When water floods into your home either from a downpour outdoors or because of broken pipes, it can be a major issue. But if the rooms it floods are cement, tile, or even hardwood, cleanup is at least somewhat easy.
If those rooms have carpet in them, you've got even more of a headache to deal with. If you've had flooding occur in your home and it damaged a room with carpet, here are a few things you need to do.
Wet carpet is the perfect breeding place for mold, so the first thing you want to do as soon as you can is get several fans in the room to dry the carpet. Water can get down into the carpet padding if it sits for long enough, and it will begin to destroy the latex that helps hold the carpet backing together.
Try to avoid walking on the carpet as much as possible—this will cause more damage since the latex is already weakened. Get as much of the furniture and other items out of the room as possible, especially if there's a chance that they will damage the carpet, then walk on the carpet only when needed.
In extreme cases, you may need to remove the tack strips along the walls and lift the carpeting up. The carpet padding may need to be removed and replaced.
While you can get your carpet drying out on your own, calling a professional mold removal Dayton, Ohio-based company is a good idea, especially if you've had a large amount of water in the room. These experts have the equipment needed to quickly get the carpet dried out, plus they know how to detect and remove any possible mold that has already started to grow.
While most cases of flooding involve rainwater or clean water from your pipes, it's possible that you can have some unsanitary water leak into your home. This water may come from a backed up septic tank or a leak in your sewage lines.
In this case, you have to deal with potential contamination, too. Instead of drying out the carpet, it may be safer to simply remove it and put down new carpet. If you want to try to save it, you'll need to make certain that heavy disinfectants are used to remove any potentially hazardous materials from the carpet.
Even worse is black water. This is water that has raw sewage in it. In this case, your only real option is to discard the carpeting and start over. In fact, the entire area needs to be evacuated and anything in the room checked carefully for damage and mold. Black water can be very hazardous to your health.
Most carpet manufacturers will consider any warranty on your carpet to be void if it's damaged by a flood, so don't expect to get anything there. Many homeowners' insurance policies also don't cover flood damage to carpet, but this isn't always true with every policy. Contact your insurance company to see what their policy is.
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