I had a city sewerage backup into my basement.I used a wet vac, and then I rented a professional carpet shampooer from home depot. I shampooed the carpet 5 times. I then sprayed the carpet with a Clorox and water solution. How can I make sure that this carpet is safe.
This happened to a friend of mine and his homeowner's insurance paid for new carpet. There's no way I know of to ensure that all the sewage/bacteria is out of the carpet.
I agree, use your insurance company to get the money off their insurance company. There's no reason for you to keep the carpet.
If you rent then use the landlords insurance.
Remove the carpeting. Vinyl tiling is a better choice for areas prone to sewage backup.
I agree with the others. There is absolutley no way to adequately clean the carpeting. In addition, the padding under the carpet is saturated and will rot and mold. Even if the you don't get sick from the initial flood, you may become ill from the mold growing in the wet carpet and padding. In addition to calling you insurance company, you should call the sewer distric. They may provide some financial assistance. They may also help with some insight into the cause of the problem. It makes a difference if the entire neighborhood got flooded or if it was only your house. Furthermore, sometimes people illigally connect their gutters to the sewer system and overload the system causing a back-up into the house. In any event, you can count on heavy rains periodically and should try to have the problem corrected.
I had to clean up a sewer leak on non-padded carpet in a room used by toddlers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. The gunk that leaked was very black, as though from a trap of some sort. . I used a professional carpet extractor, and the carpet was not replaced.
Although carpet padding presents a really tough problem, I think your situation sounds worse than it might actually be. I just wish you had access to a better carpet extractor.
Once the carpet dries, there won't be sufficient moisture [or warmth] to support microbial growth. Mycobacteria and other bacterial pathogens should die out. Viruses? Will remain viable, but deep in the padding.
Given I have a pretty good professional carpet extractor, could I live with it? Probably. Would I feel better with new carpet? Absolutely.
Michael When I die, I want to go where dogs go!
I want to thank everyone for their advice on this problem. I had a professional carpet cleaner come and check the carpet, and all is ok. He told me that if I would have had padding the caret would've been garbage. But because it was a good commercial grade carpet without padding it was safe to keep.
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