumstance which is a lot more expensive to fix than drying the carpets and rugs.