Restoring Your Wet Carpet

A free article on Home and Family

By: Byron Zoucks

Water damage to your house can occur due to many reasons. Leaking pipes, floods and leaking roofs are only a few of them. Different methods need to be used for cleaning and restoring the different items in your house. The carpet in the house requires the most cleaning. Carpets are anyway designed to absorb water and moisture. When your house gets flooded, the carpets bear the most of it.

Drying and cleaning a wet carpet can be a difficult task. It is time-consuming and requires hard work to restore a wet carpet. Most people would prefer hiring a professional for restoring a wet carpet. However, it can prove to be expensive and not all of us can afford it. So we are left on our own trying our best to salvage our wet carpet.

Now that you have decided to restore your wet carpet on your own, here are a few steps that will help you do the needful.

Begin with removing it from the floor. If you have a wooden floor, leaving a wet carpet on the floor will cause damage to your wooden flooring.

Take the carpet outdoors in a place where it can dry. A wet carpet can be heavy. So you will need the help of as many people as possible in rolling it and taking it outdoors.

Once the carpet has been rolled out, clean the wooden flooring. This step is necessary to prevent the growth of mold and mildew on your wood.

Now that the wet carpet is outside, unroll it. You will of course need a large area for this.

Use a garden hose to wash your wet carpet. Once the upper side is done, turn the wet carpet over and wash the backside.

Use a liquid cleaner to clean the wet carpet. Pour the liquid cleaner on the carpet. Use a soft brush to gently scrub the wet carpet and spread the liquid cleaner. Then allow the liquid cleaner to soak in for a few minutes. This will help the foam in lifting all the dirt and debris on the wet carpet.

After a few minutes, use the garden hose again to wash the whole carpet. Keep spraying the water on the carpet until all the foam and dirt has been washed off. Make sure that the cleaner is rinsed off completely.

Once the liquid cleaner is completely washed out of the carpet, use a wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner to extract the water from the wet carpet.

Allow the carpet to dry under the sun. This will prevent the growth of mold and mildew and kill any molds which have grown on your wet carpet.

Turn over the wet carpet to dry the backside after a couple of hours. It will help in drying both sides of the carpet and speed up the drying process.

If your carpet is stained, you can use half-a-cup of liquid chlorine bleach in a gallon of water. Pour the solution on the carpet one small section at a time. Let it stay on for five minutes and rinse it off thoroughly. Allow the carpet to dry.

It may require hard work and it may be time-consuming. But it is not impossible to restore your wet carpet. Following these steps will help you recover your carpet and allow you to use it for many years to come.