How best can I get the builder's dust from the flooring before carpet installation ?
Question:Just had a house built and the last thing is the carpet installation. The plywood flooring has been vacuumed several times but there is still dust and grime embedded in the plywood and on the surface. I was wondering if using a carpet shampooer (not the scrubber, just the wet vacuum wand) with just warm water would help clean the surface from dust. Will the water harm the plywood flooring at all or make a pasty mess? I am somewhat intolerant of dust and would like to prevent the carpeting from pumping up the dust over the years. Your thoughts are appreciated.
Answers:
If you haven't been using a heavy duty shop-vac (the bigger vac's have significantly stronger motors), do. Beyond that, you could damp mop, but I don't think you'll do much better than what the shop-vac picks up.
As for the dust coming up later, I wouldn't worry too much about that. Dust won't migrate up through the carpet padding. Your bigger concern is the dust/dirt that's trapped in the carpet from above. Three houses ago we took up the carpets ourselves to install wood flooring, and were horified to see how much dirt was trapped in and under the carpet. Since then, we almost exclusively use hard surface floorings.
I would not put alot of water on it just a damp rag or something like that you will have to keep every body and thing off of it until it is ready to go down
I would not use water either, we just got a shop-vac and went over the floor with it. It seemed to have better suction than a vacuum and without the bar brush it didn't blow dust around. Haven't had any problems with dust.
I have found the best way to get dust up is with a dust mop (works great on concrete too) Maybe after that you could mop it with a high concentrate of pinesol and water.
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