My mobile home flooded!!

Thanks everyone. I am super super sick from sleeping in such a hot house all night! lol! The window being wide open didn't even help and it was below freezing out there.

I lifted the carpet where it was wet and its 95% dry right now, boards underneath are dry. Closet is totally dry. I have taken pictures of EVERYTHING. I am not sure what else to do.

Next year the three year old will be four, be patient.

I have come to hate laminate! However if you have a mobile home, at least you aren't on a slab. I would wait to see if your laminate is damaged before doing anything. If the water has a place to go, it may not be damaged. Wait, and if it is damaged, show it to insurance.

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I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam.

Popeye

I am so sorry this happened to you. I have successfully dried carpet and put it back down. Just make sure it is very dry and the underlayment is dry as well, otherwise you will have mold. If the laminate itself is wet to the point it absorbed water, then it will probably buckle and the top layer begin to peel off (been there, done that), but as someone else has said, give it a few days before you pull it up.

In the meantime, try to take some good deep breaths and remember that this too shall pass.

Couldn't she rent a carpet cleaner and use it to help extract some of the water?

Also you need to talk to whomever you bought the mobile home from - if they told you the lines were good they should be the ones making and paying for repairs.

Right on the money. I also do carpet cleanings. The amount of water being put into the carpet is not that much using a carpet cleaning machine. I've tore out a lot of sopping wet padding from flooded basements. Usually people try to dry it out with fans and dehumidifiers. After a couple weeks it will mold. There is just no good way to get all the water out of the floor and the carpet without taking out the carpet.

I've been in homes where the home owner wanted to save the carpet. What needs to be done is obtaining huge squirrel cage type fan and placing it under the carpet. That style fan will move enough air to float the carpet. Mold can't grow where there is air movement. Padding is always a loss but at least it is cheaper to replace padding than carpet. If you don't get all the moisture out right away it will come back and haunt you big time. I've seen it a few times where the entire floor is junk because water sat trapped underneath carpet for too long.

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http://www.xanga.com/shackman A blog about whatever

Just went through something similiar. Water heater line broke while I was gone for a while, DH didn't notice. Water soaked carpet, padding and up all the walls. We tore it all out, had to put in new floor in one room and under the water heater. The drywall soaked up water like a sponge. It went almost to the ceiling. A month later, everything is ALMOST back to normal. My pantry was in the small room and we lost some stuff. DH rebuilt the shelves what was a closet, after we moved some walls. What a mess. For the floor we put in laminate. Because we did most of the work ourselves, we came out with enough insurance money to buy laminate for the living room and hall as well. Silver lining to that cloud.

Thank you! A very good older guy friend of mine says that to me every time I have a disaster (and I have lots of them!). It always makes me feel better.

No...we moved the mobile home onto this lot in April. The lot has been empty for years and years since a mobile home sitting in this spot burned down (no one was hurt thank goodness! Not into buying haunted property). We were told the lines worked fine when the last person lived here...but we didn't have a chance to check (really is our fault). We only unearthed the lines a half hour before our house showed up. We had been out digging with shovels for a week looking for it.

So sorry to hear about your problems. You probably don't have to cook the house to dry out the carpet, but good and warm will help a lot.

My grandfather used to say, "Cheer up! I've seen it go on like this for days and gradually get worse!". It always made me laugh, I hope it cheers you up too.

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~ Carol

Thanks so so much everyone! I talked to my insurance agent yesterday and he recommended that I get a contractor over here to asses the damage and see if its worth a claim or not. Someone that can crawl under and take a good look. I apparently have two years to make a claim. My deductible is $500, but it could very well be worth it. Everything on top is dry and looks good except some of my laminate curled up a bit on the edges, but still perfectly usable if I need to.