This is the same complaint a lot of people give, I shampooed my carpet and now it smells like urine. It gets even worse when you don’t have pets such as dogs or cats at home. Imagine having an odorless carpet, going through all the stress of cleaning and shampooing it and you suddenly discover that your house smells like a dog’s urine.
This can be really frustrating, cleaning up and getting rid of this smell can be an eyesore too, you wouldn’t want your home to smell this way when you have guests around. Not to worry, I’m going to share the reason why your carpet smells like urine and how it can be fixed, we’ve got you covered.
Read: Can dog urine cause mold in carpets?
Why Does My Carpet Smell Like Urine
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One way or the other, your carpet has been stained with pet urine in the past. This urine dries up without smelling. If you’re using a hardwood floor, cleaning might be easier but note that water spills on hardwood floors can damage the floor. While that might be a problem, there are some good ways on how to clean old damaged wood floors.
Mind you, dried urine doesn’t smell. You can have dried urine in your carpet for months without noticing any smell. While this might be an advantage, whenever this urine comes in contact with water, it reactivates the ammonia in the urine as well as its bacteria, thus the smell. It doesn’t end there, the water spreads further in the carpet together with the urine causing the room to smell even more.
Unlike other stains that are physical and easy to spot, urine is quite hard to spot especially when dry. Removing acrylic stain from carpet or removing sharpie from carpet is quite easy but eliminating urine smell isn’t, although this doesn’t make it impossible. We’ve got methods that will guide you through the process and remove that smell in no time.
How To Find The Spot Of The Urine If There’s Any
To know where the smell is coming from, you can either use a black light or stick your nose close to the carpet to find out where. Using a black light is the best way, turn out the lights and turn on the black light. Wherever the urine is will glow yellow, mark those areas. You can also check your furniture and wall, you might be surprised to see glows there.
Now you’ve marked the carpet, what next? You have to pull the carpet as the urine would have penetrated deep down into the carpet. Once the carpet is pulled, rinse the top side and the button side of the carpet using vinegar and following alternative steps below. Clean the floor as well with an enzymatic cleaner Repeat this until the smell is gone, then reattach the carpet.
We’ve got some best tips on how to remove the smell of urine out of your carpet do check them out below.
Read: 10 best carpet deodorizer powder
Enzymatic Cleaners
Enzymes are the best cleaning agent for urine, it eats up the bacteria in the Urine and as well kills the urine smell on the carpet by breaking down protein, oil and starches. Some enzymes we can recommend are Sunny & honey, Anti-lcky Poo and Nature’s Miracle.
For effective removal of the urine smell, apply the enzymatic cleaner to the affected area where the smell is coming from and leave for 24 hours or more. After applying the enzymatic cleaner, cover it with a wet cloth. This will leave the area damp and ensure the enzymes remain active thereby eliminating the bacteria creating such an unpleasant smell.
Vinegar and Baking Soda
A lot have used vinegar and baking soda to clean pet urine as well as its smell and it turned out successful. It’s not limited to cleaning hard wood floors. Here’s how to use vinegar and baking soda to remove urine smell from carpet.
Mix the same amount of vinegar and water in a bucket, this should be in the ratio 50:50. Pour the solution on the affected spot and scrub with a brush. The vinegar in the solution helps neutralize the ammonia in the carpet as well as its potent smell thereby reducing the odor.
The next step is to sprinkle the carpet with baking soda as soon as the spot is dry. Get a detergent and hot water, mix them in a bucket and apply it on the affected surface, scrub thoroughly with a brush. Blot the area dry.
Finally, vacuum the area a couple of times and you should be good to go. While this method might not be 100% reliable, it’s worth a try.
Bleach
You can only go for this option if you don’t have any other choice left. Note that you can only use bleach on white fabric carpet, doing this keeps the carpet’s original color. Using the bleach produces fumes with a potent smell, when applying bleach to carpet, ensure to keep the home well ventilated, open your windows and keep your pets away from the room to avoid the fume from affecting them.
The bleach can be really strong and unsafe for pets and children so ensure to dilute it with water. After applying the bleach on the carpet and cleaning the carpet, you still need to use shampoo and water for the final cleaning.
Having all these ensure to dry your carpet to avoid mold growth. To achieve this, you can run the fan on your HVAC system, you can alternatively use your own fan too. Open up the windows of your home too, the air will speed up the drying process. Steam Cleaning your carpet or vacuuming will go a long way too.
We’ve compiled tips on how you can get other stains off from your carpet, do check them out below.
How to get honey out of carpet
How to get turmeric stains out of carpet
How to get slime out of carpet
How to get blood out of carpet
Conclusion
Back to the complaint and I’ll summarize the answer with my favorite method.
Question: I shampooed my carpet and now it smells like urine
Answer: Get a dark light, spot the urine and clean with enzymatic cleaners such as Nature’s Miracle.
Now you’ve got more insight into how to remove urine smell out of your carpet, this post will go a long way in case such an accident inevitably occurs. Have you encountered a urine smell in your carpet or furniture before? How did you manage to get the smell off?
Sharing this post will go a long way and save stress for a lot of people out there looking for ways to get urine smell out of carpet.