Carpet and pad drying is where the J.R.'s Fast Dry name comes from. Before we focused on water damage, our crew cleaned carpet across Will, DuPage, Kane and Kendall counties with a low-moisture method, and that background carries straight into flood work.
Here is the honest part. After a basement flood, the pad under the carpet almost always gets replaced. It holds water like a sponge and costs little compared to the carpet. The carpet itself can often be saved if the water was clean and we get to it within a day or two.
We extract with weighted tools that squeeze water out of both layers, pull the wet pad, and then float the carpet with air movers blowing underneath it. Dehumidifiers pull the moisture out of the air. Once it is dry, the carpet is re-stretched onto the tack strip over new pad.
If the water came from a sewer or sat for several days, the carpet goes too. Category 3 water can't be cleaned safely out of carpet fibers.
Carpet glued straight to concrete is harder. It may be salvageable, but the slab under it needs to dry too, so it usually comes up.
For carpet in the rest of the house, see our regular carpet cleaning service. For the first step after a flood, see basement water extraction.
