Water has damaged your carpets. Maybe you had a toilet leak, maybe your hot water heater burst, probably your child left the faucet operating 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, https://www.bloglovin.com/@flooringpros now there is some general information regarding carpets you need to know that applies to all of the myths .
General Information regarding Water and Carpets
Residential carpet usually includes a pad underneath it. The pad could be anywhere from 1/4 inch to almost an inches heavy. The pad provides cushioning and provides your carpet that comfy, soft experience when you walk on it.
Industrial carpet in offices and stores generally does not have pad underneath it.
Carpet pad absorbs water just like a sponge: The issue with pad under a carpet is that it is a sponge and may hold many times it's own excess weight in water.
Pad is made to cushion your foot, so it is spongy by nature and will absorb water like the washing sponge in your drain.
Carpet doesn't stop or hold much water:
Although your carpet may feel extremely solid under your feet, it offers very little resistance to water passing through it.
Carpet is actually just like a sieve to water. A typical carpet won't hold more than a few ounces of water per square foot of carpet before it is saturated. After these preliminary few ounces of drinking water have entered the carpet, any more water filters right through the floor covering and in to the pad.
Water loves to travel:Water doesn't stay place, it is always on the move. The rule to keep in mind is "Wet goes to Dry". Water will automatically move towards a dried out building material.
Water at the center of an area will movement through the floor covering and across the pad to the wall space. It will migrate to the edges of the area in just a matter of moments or hours depending on just how much water was spilled.
When you touch the floor covering at the edge of the area, it may not even experience damp, however the pad could possibly be saturated. This could be seen using an infrared camcorder. An infrared (or Thermal Imaging) camera is useful in finding the real area that the water has damaged, even though you can't see or feel it.
In general I would say that the real wet area in virtually any flood (found with professional water damage and mold meters) is about twice how big is what the home owner reports.
An infrared camera will display how water travels beneath the carpeting through the pad. Even in a 'small' flood, water can migrate through walls and finish up 2 rooms apart within 12 hours.
Bearing the information 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 will eventually dry by itself. However, will it smell bad or have mold on it by the period it is dry? How many other harm will occur while the carpet dries by itself?
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 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 developing mold.
Even if the floor covering itself dries, does that mean the pad is dried out? There is very little chance that the pad can be dry. The pad holds even more moisture than carpet and is prevented from easily releasing the moisture due to the carpeting above it and the sub-floor below it. So even if your floor covering is dry, the pad is typically 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 very quickly. A saturated pad can then release water into the sub-floor.
Drying Sub-floors
Sub-floors are usually either wood or cement.
Cement sub floors are sponges too, except they are very gradual sponges. They absorb water surprisingly quickly, but launch it very slowly. So even if the floor covering and pad are dried quickly, the cement sub-floor could still launch moisture for weeks.
Wood sub-floors hold water too. If they're manufactured from chip-board/particle panel/press-board (small chips of hardwood held as well as glue) and they are wet for more than a few hours they absorb water, expand, and drop their structural integrity.
When wet particle plank dries it has minimal strength and you may find yourself stepping through your floor if you're not careful.
Plywood or OSB (Oriented Strand Board) are a lot more hardy selections for a sub-floor than particle panel. If they obtain wet, you can dry them, as long as they haven't been sitting wet for long plenty of to warp. This falls loosely beneath the 72 hour guideline. Another concern is dry rot which really is a bacterial deterioration that takes 21 times to manifest at lower moisture levels.
Determining whether the sub-ground can be wet or not can only just reliably be achieved with a penetrating wetness meter. Different building materials have different acceptable degrees of moisture, therefore you use the meter to tell you if the material is acceptably dry or not.
Depending on the region your home is in, plywood is dry at around 20% Equivalent Moisture Content (EMC). In as little as 4 times, 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 concern yourself with when your carpets and rugs are wet? No, it isn't.
Like I said, WET goes to DRY. What this means is the water keeps spreading outwards from the foundation.
On one flooded carpet job we did, the carpeting initial got wet about 12 hours before we arrived. Throughout 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 just wanted us to dry her carpets. However, using the infrared camcorder and dampness meters, we discovered that her walls were wet, occasionally 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 as little as 72 hours mold can begin developing on that wet dried out wall. Mold specifically likes dark, warm areas without airflow. That describes the wall cavity - the perfect place for mold to grow.
So that is the problem - wet floor covering creates wet drywall which can create mold. Below is certainly a picture of a wall structure after water had been standing up for a long time.
To summarize. Yes, the carpet will eventually dry by itself. But you'll probably have got mold and smells by enough time it is dried out, and then you will be ripping wall space and floor covering out to repair the problem
Myth #2. You have to remove the wet pad underneath your carpet
There is a myth that you can't remove water from a wet pad, despite having commercial extraction equipment. Individuals who state this are discussing the standard rug cleaning 'wand' proven on the proper. It is what is commonly used to completely clean carpets and rugs. It sprays hot water onto the carpeting and then sucks it back up again.
The wand is made to pull water out of 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 a great tool to use.
However, in residential carpet with a pad, it extracts almost non-e of the water from the pad.
So how carry out you get water out from the pad so you don't have to remove and discard the pad?
There are a number of new commercial extraction tools which will remove water from the pad. Our favorite can be 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 is wand extracted to death!
Before tools like the FlashXtractor came out, there was a method known as "floating the carpet" that was used to dry carpet and pad because of the poor job the wand did of extracting drinking water from the pad.
To float a floor covering, you draw up a part of the floor covering and stick an air mover or carpet enthusiast under the floor covering to blow air under the carpet and onto the pad. While this method still works it is slower, less effective, and frequently stretches the carpet so that it doesn't fit correctly when restretched.
Floating the carpet is an old school technique that's unnecessary for those who have the right tools, ie a deep extraction program such as the FlashXtractor.
To complicate matters, bear this in mind. While you can dried out wet pad, it generally does not often mean you should.
For those who have contaminated water in the pad you may dry it, but you will be leaving at least some contamination in the pad and over rot, time and it will begin to stink. In contaminated water situations you will need to remove the pad because you can't effectively decontaminate it although it is underneath the carpeting. 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 this myth is equivalent to for the question above. Basically, you can dried out a wet pad, actually without floating that floor covering, but it doesn't mean you always should. Start to see the answer above for details.
Myth #4. You have to lift the carpet and 'float' it using blowers
The answer to this question is in the response to question 2 above. To conclude, you don't have to float carpet when you have a deep extraction device and know how to use it.
Myth #5. You need to remove and discard wet carpet.
Sometimes.
When you have a black water scenario (Category 3 drinking water - contaminated drinking water such as for example sewage, toilet leak or growing ground water), according to the industry regular IICRC S500, you have to discard the carpeting. I believe this is because there is absolutely no EPA authorized disinfectant for floor covering.
However, for those who have Category 2 water (gray water such as for example washing machine waste water, shower runoff,etc) you need to discard the pad, nevertheless, you may clean the carpet and keep it.
Category 1 drinking water (clean water - toilet source series, fridge ice maker, etc), and it hasn't been sitting for a lot more than 48 hours, then you can extract the 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 floor covering that holds the carpeting fibers together. It is glued on. If it gets wet and stays wet for a long period it could separate from the carpeting fibers and start to disintegrate.
How long is quite a long time? It's hard to predict - depends upon the carpet, the temperature, how wet it was, etc. Normally by the time the carpet de-laminates you've got a black water circumstance anyway, therefore the carpet must go.
Myth #6. Professional Carpet Cleaning will dry your carpet and pad
No. Not really unless they make use of a deep extraction device that's designed specifically to eliminate water from the pad. A normal carpet cleaning wand won't remove significant drinking water from the floor covering pad.
Myth #7. To remove the wet carpeting smell, you ought to have it professionally cleaned.
Yes, with a 'mostly' attached to 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 local supermarket are such as a moped is normally to a Harley. They're a similar thing, but not really.
Getting anything other than a light smell out of a carpeting requires the high pressure and suction of a industrial machine. In addition, it requires the expertise of a tuned and experienced carpet cleaner. There are plenty of causes and answers to different smells in a carpeting and knowing what to do and when to it needs training and experience.
If baking soda and vacuuming don't function, your best bet is to contact an trained and experienced floor covering cleaner, preferably one which can be an IICRC certified Smell Control Technician.
Myth #8. In the event that you dried out a https://en.search.wordpress.com/?src=organic&q=Vinyl Plank Flooring flooded carpet, you will not get yourself a moldy wet carpet smell
Depends. If a floor covering is dried quickly and properly you will have no smell. In fact, if anything, you will see less smell since the carpet has successfully been cleaned.
If the carpet and pad aren't dried quickly and properly 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 floor covering properly
False. This is an ongoing debate that I don't think will ever be resolved completely. Portable rug cleaning devices have the benefit of short hose runs while vehicle mounts have the advantage of high power.
What it boils down to is really the technician holding the wand. A good technician on a poor machine will get a better result than a bad specialist on an excellent machine.
Summary
If you've had lots of gallons of drinking water spilled on your carpet, you're better off calling a specialist water damage organization to properly dry your house when you can afford it, or when you have insurance. As you leaned above, the problem is that if the carpets and wall space aren't dried quickly you could encounter a mold situation which is much more expensive to repair than drying the carpets.