Carpet cleaning

[TitusGibbonicus]

Ok, Need to tap into the MN wisdom for this one, we can't be the only people that have had to deal with this... DS (4) decided wanted to sleep on his bedroom floor last weekend, shagpile carpet so it is rather soft and well, no harm eh?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

Late on Sunday there's a faint but odd smell. Monday it's no longer faint. At some point he's had an accident, unusually not told us and we now have a distinct problem, over quite a large area. I've tried the vinegar/water solution, mopping up some of the wet, then sprinkling bicarb soda over it several hours later and working it into the carpet before hoovering it up a few hours later... but it's not really drying out and despite early promise the stench has returned with a vengence. I gather the main source of the smell is the bacteria working away in a wet environment, and the underlay is going to kind of be saturated, nevermind the thick carpet. Is there any mileage in dryig it out with a hairdryer, repeating the cycle, or changing over to coating the area in biological washing powder as another suggestion found online... or are we into hiring a carpet steam cleaner/tearing up the carpet and underlay and burning it?

I'd recommend to have a steam cleaner deal with this.
if you already got the smell (indeed, it's bacteria growing in the thick base of the carpet), it's very hard to get rid of it with simple solutions. And the faster you act, the better (personal experience..)

Bio washing powder should work or failing that I once used the spray stuff you use when pets have accidents that worked well for me.

Ah yes, i used a kilo of daz in warm water and doused the entire area quite liberally, mopping up the excess fluid a few hours later with towels. It's still drying out but smells of, well, daz. It would seem the bio powder enzymes have done the job... Give it a week to dry and see what happens, after that it's either ripping the carpet up and using the pet spray stuff on the underlay or hiring a steam cleaner. Going for working up the expense/hassle options from cheapest to financial armageddon. I also worked out it is synthetic carpet after foolishly trying to get the hairdryer deep into the fibres - not a huge amount of melting but a valuable learning experience.