Black Light carpet bites the dust!
My poor blacklight carpet has survived two major floods in the basement. The first time it was still rolled up during the final days of construction and didn’t get that wet. The second time it had been newly installed and required professional cleaning and drying with new pad. It wasn’t so lucky the third time around. With record rainfall here in the Midwest my poor carpet didn’t stand a chance!
The good news is that I was able to determine where the water is getting into the basement – of course only in my game room – and no games were damaged. The bad news is that my expensive black light carpet and pad is now garbage at the curb. My window wells filled with water and dumped their contents into my work space and game room, flooding the basement. I put calls into the various disaster recovery places to get my name on the “list” as soon as possible. Then I did my best to mitigate the damage. Vacuumed up about 50 gallons of water with a loaner Bissell and kept an eye on rainfall, pumping out my window wells when necessary. I pulled out the pad, but in the process I ripped some of the re-seamed carpet seam edges, damaging the BL carpet. I also discovered a small patch of mold under the carpet! Was it from this time or the last time, I don’t know, but I couldn’t mess around with mold and I yanked it all. I found a few more patches of mold, so I guess it was for the best. My poor BL carpet now lies dead at the curb, having a very short yet glorious life in my game room. You will be missed. What to do now? I can’t be 100% sure of the repair to the window wells, so I think I’ll be throwing tile down in the game room. Stinks, but its better than dealing with this BS every 6 months or so. If I don’t get water for a few years maybe I can revisit the carpet idea. Here are a few photos.
Tags: Black light carpet, game room, water damage
September 15th, 2008 at 11:16 pm
RIP Black Light Carpeting….
September 15th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I am happy to say I at least had the chance to walk on that fine floor covering before it met it’s soggy demise.
September 16th, 2008 at 8:33 am
OUCH!
And you had such a nice setup. Hopefully you have identified all of the water sources with this record rain and correct them, never to have to deal with this again.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:29 am
This is really too bad, and so much work to move every arcade game out of the gameroom, but good to know none of the games got damaged.
And just a month before the Halloween party….ugh. It is a cement patch repair that will / has been done to the window wells?
September 16th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Sorry to hear it, Chris. Just use it as an opportunity to expand into other parts of the basement.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
@Jeff Rothe: The water has been coming in through two window wells located on the driveway side of the house. The only two window wells we have and of course located in the game space. I plan to glass block the windows and re-seal the wells against the foundation. Then we’ll probably run drains down to the drain tile (if it’s there). Also plan to add french drains to other parts of the system to help relieve pressure and move water away. If all that works and we don’t get water – then we can think about carpet again.
September 17th, 2008 at 8:56 am
Wish I was there to help.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
[...] recently lost my black light carpeting to water damage. (Black Light carpet bites the dust!) It just couldn’t survive the last soaking, so it was time to pull it and search for another [...]