my carpet is wet from water over flow, what can i do to prevent mold with out removing the carpet?

Question

my laundry room (in the second floor)has a sink that overflow because of running water, the carpet is wet arround the laundry room & water traveld to the ceiling of the first floor dripping for about 30 min. now the ceiling is dry but my carpet is not, what can i do to prevent mold in the inner walls and carpet....please help!

Answer 1

You can take up the edge of the carpet at the wall baseboard. Its prolly on some nail-strips-just pull it loose enough to be able to direct the airflow from a portable fan between the carpet's padding and the subflooring. Use a few sprays of Lysol to kill any mold spores left after thourough drying. Replace carpet.

Answer 2

You can't: Use a shop vac to get as much water as possible out of the carpet, then peel the carpet back as far as possible and put fans on it, make sure it's dry before you put it down and make sure the pad is perfectly dry or you'll be sorry, it will mold. This is all you can do for it. A carpet once wet, is never the same again, I've dealt with many problems like this.
Check with your home owners insurance, you'd be surprised, they may pay for it. If it was an accident.

Answer 3

You usually won't have mold with a short term problem like yours.
Get a good shop vac or carpet extractor to suck up as much water as possible. (I recommend the carpet extractor.) Then treat with a mildewistat. A proffesional quality mildewistat will help more than several cans of Lysol.
Place a fan in the area to finish drying.
(Pulling the carpet up will speed the drying, but realy shouldn't be necessary with a short term water problem as yours. Had the sink been leaking for some time, my advice would be different.)

Answer 4

Get hold of a good shopvac or carpet cleaner and vac out the excess water. That`s about all you can do.