Wrinkle in carpet - restretching needed, or something worse?

[jkn]

Hi all we have a long, thin living room - about 6m by 3m. About half of this comprises of an rearward extension to the house that was put up before we moved in (1960s ex-council house, on a slope in Brighton).

About five years ago we had the room re-carpeted. IIRC we had decent underlay put down at the same time. It's been fine since.

I've recently noticed a 'wrinkle', in the carpet, at about the midway point, ie. roughly dividing the carpet into two 3m x 3m areas. It's only slight, but given that this marks the point at which the extension begins, it's got me a little concerned.

Is it likely that the carpet was not originally stretched enough, has gone a bit 'baggy', and now needs re-stretching? Does this often happen? I'm slightly concerned that, given the hot summer followed by recent torrential rain, there might have been some subsidence of the extension, which the carpet is showing up.

Your thoughts very welcome

Cheers Jon N

[Phil L]

OK, my immediate thoughts were along the lines of WTF - this bloke thinks his extension may be sinking into the bowels of the earth and hasn't even lifted the carpet to check.

What would yours be if someone else had posted this?

[Phil Anthropist]

I had a new carpet fitted in a bedroom and when the fitter had finished I asked him to look at the wrinkled fitted dining room carpet to see if he could stretch it. He took one look and said no, because the backing was disintegrating. I lifted it off the gripper rods and rolled it back, and sure enough the woven hessian backing was breaking up. So, that's one possibility, the carpet has stretched because the backing is disintegrating. If you had subsidence you would most likely have cracks in either your external or internal walls.

[Cicero]

============================ I think that the carpet would be more likely to stretch if the extension decided to sink since it's attached at both ends. The junction of old house / new extension is probably a high traffic area leading to greater wear on that section of the carpet.

If you're concerned about possible subsidence look for cracks in the outside walls, particularly where old meets new.

Cic.

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