Backed up toilet, leak in the ceiling, washing machine hose gone astray… there are many scenarios that can potentially lead to your carpets getting soaked. Whether the water is dirty or not the reality is that carpets do not handle being soaked all that well and it can lead to a lot of odour, health and carpet condition problems if not taken care of promptly. A flood restoration should address as many of these potential problems as possible:
- Water extraction: Probably the most straightforward element, this is sucking out as much liquid as possible so the carpet has the chance to dry. It also reduces the risk of the fibres in the carpet continuing to break down as well as eliminating a major environment for bugs and germs to settle down in. Generally a high powered suction unit, say a steam cleaner, is used for this.
- Anti-Browning: Due to the nature of the pile of most carpets when left soaking many start to discolour. Even just a couple of days is enough to permanently stain a carpet with many adopting an unpleasant brown tinge. Anti-browning is a treatment that helps to assure that doesn’t kick in, allowing you to preserve the quality of the carpets.
- Anti-Fungal: Moist, fibrous carpets kept in a warm home are basically paradise for fungus to grow. They will quickly take root and will damage the carpet, literally rotting them apart, and can potentially lead to some significant health issues. They also tend to stink of pure evil, making even just cleaning them a hard task. With early treatments this can be avoided.
- Anti-Bacterial: Bacteria love damp carpets and standing water to breed in, so the longer you leave carpets wet the more likely they are to start breeding nasty things. Anti-bacterial treatments are a big element of a lot of cleaning products but they are particularly important in wet carpets, particularly when the carpets have sewerage or dirty water soaked in.
- Blowers: To dry the carpets large industrial strength fans are used. While they might look and basically function as oversized fan heaters the reality is they are significantly more efficient and blow a dry air that will help to remove moisture from the carpet. This is important as some conventional heaters will just warm up the water and that promotes nasty things growing.
- Steam Cleaning: You should cap off any flood clean with a nice deep clean, steam if you can help it for the heat element, to assure that any residual bugs and bacteria are destroyed and removed. While it might sound counter intuitive you have to wait until the carpets are dry to do the steam clean. This is because if there is water or it is damp the cleaning liquid doesn’t soak in and disperse as effectively, lowering the efficiency of the process. Since a steam clean is always going to benefit the carpet this is a good excuse to get them done and it assures as few ongoing problems as possible.
