I came home to discover my husband decided to clean our dirty low profile wall to wall carpet with a pressure-washer to infuse hot water in the carpet and then shop vac out the water. The floor underneath is wood and most of that section of our house was built in 1929 with a crawl space beneath the house.
I tried to talk him out of doing it that way, afraid that much water would possibly damage the carpet or lead to mold even though its supposed to get hot here in the next few days. He claimed the powerful shop vac would take out enough of the water.
Now its the next morning the carpet is still very wet. I'm running fans, but worried. How can I be sure mold doesn't form under the carpet?

 

Welcome to the forums!

Sometimes us husbands come up with ideas that just don't pan out
Unless you can get a vac strong enough to suck up most of the water I suspect you'll need to remove the carpet to get everything dry - sooner is better than later!!

 

There are extractors available to do that job. They shoot water in & suck it right out again. If you need it today, rent a Rug Doctor with the upholstery attachment from Home Depot. Rent it for 2 days. Run it over the carpet as many times as needed.


They also have floor fans. Lift the carpet & send air under it. It will float like a magic carpet ride. Those 2 things should get you back to normal. Then tell you husband to take you to the best restaurant in town.

 

I second that

Without lifting the carpet..... it will never dry completely below it.

 

Hooah, Now there is a novel idea.

So did it clean the carpet??

I'm not so sure you have a problem, when we get our carpets cleaned they get really wet and it just takes a few days to dry and there is no mold issue.

Keep the windows open and the fans running and see what happens!

 

AC and dehumidifiers should be running, if applicable, as well.

Short version is if the pad is soaked, it would need to be replaced. If the wood gets too wet too long, you could have issues there as well. About two days is all I would give this; if still wet after that I would be pulling it up.

 

After I posted this I had to be gone for most of the next day and I guess he extracted a lot of the water. Now it seems mostly dry, almost 90 degrees here today, so.. It looks cleaner. Time will tell. The carpet is not real dense or new.