Yeah, this is pretty far off-topic, but so far this place has never let me down with odd requests.

So wednesday night, sometime when i was sleeping, the pipe about 1 foot up from my hot water heater burst open. Just a tiny little burst. It was that shitty polybutaline piping. A tiny pinhole sized slit opened up and a tiny high pressure jet of water came out and actualy drilled throgh my drywall.

Anyways, fast forward to 8:15am the next morning.

I go downstairsto the basement to throw some of my kids clothes in the laundry and notice the floor is like a big sponge. I shut off the water to the hot water heater and bleed the pressure with the sink.

I take my stepson to school then proceed to spend the next 3 hours with my hoover carpet cleaner (high level consumer grade) and manage to suck about 20 gallons of water out of the carpet downstairs. I couldnt get ALL of the water sucked out though .

I replaced a bunch of the Polybutane piping with copper and put some high powered fans down there to keep the air circulating to help dry things out.


This carpet is low grade stuff. About 5 years old. Its had plenty of crap spilled on it with the various roomates ive had renting the basement.

My wife called me up, my fears have come true, the carpet has started to take a funk on.


Like i said, i have a real good steam cleaner, $500-600 range, it has always worked awesome. But the problem is the water wasnt just in the carpet, but also the padding beneath the carpet.

Is there anything i can do short of cutting out half my family room carpet to fix this? Can professional cleaners actually get all this junk out? or once it is in am i screwed?

If im basically hosed, i have no problem going in and tearing it out this weekend before it starts molding and gets any worse. Its just the basement. The two bedrooms in the basement seem ok, it is just half the family room that got soaked.

 

Down here in Florida with flooding I have seen some pros do miracle work in some friends homes you you may have a chance but who knows.

 

I had something similar happen several years ago. It was about 1am and I got up to use the bathroom and realized that the hallway floor felt just like what you said... a sponge. I ran to my parents' room to wake them up and the closer I got to their room, the wetter the carpet was. By the time I got to their door, I was standing in about 1/4" of water. I woke them up and they found their toilet had been overflowing and they didn't realize it.

We also have one of those commercial grade wet/dry vacs. We spent the entire night moving things away from the walls and sucking up water, but we still couldn't get it all out. We used every towel in the house to help after we sucked up what we could out of the carpet. After about 2 days, it started to smell bad. We ended up having to rip all of the carpet out of almost every room, except for mine and my brother's rooms.

So, there's my story and I know how you feel. I'm sure you can call around to professional cleaners and they might be able to help. For instance, ServPro or whatever they're called. If I were you, I'd just rip the carpet up and put some tile down. If anything happens like this again, you won't have to worry about it.

 

We have a company in Va. that does fire & water clean up. They are called Serv-Pro. They can do miracals. They have green trucks, I dont know if they are nationwide. I have seem thier work. Good luck!

 

We had the same sort of incident with our washer a couple years ago, it was actually raining in our basement. Our home owners insurance covered the damages to the flooring both upstairs and down. And once the carpet starts to get that funk, it's time to get rid of it. You can get the smell out for a while but it will usually come back.

Our family room in the basement we put some cheap laminate flooring that has been great with the kids and the dog. I highly recommend it and you can put it down yourself with the right tools and save alot of money.

Good luck!!

 

yah i pulled up the carpet and ripped out all the wet padding.

im going to try to salvage the carpet, right now it is half installed and rolled up. I mopped the floor with bleach and maybe tomorrow ill lay the carpet back down and use my carpet cleaner and clean the hell out of it, dry it out, then do it again and see how that helps.

 

That sucks man. Good luck i hope you get all the smell out.