Four Reasons You Shouldn’t Use Carpet in Basement?

In many homes, carpeting is a luxury and it offers extra comfort for family members. A fluffy carpet should make your home feel much comfortable. You will always feel at home while you are sitting on the carpet. You may place carpets inside the basement, but they could represent additional problems.

1. They can get wet: It will be bad if the basement carpet gets wet. But, it’s the fact of life and you often accidentally spill some forms of liquid. Also, the basement can be flooded during rain or when the drainage system is malfunctioning. When the basement is flooded, you can be sure that it’s not clear, spring water. The water could be saturated by organic material from top soil. It gets really worse if your basement is flooded by sewage water, especially if it’s contaminated with fecal matter. When it happens, you need to drag the carpet outside and dry it under the sun. It needs to get dry as soon as possible to prevent further growth of microorganism. After you have the opportunity, you can bring the carpet to professional cleaner or you can clean it yourself.
2. Germs grow easily in carpet: Carpets can easily absorb sweet drinks and it will feed germs for rapid growth. The bottom of your shoes could also have fertile top soil along with plenty of microorganisms. This will introduce more germs into the carpet. Even if the carpet is made from nylon or other non-organic materials, germs can still grow rapidly if organic matter is trapped on your carpet as well. Bacteria could cause respiratory problems and viruses can stay dormant in your carpet, until they enter your body.
3. Carpet is often organic: Some carpets are made from non-organic materials, but often they are organic. Although organic material can be dried and treated with chemicals, they will slowly degrade with age and exposure to moisture. When organic material has degraded and becomes humid, mold will grow easily. In just 24 hours, mold spores will fully germinate on wet carpet. So, if you have spilled something on your carpet, making it dry is the top priority. You shouldn’t expect that mold problem will go away permanently. Mold problems may go unnoticed, because spores can survive in harsh environment for a long time. Spores of some mold species have toxic substances, which can cause various problems to your health.
4. Carpets smell: When your organic carpet is wet and infested by microorganisms, it will certainly be smelly. Basement often has less than ideal air circulation, this will make your basement smelly as well. This means that the basement can become one of the less habitable places in your home, because people can’t stand staying too long inside the basement. When you want to clean up the carpet, you will need to drag it outside, which will be quite effortful and time consuming. Even if your basement is waterproofed, the air inside your basement can still be humid and the carpet will absorb moisture constantly. Due to the amount of effort to keep your carpet comfy and fresh inside your basement, you will need to consider whether it’s worth it.