Water is a welcome resource in your home. You welcome it into your house daily with the twist of a knob, handle turn or button press. But that water becomes much less welcoming when it covers your floors and soaks into your carpets. Once you remove the water and begin the drying process, you might wonder just how much of your building materials and possessions you’ll need to replace. Will you need to get a new carpet, or is it enough to dry it thoroughly before reinstalling it? Please keep reading to learn more from our water damage contractors in Lawrence, KS.
What Type of Flooding Was It?
The first important question we need to address is the type of flooding that occurred in your home. Was it natural flooding from a backed-up sewer line or flooding from a water supply line? You will almost always need to replace your carpet in the first two instances. This type of water damage brings a lot more than just water; that water will contain many different contaminants, including bacteria, viruses, parasites, microbes, and more. These can cling to carpet fibers long after drying out and pose a severe risk to your family’s health. It’s much better to replace the carpets instead of trying to clean and restore them.
How Long Has It Been Wet?
Speed is always of the utmost importance when it comes to water damage. So, the next thing that needs to be addressed is how long the carpets have been wet. Mold can begin to take root in as little as 24 hours; however, in most cases of wet carpet, we have about 72 hours to get it dried out before we have to consider severe carpet mold.
Of course, the drying process does take time, so you still need to take action within the first 24 hours to get that carpet entirely dried by the end of that crucial third day. If your carpet has been wet longer, you’re likely to have already mold growing in it. This is not something you want in your home. It’s better to replace the carpets.
Are They Being Dried Properly?
There’s very little room for error with carpets if you want to salvage them. You need to ensure that they’re being appropriately dried, typically not doing it yourself. Water damage experts like the ones here at Emergency Mitigation Services have the knowledge and equipment needed to remove water quickly and dry your carpets thoroughly.
We’ll start by extracting as much water as possible from the carpets using wet vacuums. Then, we’ll pull up your carpet and elevate it to allow for proper airflow on all sides of the carpet—and then we’ll do the same with the carpet padding. We’ll keep the carpet and pad elevated as we ventilate the room with fans, blowers, and dehumidifiers to help dry it out. The carpet pad must be dried just as thoroughly as the carpet, or mold will still grow.
If this process is implemented quickly and adequately, it is possible to salvage your carpets. However, it can only be done with professional emergency cleanup services in Lawrence, KS, so contact Emergency Mitigation Services quickly better to save your carpets after a flood in your home.