Chicago's Water Damage Technicians Discuss Problems With Wet Carpet

6/18/2018 (Permalink)

To remove moisture from the subfloor sections of carpeting may be lifted to ensure complete removal of water damage.

How SERVPRO technicians dry wet carpeting after water damage

If a pipe ever breaks inside your Chicago apartment complex, water will follow gravity as it flows into your home. Whenever moisture gets into a structure, the carpet can get damaged. Carpet fibers are porous so water can soak into the material and hold moisture. If carpeting gets saturated, glues can weaken causing the backing to peel away from the fibers.

Carpet can also hold in moisture causing microbes to develop on the surface of the subfloor underneath. When mitigating water damage in Chicago, our SERVPRO technicians take extra measures to save carpeting materials. When the padding underneath the carpet gets wet, it can disintegrate and fall apart. Pad often gets removed and replaced since it is rather inexpensive to install.

The first step in removing moisture from carpet is to extract it using specialized equipment. Either a portable or truck-mounted extractor gets used to pull water into a disposal tank. If the carpet has a high level of saturation, heavy-duty weighted extraction tools get used to suck up the moisture. Weighted extraction tools use the weight of the operator that stands on top of the unit and rides it across the carpet. The weight of the operator compresses the carpet allowing more moisture to get pulled out.

After extraction is completed, drying equipment gets set up to dry out the carpet inside your apartment. Air movers push air in a circular motion speeding up the evaporation process. Dehumidifiers then get utilized to pull moisture out of the environment and lower the building's relative humidity.

In some cases, the carpet gets extremely wet and the subfloor underneath also gets affected by moisture. In situations like these, our SERVPRO technicians pull up the carpet and place an air mover underneath it to float the flooring material drying the floor covering from underneath while drying the wooden subfloor at the same time. Once moisture levels in both affected elements return to what they were before the loss occurred, the air movers get removed.

Before we finalize the project we use carpet tools to put the material back into the same condition, it was before drying procedures took place. The last step usually involves cleaning the carpeting with disinfectant solutions. If you ever need help dealing with wet floors, call SERVPRO of Evergreen Park / South Chicago City at (773) 337-3900 24 hours a day.

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