Carpet Water Damage

The only way to deal with carpet water damage is to act as quickly as possible. Of course the extent of the damage and the amount of water on the carpets will play a large part in the solution but basically the quicker you act to get help and treat your wet carpets the more certain you can be of saving them. So if you have carpets that have been exposed to any type of water, skim through this site quickly and then start acting on the advice provided.

First of all you must stop whatever it is that has caused the carpets to get wet. If it’s a leaking pipe, fix it or get the plumber in. If it’s a leaking roof and it’s not raining now, first deal with your wet carpets but also repair the hole in the roof! Of course if flooding was the cause, there is no way you can turn off the rain or protect your house any more than what you are doing now, but do what you can to stop any more water from coming into the house.

Secondly, you have to know what substance it is that has caused the water damage. A home pipe that carries drinking or bath water to the house would just be clean water, but a sewage pipe would be a different story all together. Flooding of homes from rain water, a river that burst its banks or a pipe line that burst will need you to call in the professionals. You need to establish whether or not your carpets have ecoli in them. If they do, you will have to do more than just remove the water – you will have to have them deep cleaned too, and you might want to consider a chem dry carpet cleaner.

Thirdly try to lift up any carpets than can be lifted and hang them up in the house but preferably outside. If you have a wet/dry carpet cleaner then suck up as much excess water that you can from carpets still on the floor as well as from those hanging up. It might be impossible to do this if your whole house is flooded but do what you can. The longer you leave your carpets in water the quicker they will grow black mold on them or be prone to permanent damage. Put towels under loose carpets – basically absorb as much water as you can from under and on top of the carpets.

Fourthly open windows, get the fans going let air pass through the house. This will also help with the drying.

Next you will need to assess the damage. Some carpet water damage is only limited to mere stains on a few parts of the carpet. Professional carpet cleaners would quickly be able to treat these problems and get your carpets looking normal again. If you have large areas of damage and sanitary factors to consider you will definitely have to call the professionals in and get quotes and the cleaning will most likely take a few days. Unfortunately it will cost but you might have to compare this as against buying a whole new set of carpets for your home. You can see home carpet cleaner machines here.

Once you have dried your carpets, you can breathe a sigh of relief. At least there is no possibility of mildew growing. Just make sure that the padding under the carpets is also dry and not just the top layer of carpeting – otherwise you may smell something bad in a few days time!

For stubborn stains in limited areas, you might be able to get away with cutting out the affected area, and replacing it with an identical piece of carpet. This of course depends on where in the room the carpet is, how new your carpets are and the type of carpets you have.

If your carpets have been badly damaged you will probably have to resort to pulling them all up and have the sub floor checked out for damage too. This is especially if it is wooden. Wooden floors under carpets are often untreated and therefore prone to warping. This means it will make things difficult when you lay your next set of carpets down. The floor should also be cleaned with some sort of sterilizing detergent to prevent bacterial overgrowth or mildew. If you did manage to save your carpet after it was pulled up, you can then re install it and fix it to the floor again. Consider a professional carpet cleaning service to ensure really clean carpets and to reduce any potential damp smelling mats.

Now caring for your carpets over the long term will be important too. I would recommend avoiding water based cleaning methods and stick with dry chemical compound cleaners in the case of water damaged carpeting.

So in summary to minimize carpet water damage, you need to act quickly, stop the causative water leak, start lifting and drying carpeting immediately and then have the carpets assessed by professionals to get ideas on what types of cleaning you will need.

To find out about the types of home carpet cleaner machines, please see the buyers guide on this site.

Below is a video of a water damage restoration company in action. You can get an idea of how the job is done.