Wet carpet

Best is a carpet cleaner. They suck the water out. I suspect you don't want the best though. The simplest for anyone without a cc is to use towels then bogroll, then fan dry it.

The biggest problem is glue failure.

Heat is not what's wanted.

Weird taste is not something we can help with in uk.d-i-y.

NT

Been there with the T shirt, and have made some mistakes in the past (mainly over wetting when cleaning).

It will only rot if left wet for months. People use old carpets on top of compost heaps and they don't rot for many months.

Even if water has not been discovered for months and the carpet backing has a mild mould a wipe over of the backing with a rag damped down with bleach after first drying it out can save the carpet. Don't make the rag too wet or the bleach will wet the pile.

If the water from the central heating leak is relatively localised and clean or just slightly stained then as long as the leak is caught soon enough first let the carpet fully dry out and then shampoo it. Letting it thoroughly dry first may/will reveal a water mark around the edge of the area of the leak, especially visible if the carpet is one colour. The trick is not to wet the carpet too much when shampooing - try to just clean the pile without getting the backing wet/damp. You may have to do this multiple times letting the carpet dry between applications.

but it was just that I do have the odd

It depends on how much water and how the carpet is fitted. With a fitted carpet a rubber/foam type underlay may trap the water and its best to try and lift the carpet away from the underlay. This is easy with something like a radiator leak as only the edge of the carpet needs to be lifted. If the carpet is small then hang it out on the washing line or put over a radiator.

In the past with a fitted carpet where a lot of clean water was spilled in the middle of carpet I have screwed in a self tapping screw into the carpet, attached a string to the screw and lifted the carpet perhaps half an inch away from the underlay.

As for smell you may/will get a distinctive wet carpet (wet dog) type smell while it is wet and for some time after its dry. Once fully dry a spray with something such as Fabreeze. If you have lifted the carpet spray both sides, and the floor underneath, and let it dry again before restoring the original fitting.

The final solution may also be down to the material the carpet is made from. I have some largish synthetic fibre rugs which I can take outside and clean with a hose pipe and soft brush to work in the shampoo. Draped over a garden bench they drip dry in 24 hours in rain free summer days.

Are you sure about that ? ;-)

Assuming you can't lift it and hang it up somewhere to dry, get some dry towels or flannels, put them down on the wet patch and tread on them. It may sound contradictory, but it brings the wetness up into the towel. After you've done that two or three times, moving the towel around a bit to expose a fresh dry part, repeat with a new dry towel. Finish off by repeating the process with sheets of kitchen roll, until they come up nearly dry. Then blow cool air over the damp patch of carpet until it's completely dry.

It was my late wife's technique, and it always seemed to work very effectively.

Also, if you happen to have a wet-and-dry vacuum cleaner or a carpet cleaner, you could use that to absorb the bulk of the water before going on to the towels and kitchen roll.

Incidentally, don't use light-coloured towels with a dark carpet, as they may become stained with the dye from the carpet - or with dirt that inevitably gets into carpets.

There's some nasty food poisoning bugs going round this year. Tends to cause lots of issues for fitted carpets. :-)

Brian Gaff has brought this to us :

I used to look after a certain banking chain and the banks often had floods on carpets. Sometimes several inches deep in water. The usual procedure was get guys with pumps in, then industrial wet vacs, then several industrial dehumifiers, fans and heaters.

Worst case, was a bank flooded by a burst pipe from the tenants floor above, a foot deep in the basement and that was out of operation for just one week. It went unnoticed for days, because of a Christmas break.

Yuck!

It's only in recent years that I've started to see bathrooms with lino or tiles. All my parents' houses have had carpet (usually artificial fibre on foam backing) in the bathroom, and several houses that we've seen while house-hunting have had carpets.

As long as it doesn't get wet, and as long as there's a mat round the washbasin and loo, and a mat for you to stand on when you get out of the bath, then it's fine. Nicer than standing on cold lino or tiles. But not as hygenic.

I once helped a friend strip out a bathroom in a house he had recently purchased. A carpet had been fitted and the toilet then fitted on top of it. The smell of stale urine was present before the toilet bowl was released and when lifted off..........

Any fixed carpet anywhere near a loo is bad news.

Yes. If you get down close to clean around the bog it's remarkable where pee ends up. I can't imagine why but it often does. Maybe some people are just not housetrained.

NT

We bought special bathroom carpet for our en-suite perhaps 12 years ago. It has lasted quite well, the pile tends to 'flatten' but we clean it with one of those carpet cleaning machines (a Vax thing) and it 'springs' back like new. It doesn't have an underlay or foam back so is quite 'firm' under foot. Otherwise it is fine. No sign of mold etc. If things like shampoo etc spill, it does stain. It was quite expensive compared to ordinary carpet.

A domestic toilet is only a pub toilet in slow motion.

Sign in the bathroom in a hotel I once stayed in "Our aim is to keep this toilet clean; yours will help"

Even if you are careful you can't avoid the occasional splashes. Bathroom carpets are vile. Decent cushionfloor much preferable.

Any truth in the story some office staff pee in a circle round their desk every morning?

If you need to dry the carpet or part of the carpet, then I recommend you use a vacuum cleaner, if you don't have a vacuum cleaner, you can find some tips in this article

o><

we have a joker