Question from Karen
Hi Debra,
There was work done recently in my apartment to make the floors less squeaky because it was bothering tenant below me. I have wall to wall carpeting and so what the maintenance guys did was drive multiple (30+) metal screws through the carpets to secure the floor boards more tightly. The screw heads were then sheared off.
I’m reacting strongly to whatever they did. No glues were used, just the metal screws. So I’m guessing the screws might have had a heavy coating of machine oil on them . Can’t think of anything else I could be reacting to. And it’s making me quite sick.
Do you have any suggestions for a carpet cleaner? The building manager is willing to clean the carpets for me. Any other suggestions? Im guessing I will need to ask them to rinse out the tank of the cleaner to get rid of the usual chemicals they use. What would be good for cleaning the carpet cleaner?
Thanks for your help. I’m having one of those domino effects since they did this work in my apt a few weeks ago and just reacting strongly to everything now.
Debra’s Answer
It sounds to me like putting the screws in your carpet opened up the latex adhesive layer in the carpet and also perhaps formaldehyde emissions from the subflooring.
Do you know the exact locations of where the screws are?
Foil for sure would block the emissions.
The challenge here is how to put something over the screws to block the emissions.
I don’t think cleaning the carpet would do it.
Readers, any ideas?
