Carpet mildew at another church

[Stormin Mormon]

Today I was visiting a Chrisitan church, that has clothing distribution in the cellar. The recent super heavy rains wet the carpets in the cellar, and they are concerned about mildew. Old building. I havn't "got down" but I suspect they are wool.

They are concerned about mildew, drying, etc. The workers were doing what they could with shop vac. And the three dehumidifiers which run nearly all the time.

I was thinking carpet shampoo, and extraction. Mix a little clorox in with the shampoo. What else might help for wet cellar carpets?

[harry]

IME you have to take them up to dry them & even then a smell often remains. Even folding them back alternate ends helps. Dehumidifiers are good, keep doors closed. Portable fan shifts the air about, speeds drying.

[clare]

The "disaster recovery" guys around here do a pretty good job with extractors (basically high powered wet vacs), powerfull fans, and big dehumidifiers. They use some kind of disinfectant type spray too. We had a flood at the office - a waper line broke and put up to 2 inches of water over the wool rugs - over 6000 sq ft - and although it took a week to dry, they are just like new, and fresh as a daisy. Being glued down, lifting an edge was not an option, and at $39 a yard for material alone, replacement was not a tolerable option either.

[RicodJour]

Your head has been so far up your ass for so long that you think everyplace has uniform 100% humidity, eh?

There's no need to point out to the OP that your rambling is not advice, merely more trolling.

R

[RicodJour]

Most of the time the extractors are initially pointing out a door or window. You want to get as much air movement as possible, and get rid of some of the humidity, then when the place is starting to dry out, you close up the room and cook it with the dehumidifiers to extract the most moisture. Doing it that way accounts for ambient humidity that is not 100%. Like most of the planet outside of harry's sphincter.

R

[gregz]

By the way, Mean Green is good on carpet extractors. Add 1 tbs oxiclean per gallon of fluid. Probably says ratio mixing on mean green bottle. Greg

[gregz]

Oxiclean will work as it dries. I don't think I would mix with clorox. Oxiclean makes hydrogen peroxide.

Greg

[gregz]

Oxiclean.

Greg

[RicodJour]

Hmmm...you told the same person to use Oxiclean three times. I'm guessing that you want him to use Oxiclean. Am I right?

R

[clare]

It was a fungicide of some sort - definitely NOT bleach - and had a deodorizer that smelt a bit like Febreeze and a bit like fabric softener. I think they DID say something about a fabric softener too, if I remember correctly.

Sure worked a treat anyway - thankfully it was CLEAN water (but it sure removed a LOT of dirt from the carpet,considering the place was only 1 1/2 years old, and only occupied for a few months). The building had been extensively modified from the original layout (bigshot financial plannner that went bust before the oors opened!!!)

[clare]

Depends on relative humidity. When it's 100% =/- 5% inside, and only

60%, +/- outside, "purging" with the fans does a lot more, a lot quicker, and with less power, than the dehumidifier. Get the fans and wet-vacs running with the doors open - and when you get to the point that the rugs are just very damp instead of very wet, turn on the de-humidifiers and close the doors - circulating the air across the carpets to draw out the last moisture.

[clare]

My reference to "extractors" was not air extractors - but carpet extractors - like "steam" axtraction units, but not using the steam.

The "extractor fans" were also used in our case - and the RH outside at the time was likely about 15% - and the air temp was not terribly high (late spring central Ontario)

[clare]

Trust me, when you have half a dozen industrial dehumidifiers running, COOKING is VERY accurate. They put out about 1500 watts of heat EACH, running 24 hours a day for several days. That's over 5000 BTU/hour - 120,000 BTU per day EACH.

[Michael B]

Where are the air conditioners located? They could provide serious dehumidification, much better than those weenie dehumidifiers.

Close up the area, heat it to about 90 degrees, then suck the hot humid air to the A/C unit, and return considerably dried air. After the temperature starts going down, just stop everything, let more humidity be drawn into the less humidified air, then pull with the A/C again. Then turn off the A/C, crank up the heat to 90, do it all again.

I find it amazing to frequently see a dehumidifier operating in a basement, right next to the biggest dehumidifier in the house.

[clare]

These dehumidifiers were pulling over 20 gallons of water out of the air every 8 hours for 3 or mare days - and we ran the AC as well, after the doors were closed. Lots of paper in an insurance office - and that needed to be dried out too - never got "wet" but was pretty limp from humidity.

Over a year ago now - and no mold/mildew/smell/whatever.

[krw]

Maybe they should have been Episcopalian?

[gregz]

I frequently use oxiclean. I have used it to get rid of stains in wood floors after sanding. I used it recently to get rid of the smell in my truck with water leakage. I used it after someone barfed. I used it in my rebuilt trailer with mice piss in the wood floor. It also tends to leave a fresh smell all by itself, but you can add deodorant. I don't like the smell of most rug shampoos.

I did say mean green. My brother uses it and my sister just used it on rugs and furniture. You can call it a steamer, but real steam would damage rugs. It's lukewarm at best.

Greg

[The Daring Dufas]

I've done a lot of work for a small Episcopalian church, they're nice folks who are basically pissed off Catholics. They don't have psychotic nuns to deal with like I had to when growing up. ^_^

TDD

[clare]

Not kind to rubber carpet backing and certain foams etc - but quite effective AFTER things stat to smell. Not sure if it will prevent the smell.

[Evan]

That would be perfect -- NOT...

Let's suck up all sorts of wet air and all the fungi and mold spores and run them through the AC duct work while it is "wet"...

Nothing will grow in the AC duct work in the furry coating of dust and stuff that lives in the parts of the system that remain unseen once installed -- right ?

You need INDUSTRIAL dehumidifiers to recover after a flooding event, not the toy consumer grade attempts at humidity control which are designed to only be able to work with x-number of square feet of space...

You also need several fans for the initial phase of dewatering and to circulate the air in the space after you close it up to let the dehumidifiers to do their magic...

It sounds to me as if this church mentioned by the OP made a mistake in its flooring choice... Carpeting is bad in basements and is worse in rooms that are filled up with racks which are difficult to move around to be able to clean the carpet... I would have gone with a commercial VCT flooring option instead...

~~ Evan