White Powder Under Carpet

White mold is often found in two locations in a crawlspace exposed soil and the lower portions of the floor joists.

White powder under carpet.

Efflorescence is the white powdery substance on the surfaces of unsealed concrete and the white blush seen with sealed floors. Smelling mold in your home is another symptom of heavy mold growth. You shouldn t necessarily be concerned unless sections of your rugs pile or yarn are slowly surfacing. The stuff is powdery and uniformly white or light in color if that helps.

Heavy white mold growth on floor joists. Mold typically smells damp or musty. In cool climates mold growth on floor joists is rare. When i pulled the carpet padding up i found a lot of a white powdery substance.

Another cause could be alkaline salts coming up from the concrete slab underneath. One cause of the white powder could be the deterioration of the carpet backing. I put the wet padding in a pile and. The white powder of which appears underneath a tufted rug is actually dried up particles from the glue which had once held wool securely to the canvas or foundation of the rug.

Efflorescence is normally worn off or washed away on unsealed concrete surfaces. Hand tufted rugs are constructed from different parts that are glued together. Efflorescence is caused by vapor migrating through the slab bringing soluble salts to the surface of the concrete. Posted by turducken at 3 36 pm on august 28 2008 in my experience it s the dirt filtering through the rug.

I think it is just carpet freshener. The white powder under your rug is latex and its powdery mess is a common occurrence with hand tufted rugs. Sometime vinyl and other materials break down and the result is a powder under the carpeting. A ph test evaluates this as well as by checking the moisture content of the slab itself.

If you have white mold visibly growing on your carpet then you have heavy mold growth underneath the carpet on the padding. We use that once a week before we vacuum.