After a flood, you have a limited amount of time to take action before mold starts to grow. Even if the dampness on your carpet wasn’t from a flood, you still need to take action to prevent mold growth. For some surfaces, it’s easy to prevent mold growth. For instance, hard surfaces make it easy to wipe away water before mold has a chance to grow. Other surfaces aren’t as easy. When it comes to your carpets, you need to act fast. When it comes to removing mold from carpeting, you need to act fast in order to keep your carpet after restoration and remediation.
Lift the Carpet
Depending on the stage in which you caught the dampness in your carpeting, it may have spread to the padding underneath your carpet. If you can, lift the carpet to see if mold is present. Chances are, if mold is present on the surface of your carpeting, you’ll also find it on the underside of your carpet. If you can’t lift your carpet, you’ll have to treat everything at the surface level and hope that the mold hasn’t spread past the surface yet.
Scrub, Not Vacuum, the Affected Area
Regardless of whether you lifted the carpet or not, you’ll need to scrub at the area. It’s important that you use a stiff bristled scrub brush and not your vacuum. Your vacuum may not trap all the mold spores, allowing them to travel through the room.
With the scrub brush, you’ll want to scrub at the mold on both sides of the carpet. Doing this when there’s nothing on the mold spots breaks up the mold, making it easier to treat. Continue to scrub until some of the mold is removed. Sweep up the loose mold pieces and throw them away.
Treat the Affected Area
Next, you’ll want to treat the carpet with anti-mold products. You can either buy them in a hardware store or make your own mixture. Apply it to both sides of the carpeting and let it sit for an hour. From there, you’ll need an old rag to clean the mold up. The best way to clean the mold is to blot at it. Be sure to avoid letting people or pets into the room with the mold for a day. They may incidentally spread the mold to other locations in your home.
Run a Dehumidifier
Lastly, once you’ve removed the mold, run a dehumidifier at the spot where the mold was. That will dry out the area and may prevent any future mold growth.
Removing mold from carpeting takes work. The sooner you catch dampness in your carpeting, the more likely we can save the carpeting during the remediation and restoration process. At Ram Restoration, we work with you to keep what’s most important to you. If you want to save your carpeting, it’s something we need to know upfront. We work hard to restore everything in your home to it’s pre-loss condition. Contact Ram Restoration to get started now.
