Carpet and Rug Restoration Tips By Atlanta Carpet Cleaning When you have a fire or a water loss, one thing is inevitable...you will need your carpets cleaned and restored. Oriental rugs are often the most expense by the square foot and need special attention. Handling the rugs in a proper manner immediately will save you headaches down the road. The first task you will want to do is extract the water from the rug/carpet immediately! The longer a rug sits in water the higher the chances are that the dyes will migrate. Color correction can be difficult and maybe impossible if your rugs/carpet is older. Immediate extraction will greatly reduce this risk. When extracting the water, move your wand with the grain. This will do two things...one: It is physically easier to do and puts less stress on your body & Two: It will prevent and minimize fiber distortion which on some rugs is nearly impossible to fix. If you have to move your rugs from one area to the next, please DO NOT STACK THEM! The dyes could run from one carpet to the other. In the end you could have just a pile of ruined carpets. To alleviate this problem do one of two things...One: Roll the rugs up and place in plastic bags (Only if you are transporting and removing quickly from the plastic, long term storage will not allow the rugs to fully dry and may cause mold growth). Two: (Best Option) - Place a sheet /towel on the rugs and roll them up individually. One of the most popular and possibly the most damaging ways to dry thick rugs and carpets are too put them out in the sun to dry. Even a short trip in front of the sun's rays could fade your rug. I would even recommend not placing your rug in a place where the sun hits it for long periods of the day inside your home let alone outside. This will surely damage your wet carpet. Better idea is to extract the water and put some fans near it to get air moving and dry it out faster. If you must lay them out in the sun, lay them top side down and on a flat surface. Lastly, do not dry drip your rugs. Dyes can go into your wool fibers if you do this, or run into the other dyes of your carpet. It may end up looking more tie-dye than intricately designed in the end. If there are no dyes, you still shouldn't drip dry. Atlanta Carpet are often thick enough that if will never fully dry the one end the water is dripping off.
Water has damaged your carpets. Maybe you had a toilet leak, maybe your water heater burst, maybe your kid left the faucet running in the sink for hours. What should you do to dry your wet carpet to minimize damage to your carpet and pad? First of all, there is some general information about carpets you should know that applies to all the myths . Residential carpet usually has a pad underneath it. The pad can be anywhere from 1/4 inch to almost an inch thick. The pad provides cushioning and gives your carpet that comfortable, soft feel when you walk on it. Commercial carpet in offices and stores generally doesn't have pad underneath it. Carpet pad absorbs water like a sponge: The problem with pad under a carpet is that it is a sponge and can hold many times it's own weight in water. Pad is designed to cushion your feet, so it is spongy by nature and will soak up water like the cleaning sponge in your kitchen sink. Carpet doesn't stop or hold much water: Although your carpet may feel very solid under your feet, it offers very little resistance to water passing through it. Carpet is actually like a sieve to water. A typical carpet will not hold more than a few ounces of water per square foot of carpet before it is saturated. After these initial few ounces of water have entered the carpet, any further water filters straight through the carpet and into the pad. Visit Upholstery cleaning Atlanta for more.