Dust allergies: Carpet Steaming or Dehumidifier?

My suggestion - get rid of the carpet :) No matter what you do to the carpet, you are always going to have to deal with the mites. The only problem with a dehumidifier is if you make the air too dry, it can irritate any allergies or asthma you may have. There's a fine balance with humidity that helps us stay healthy. I used to sell some high end vacuums and one of the tests we did was put a super fine cheese cloth on the end of the suction wand. We did a test, we vacuumed brand new carpet, chemically treated carpet, old carpet and just cleaned carpet. You know what it revealed? Every single carpet still had some degree of dust mite still living in the carpet. Actually we used the test to freak potential buyers into how unhealthy they're carpet was so they would buy the vacuum :) - it was a gimmick but the actual test was very real. Professional cleaned carpet is a short term solution because unless you live in an air tight room, the dust is always going to be present.

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