Tonight, I spilled 30 gallons of water on the carpet. The water vat was upright, and then suddenly it was not. I’m not happy. I’ve blotted it, and moved most of the furniture that I am able to alone, I got on the floor, took the shop-vac and vacuumed all over (I had a wet lower half for several hours), and have fans blowing on the surface.
It’s still very wet, of course. How can I save it? I am going to have to get help to move the computer desk and two 55-gal fish tanks and stands. I will empty the tanks first.
I would try the shop vac method again but you’ll probably have to pull they carpet and pad and prop it up with something, I have used milk crates and get all the fans you can muster to try and dry it out. Of course leave doors and windows open to void the moisture. The sooner the better, it doesn’t take long for mold to start.
I just had something similar happen in my house on Friday night. I called a professional clean up company right after I called the plumber and insurance company because:
a. I hate mold. It’s gross and can be unhealthy to all living in the house. Mold also stains.
b. Water can damage not only your rug and the padding underneath, it can also destroy your wood floor, your walls, your molding around the walls.
c. my house insurance covers the cost after my deductible is paid.
Unfortunately this happened in the family room whick contains more junk, books, videos and stuff than any other room. Moved it all. Took out the bookcases. The cleaners took out my Chinese rug [soaking wet] to dry it at the shop. They pulled the wall to wall carpeting out. They pulled the padding out and took it away.
New padding will be installed later once the area is dry. They vacummed the rug with a huge hose with motor in the truck. Sprayed anti-mold stuff. They retacked two corners and walls. Then they installed two large blower fans to dry my concrete floor and wtw rug at the same time. So I have what looks like a hovering flying carpet in the room right now. the guys took pictures and said that the insurance company might just replace the carpet for me.
Bottomline: Act quickly
My point is get rid of the water as quickly as possible to avoid health and structure problems…
First of all
a) Do you live in an apartment?
b) Did you inform the management if above is true?
c) Else if you live in a house do you have waxed floors that are waterproof?
d) If above is false hire professionals…
e) Else throw the carpet out if you cant afford to hire them…its better to have no carpet than to have a carpet with mold.
I am off to church to find some helpers for moving the heavy stuff, since my complete bum of an s.o.(b) is in another state and after I called him last night and said I needed him to come, told me it really “isn’t practical” for him to come. This morning he called to say: “But if you need me, just say the word and I’ll go ahead and come.” I already said the word last night. Jerk. I’ll remember this.
It will take me a while to remove the fish tanks… I have to find something to put the fish in, then drain the tanks, figure out what to do with the tanks and stands…
I must confess, I was planning to clean this carpet, but this isn’t exactly the way I had thought of doing it.
Thanks for the advice so far… I know it may be a loss but I am going to try. BTW, it is not a rented place, it is family owned.
Was the water hot water? If it was and the carpet is fitted wall to wall. Even if you get it dry the carpet will most likely shrink. So it probably won’t quite fit. But that depends on how long it’s been down and how much it has stretched.
Call a carpet cleaning company. Something like that happened to my parents once, (it wasn’t nearly as much water), and the carpet people have a special kind of fan. They lift up one side of your carpet and then the fan has a tube that blows under your carpet to finish drying it from underneath. In the meantime it sounds like the shop vac idea is good.