How do you dry wet carpet?

Factual Questions
1

Question from a friend of mine:

Michael in Costa Mesa: I’ve sprung a leak. I now have three rooms with soggy carpet. The windows do not open, they’re rusted shut. No hair dryer. No money for a professional. And it’s raining, so it’s superhumid. What can I do?

My friend thanks you. Please help him. I tried the above suggestions, and Google for once doesn’t help.

2

Tell her the condom broke.

3

Tear up the carpet and replace with new/used carpet or linoleum. Or spend the 10 bucks and buy a hairdryer. (Though this will probably not help the padding and floorboard dampness.)

4

Might he have access to a wet/dry vac or a carpet shampooer so that he could vacuum the water? I’ve had decent success using a carpet shampooer to vacuum up water in a similar situation. You could probably rent something that would work. After you’ve vaccuumed, set up fans…well, this might work better if you could also open the windows, but every little bit helps.

5

I stripped floors for a living, and also did carpet maintenance at stores. Do whatever you can to increase ventillation. If you want wax to dry, you speed up the process many hours by placing fans in every direction on full power, I don’t see why this wouldn’t work (albeit slower) on carpets.

If the carpet is sopping wet, you could consider getting a professional cleaner. They have soap machines that have vacuum attachments that will suck up excess water. On a carpet that was dry, you put soap on at the same time you suck, and it usually dries in a few hours.

Cheapest way is to open as many doors and windows as you can, and place as many box fans in as many directions (if you don’t have enough, rotate).

6

I’ve had to deal with this a few times as a landlord.

The only real solution is to pull the carpet and the pad. Discard the pad and support the carpeting above the floor with something, milk crates work great or I’ve used saw horses. When it dries out replace the pad and the carpet.

As mentioned above, ventilation and fans are critical and large de-humidifier is a real plus.

It’s a lot of work and it will cost money but the alternative is a severe mold problem and it doesn’t take long to set in. Once mold gets started, it can be very difficult to stop.

I hate carpet!

7

As Bare said he will need to tear the carpet up from at least a couple of side walls and get some air flowing underneath the carpet. It needs to be dried from the bottom up to avoid mold and the lovely smelll that comes with it. If he can afford to rent a carpet fan that would be a real help.

8

Definitely look into renting a carpet fan. They look like this and they really blow. The last flooded house I saw had a few in every room to help dry it out.

9
      • I was living in an apartment building and the next-door neighbor’s water pipes came apart one day (due to cheapo press-in water softener fittings simply exploding one day) and the lanlord had a place bring in a few carpet fans. They pull up one edge of the carpet and stick them under and turn them on. The wet carpet is very heavy but the fans made it “bubble up”, they were so powerful… but the carpet can still dry with wrinkles, and then it is shot.
        ~
10

If you have the patience and only the carpet is wet (not the underlay) things like the Super Clean Sponge and Slurpex will suck huge amounts of water out of carpet. When I lived in a place with carpets I kept a couple of Slurpex around for spills. Even stuff like red wine can be sucked straight out of the carpet - you just lean on the sponge and when you ease up it sucks the fluid up. At one time when my wife spilled a bucket of water I cleaned up the 10 square feet (I guess) of wet carpet in only a few minutes. MInd you I also had a fan and good ventilation afterwards.