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Asphalt. Tips to remove Asphalt stains from carpets

No matter where you live or what the name of your town is, you most likely have a paved road that is always in the process of getting fixed, this might not even be the road that you drive on but the driveway that you park in. Asphalt, in the warm summer months can get tracked in your home and on your carpets. If this should happen to you – here is how you can get rid of this dark gooey stain on your carpeting:

Using your fingernails, a butter knife or a paper towel blot up and scrape up as much of this asphalt mess as you can. Try not to pull to hard on the carpeting as you can pull out some threads that you really don’t want to come out as this can leave ‘bald’ spots on your carpeting.

Use a clean white cloth or paper towel or cotton ball and apply isopropyl rubbing alcohol to the area that is stained by the asphalt. Do this in a blotting motion, not rubbing just dabbing.

You will have to keep changing the portions of your cloth that you are cleaning with and you will have to keep adding more rubbing alcohol to the area that is stained.

Be sure not to pour the rubbing alcohol on the area that is stained. The rubbing alcohol will destroy or eat away the padding that is underneath your carpeting giving you more problems. Just put the rubbing alcohol on your cloth and dab at the carpeting.

Continue blotting on this stained area until you aren’t bringing up any other coloring on your cloth from the asphalt that is in the carpeting.

Rubbing the area carefully and changing the portions of the cloth that you are cleaning with you will be able to bring up more and more of the asphalt that is in the carpet fibers. If you find that all the dark staining is gone, you are done!

If you still have a bit more stain left in the carpeting, apply a bit of liquid detergent to the area that is stained. Using just a few drops of dish detergent and about a quart of water, you should continue blotting the area with a wet cloth and then blotting with the dry to bring up more of the asphalt stain in your carpeting.

Be sure that you don’t use a liquid that includes bleach or lanolin as this will cause additional stains on your carpeting.

Still left with a little bit of stain in the carpeting?

Let the area dry and repeat as needed with the above steps you are most comfortable with.

Apply hydrogen peroxide to the area and blot up using a clean cloth never pushing the stain deeper in the carpeting. Only use diluted peroxide, about three percent peroxide that will not change the color of your carpeting that you are working on! Placing a paper towel or clean cloth and then applying pressure on the area will bring up moisture deep in the carpet so it will dry faster.