What To Do When Your Basement Floods

The post What To Do When Your Basement Floods appeared first on Friendly Cleaning Services.

A flooded basement or kitchen can really wreck your day. Water Damage happens for all sorts of reasons, whether it be from faulty plumbing, a frozen pipe, sewer back up or a sump pump failure the key to getting back to normal as quick as possible is fast response time. The flood jobs that always go the best and stay right on the desired 3 day schedule are the ones when the home owner did not wait to call and did not try to just suck up the water with a shop vac. If your carpet is sopping wet a shop vac and a box fan are not the answer to your problem. The average box fan is about $20, our average drying fan cost $300 and can literally float your carpet in the air while supporting the weight of an average house cat... I've seen it many times. The average water damage job requires 10 fans to properly dry the carpet, carpet pad, drywall and trim. Our van mounted vacuum drying system cost $12,000 so its got a smidge bit more vacuum capacity then your average $40 shop vac... I cant tell you how many times I've had some one call exhausted after many hours of sucking water up with a shop vac only to find they still had much more to do.   We always tell our water loss clients we have a 3-4 day time window to get your home dry and back to normal before real problems start. If you call as soon as you find the problem and we get right on it, we can get most any job dry and back to normal mold free in 3-4 days. If you wait a day to call we are really risking a mold issue at which time carpet and pad needs to be replaced.... and that's the easy part. Most people over look how wet drywall gets when exposed to water. When walls are allowed to get wet and worse yet stay wet for an extended period of time then it gets very very costly.

Sources of Water Damage

Assuming we are talking about a water damage issue from a clear water source like rain water or a supply line burst, we can totally dry what you have with out removing carpet, carpet cushion, baseboards, drywall or insulation. With no risk of mold or mildew if we can start drying it shortly after the problem started. Again the quicker we can suck out the water and get fans and dehumidifiers going the less hassle it will be for you and the sooner you will get back to normal. Obviously if the water source was a sewage backup other then a washing machine then yes carpet, pad, drywall and insulation will then need to be removed and replaced with new