The washing machine in our apartment flooded this past Friday morning due to a malfunction and caused some significant flooding of the carpeted areas of our living and dining rooms. Maintenance responded extremely quickly, brought out water vacuums, and got floor flans blowing underneath the carpet (i.e. between the carpet and the padding). The area of carpet that flooded was a good 200 sq. ft. I also went out and purchased a deumidifier and ran the a/c all weekend. By Monday morning, the carpet and padding was pretty much dry to the touch everywhere. I did not notice any dampness, although there was a slight musty smell in the room. The apartment maintenance came back out Monday afternoon, put the carpet back down and brought in a carpet cleaner to clean the carpet. To be perfectly honest, but for a few edges of the carpet that had some unraveling and fraying of the carpet fibers from the fans blowing all weekend, the carpet looks decent and the apartment smells pretty good too (like fresh cleaned carpets).

My primary concern is whether the padding underneath the carpet fully dried or was even able to fully dry using these methods. I have read elsewhere that when carpet floods, it is next to impossible to save the padding, even if you act quickly. Before the carpets were cleaned yesterday, I asked the management to consider fully replacing the carpet and padding expressing my concern about whether the padding would ever be able to fully dry. Now that the carpets have been cleaned and put back, I am second guessing whether I was overreacting and whether I should continue to push for replacement of the carpet and padding. My fear is that if the padding did not fully dry on the bottom, in a couple of months, the musty mildew smell will be back, and then we'll have a bigger mold problem on our hands and probably need to move. On the other hand, I don't want be an annoying tenant that sounds concerned where there is no need to be concerned. I find myself obsessing about this problem and am even considering offering to the management to pay for part or all of the carpet replacement just for peace of mind. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.