If your home is flooded, then odds are pretty good that your carpet is going to need to be taken up. Sewage, chemicals, and other biohazards live in the dirty flood water that took over your home during that time and most of the time, porous materials such as carpet cannot practically be saved. You can go through a lot of trouble trying to save your old carpet when the most efficient thing to do is just to throw it out.
Trying to shampoo the carpet itself may work and remove a lot of the smell and stains, but the carpet padding underneath will need to be completely taken out and replaced. Foam padding like this cannot be cleaned and will usually end up shredding if you try, so whether you choose to clean the carpet or just replace it, it will still need to come up.
Removing your carpet is not a difficult task. You must remove all furniture from the room first and depending on whether you want to save the carpet or just replace it, you can take a utility knife and cut it in areas that may be difficult to take up. You can also use it to cut the old carpet into strips if you do not want to save it. Pull the moldings on the walls around the room off and take the door off its hinges. Removing the door will help you get the old carpet out and the new carpet in. The carpet padding also needs to be removed.
Pulling the old tackless strips up and installing new ones may be a good idea and you need to leave about half an inch of space between the new strips and the wall. The tips of the tacks need to be facing toward the wall.
If the floor has had much mold or sewage damage to it, you will want to clean this up before installing new carpet or re-installing your clean old carpet. Cleaning up mold stains can be done by putting 5 tablespoons of trisodium phosphate in a single gallon of water and scrubbing the floor with something that will not scar it.
If you cannot afford new carpet or to have the old carpet cleaned, refinishing the hardwood floor that may be underneath it may be an option. If you had to take carpet out of the bathroom, laundry room, basement, or kitchen, then you will really want to avoid putting carpet back into these areas, since these rooms of the house tend to stay damp.
Showing posts with label air. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2008
Keep The Humidity Down To Reduce Mold
Controlling the humidity level in your home is one of the most important things that you can do to make sure mold does not start to grow and this is not very difficult to do. You do not want to make the air in your home too dry, though, since this can cause nose bleeds and other forms of nasal irritation for the members of your household. Air that is too dry or too wet can cause problems for any respiratory system, so keeping the humidity level in your home around a medium level is optimum.
Keeping the humidity level in your bathroom down is fairly easy if you have an exhaust vent installed that will draw the steam out of the room when you take a bath or a shower. The steam is soaked up by the upper walls and ceiling, causing it to become molded and eventually, to crack and collapse. This can cause injury if you are in the room at the time, so installing an exhaust vent is a good idea. Building codes usually dictate that a bathroom have either a window or an exhaust vent, but windows are fairly inefficient in releasing the steam from the room since it settles at the ceiling instead of the middle of the room. Unless the window is located near the ceiling, it is not going to work as well as an exhaust vent.
Basements are also prone to having humidity problems and you can solve this by installing an exhaust vent here, as well. This is not the only solution, though, since you can also replace your basement windows to make the more energy efficient and therefore, allow less moisture from outside the house inside. Dehumidifiers can help take care of humidity problems that stem from the simple fact that the room is underground.
Keeping the humidity down in the house means reducing the moisture across all areas of the home. Wash wet clothes and dry them as soon as possible to keep the moisture from evaporating in the laundry room and never put dry dirty clothes on top of wet ones. Mold loves warmth and moisture, so you are only helping their cause by doing this. It really is a bad habit to let yourself get into, so try to wash damp towels at least once a day instead of letting them dry in the laundry room naturally.
Keeping the humidity level in your bathroom down is fairly easy if you have an exhaust vent installed that will draw the steam out of the room when you take a bath or a shower. The steam is soaked up by the upper walls and ceiling, causing it to become molded and eventually, to crack and collapse. This can cause injury if you are in the room at the time, so installing an exhaust vent is a good idea. Building codes usually dictate that a bathroom have either a window or an exhaust vent, but windows are fairly inefficient in releasing the steam from the room since it settles at the ceiling instead of the middle of the room. Unless the window is located near the ceiling, it is not going to work as well as an exhaust vent.
Basements are also prone to having humidity problems and you can solve this by installing an exhaust vent here, as well. This is not the only solution, though, since you can also replace your basement windows to make the more energy efficient and therefore, allow less moisture from outside the house inside. Dehumidifiers can help take care of humidity problems that stem from the simple fact that the room is underground.
Keeping the humidity down in the house means reducing the moisture across all areas of the home. Wash wet clothes and dry them as soon as possible to keep the moisture from evaporating in the laundry room and never put dry dirty clothes on top of wet ones. Mold loves warmth and moisture, so you are only helping their cause by doing this. It really is a bad habit to let yourself get into, so try to wash damp towels at least once a day instead of letting them dry in the laundry room naturally.
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