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Hey all, I’ve read some posts here about water damage and my situation is a little different. I had a customer call that said their basement flooded twice. They have removed all the padding and the water and it’s been about a month since it all happened. Currently they just have their carpet, about 1500 sq.ft., just rolled up or thrown on top of each other. They have treated the basement and the carpet with some kind of anti-mold substance. They still have a bad smell though. They were wondering if we thought we could clean the carpet and then they could have it restretched or if they will just need to buy all new carpet. Any ideas? I thought I could clean it but I don’t know if I could guarantee that we could get the smell out…
My recommendation would be not to inherit the risk. Especially if they rolled it up while it was wet and set it aside to marinade. If they did the extraction, clean up & treating; it sounds like they were trying to cut corners & not deal with the insurance or cost to have it professionally done. I don’t deal with water damage too often, however have dealt with situations where the carpet has been drenched (flooded) and not handled in a timely manner; the insurance has automatically recommended having the carpet replaced. This would have been much easier to handle if you had been involved from the start.
Once you touch it, you become responsible. Most flood companies won’t do work that some other company started. Since it was the homeowner, it’s a little different situation but still wouldn’t touch it in my opinion. If you are going to tackle it, my questions would be:
1. What kind of flood (fresh water or sewage) and where did the water come from (upstairs washer, window well, drain,etc)
2. How long was the carpet wet?If it involved sewage, tell them to throw it all out. If it sat wet for longer than 3 days, good chance of mold if conditions were right even if it was fresh water. So many variables to deal with that I wouldn’t risk it.
I would stay away from this one. They would be much happier with new carpet, and you won’t get yourself tied in to a no win situation.
Dont touch it! Like the people before me have said, it becomes your problem once you mess with it. Tell them to call a restoration company like Servicemaster.
Ditto that! Don’t touch ’em. Wet carpets piled on top of each other? What were they thinking? If nothing else they should have dragged them outdoors and allowed to be flipped and dried on both sides. Now they have a smelly mess that smells bad and probably looks bad with mold and mildew.
Sounds like the carpet was wet for too long. I have never been able to get out the smell of carpet from a flood job that I have done. The ones that I do are really small and didn’t have standing water. I work with a water restoration company and refer them out 99% of the time. If there is mold there is health risks to. STAY AWAY were not trained to remove or deal with mold.
I have recently tackled 2 basements with approx 1500 sqft of carpet in each that had been soaked with rain water. I would not have taken the jobs but they are loyal customers that had no where else to turn. All my competitors where swamped for over a week with the massive rainfall we had. Within 18 hours, I had all the carpet extracted and pad removed. I then used 4 turbo fans and ordered each customer to buy 2 de-humidifiers. We had the carpet and floor plates dry within 72 hours. I then treated for mold, mildew, fungus, bacteria and odor. Everything ended well except for my body! This is extremely hard work. I did over $3000 in water restoration in 3 days after my regular cleaning jobs. I would not recommend this work to us average Joe’s without the correct equipment or training. On a positive note, I am swamped with people who had their carpet dried by another company and now want the “Dry In One Hour” guy to clean. Seems they are now afraid of water!!!
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