3 Ways To Dry Your Wet Carpet Out Faster After Shampooing

28 July 2015
 Categories: , Blog

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After you shampoo your carpet, your primary goal should become drying it out as quickly as possible. Letting the carpet stay wet for an extended period of time can cause mold and mildew to develop, and it can also cause some carpet materials to shrink or expand. To ensure your carpet dries in a timely manner, try one or more of these strategies:

Creating a cross breeze with two fans.

This strategy works best if you have a room with windows on two opposite sides, but you can use it in a room with windows on consecutive, perpendicular sides, too.  Place one box fan in a window, facing so that it blows air into the room. Set a second box fan up in a window on the other side of the room. This second fan should be facing out, so that it is blowing air from the inside of the room to the outdoors. Turn the fans on, and let them run for 6–8 hours. The one fan will bring fresh, dryer air into the room, while the other one will blow moisture-saturated air out.

Using a wet vacuum.

The suction features on carpet shampooers are not always as strong as they should be. To suck more water out of your carpet, use an actual vacuum cleaner that is approved for "wet" use. Generally, shop vacuums will handle this safely. Using a carpet attachment if one is available, go over the carpet several times to suck up more water. This strategy is easily used in combination with one or both of the other two in this article.

Soaking up excess water with absorbent towels.

This strategy is a bit time consuming, but it will help remove water from the carpet more quickly. It's a good choice if you don't have the window setup to create a cross breeze or cannot access a wet vacuum, as recommended above.

Grab a stack of bath towels. Lay one down on a portion of the wet carpet, and then walk all over the towel. Some of the water should come up out of the carpet and be soaked into the towel. When the towel is mostly moist, switch to a new one. Make sure you dry all portions of the carpet in this manner. The carpet will still need to air dry for a bit, but it will do so much more quickly than if you were to have skipped this towel drying strategy.

For more tips, you might consider contacting a carpet cleaning service like Clean Sweep Professional Cleaning Service.