Carpet sucks.
Allergens, dander, dust mites, anything small enough makes its way through the pile of your carpet and down to the underpad even if you vacuum around the clock. (don't try this at home)
This has led flooring sales in North America to lean more towards tile and hardwood purchases.
It's not the carpets' fault that it sucks, gravity works.

What I propose is a thin double layer of rubber, custom fitted to each stretch of carpeting in a home, to be installed between the carpet and underpad. The upper sheet is perforated and connected to the lower sheet in a six inch grid to keep the upper sheet from ballooning under pressure.
An air intake would take the form of a small corner round that would run the outer perimeter of each room along the lower edge of the baseboards and pass air through a filter system before being forced between the sheets and up through the carpet backing blasting the particles back into the air.
This serves two purposes. It creates a water repellent barrier between the carpet and underpad, but more importantly rids your carpet of these small particles.
The largest of these particles will fall back down to the surface of the carpet where they can be removed through normal vacuuming and the smaller ones will follow air currents to the intakes and be filtered out.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 31 2005

There is a good idea here. Paring it down to its essential: a reverse vacuum. The carpet holds the dust, so blast air up thru the carpet and resuspend the dust. If this worked, it seems to me that it could be done with industrial blowers (like the kind they wedge under your carpet after it has been flooded) together with a powerful "house fan" type apparatus - these are superfans mounted in the attic which evacuate all the air in the house within a few minutes. No need for a seperate pad.

So the question: would a blower forced under a carpet launch dust into the air?
-- bungston, Jan 01 2006


I think so, especially if the air flow varied in intensity.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 01 2006


/varied in intensity/ do you mean pulsatile, or some sort of device to ensure good airflow out thru the middle of the carpet?
-- bungston, Jan 01 2006


The airflow should be the same at the center as it is close to the outlet once it becomes pressurized I think. I meant that the airflow would pulsate to loosen or shake free stubborn particles.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 02 2006


Probably wouldn't want to be inside on reverse-vacuuming day. <cough cough HACK>
-- PollyNo9, Jan 03 2006



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