Author: hello@krishnaale.au

Mould in carpet is easy to miss. It starts underneath, in the underlay, where nobody looks, and by the time it is obvious on the surface it has usually been growing for a while. In a humid Sydney summer it only needs a day or two of trapped moisture to take hold. Here are the four signs worth acting on, and what each one means.

1. A musty smell that comes back after you clean

This is the earliest sign and the one people most often explain away. A damp, earthy smell that is stronger on humid days, stronger in a closed room, and stronger near the floor. If you shampoo the carpet and the smell is gone for a week and then returns, the source is not on the surface. It is in the underlay or the subfloor, and surface cleaning will never reach it.

Worth checking: does the smell get worse after rain? That points to water coming in from outside rather than a spill.

2. Discolouration you cannot lift

Mould shows up as patches rather than lines. Green, black, white or a dull yellow-brown, often with a soft edge that fades outward rather than a hard mark like a spill. Traffic-lane soil follows the path people walk. Mould does not. If a patch is in a corner, behind a door, under a window or beneath a piece of furniture that never moves, and it will not come out with normal cleaning, treat it as suspect.

3. The carpet feels damp when it should not

Press your palm flat on the carpet in a few spots around the room and compare. A patch that feels cooler and heavier than the rest is holding moisture. Common causes are a slow leak from a nearby wet area, a failed seal on a sliding door, rising damp through the slab, or a carpet that was cleaned and never dried properly.

That last one is more common than it should be. A cheap clean that soaks carpet and leaves it wet for two days is a good way to create the problem you were trying to fix. Truck-mounted steam carpet cleaning uses a high-lift vacuum pass so most of the water comes straight back out.

4. Symptoms that ease when you leave the house

Blocked nose, itchy eyes, coughing or a headache that settles when you are out and returns when you get home. Mould spores are a known trigger for allergic reactions and can worsen asthma. This is not a diagnosis, and plenty of other things cause the same symptoms, but if it lines up with a musty room it is worth investigating. Anyone with ongoing symptoms should talk to their GP.

What to do about it

Deal with the water first. Cleaning mould without fixing the moisture source just resets the clock. Find the leak, improve ventilation, run a dehumidifier if the room is closed in.

For a small, recent patch, dry the area thoroughly and get air moving. Do not scrub vigorously with a dry brush, which flicks spores into the air. Do not tip bleach on carpet either; it will not penetrate to the underlay and it will take the colour out.

For anything larger than about a hand span, or anything that has been damp for more than a couple of days, get it looked at. In many cases the carpet can be saved. Where water damage is the cause, our flood and water damage service lifts carpet, dries the underlay and subfloor with air movers, and treats the affected material. Where the trigger is allergy-related, allergen treatment is applied after the carpet is clean and dry.

Preventing it in the first place

Clean up spills straight away and blot rather than rub. Keep bathroom and laundry doors closed and extractor fans running. Open windows on dry days. Move heavy furniture occasionally so air reaches the carpet under it. And when you have carpet professionally cleaned, ask how long it will take to dry — a good answer is four to six hours, not two days.

Adam’s Carpet Cleaning has been family-run since 2004, with IICRC-certified technicians and more than 25 years in Sydney homes. If you have found damp carpet and you are not sure how far it has gone, ring 1300 309 276 for emergency and same-day service, or ask for a free quote. Cleaning starts from $40 to $60 per hour, with a two-bedroom home from $120 and a three-bedroom from $150.

Related reading: useful tips to remove carpet stains and pet stain and odour removal.

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Hiring a supermarket machine for the weekend or picking up the phone — most Sydney households weigh this up at some point, usually the week before visitors arrive or the week before a final inspection. The honest answer is that both have a place, and which one is right depends less on the carpet and more on what has gone wrong with it. A light refresh of a lightly used bedroom is a reasonable do-it-yourself job. A traffic lane that has taken five years of grit, a pet accident that has reached the underlay, or a bond clean an agent has to sign off on are not.

The gap between the two is mostly water temperature, suction and what happens afterwards. A hire machine puts water down at roughly room temperature and lifts a fraction of it back out. A truck-mounted unit heats water well past what a domestic machine can reach and recovers most of it, which is why a professionally cleaned carpet is walkable in a few hours instead of damp overnight. Carpet left wet for a day is where musty smells and, in a bad case, mould come from — see why carpet smells after cleaning.

The other thing worth knowing before you start is what your carpet is made of. Wool, nylon and polypropylene all react differently to heat, pH and moisture, and the most common way people ruin a carpet themselves is using far too much detergent on wool. Our guide to carpet fibre types and cleaning techniques explains what to check.