Water Damage Remediation: What To Do If Your Home Floods

If your home has suffered water damage due to a natural disaster such as a flood or due to an unnatural disaster such as frozen pipes bursting and flooding your home, you only have a short amount of time to salvage your property and eliminate more extensive damage to your home.

The first twenty four hours are critical to water damage remediation. There are some things that you can do yourself to salvage your property but you will likely need the services of a water restoration company to do most of the restoration.

If your home has flooded, the first thing you need to do is turn off the electricity going into your home. Standing water and electricity do not mix and it can be a deadly combination to enter a room with standing water and an active electric current in the home.

Depending on how badly damaged your home is, your electronics such as your computer, telephone and fax machine may still be salvageable by professionals within a brief twenty four hour window.

Your floors of course are most likely where most of the water damage has occurred. Most homeowners do not have carpet cleaners with enough suction to dry out their floors from water damage so this is one thing you will have to leave to the experts. Water can get down quite quickly to the padding and the flooring underneath and if the water is not suctioned up, it creates the perfect breeding ground for mold and bacteria to grow.

If you want to salvage your carpeting by pulling it up to remove from the home, to dry out, make sure you have some expert guidance first. Wet carpet will shrink as it dries if it is no longer stretched out and tacked down.

To quicken up the drying process, open your closet doors and drawers to let air circulate and if you have access to a humidifier or fans use them to keep the air moving. You can also run the heater in the winter and the air conditioning in the summer to help dry things out but do not attempt using any electricity until you have been cleared to safely do so.

If we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina it is the fact that the longer a water damaged home sits untouched the more permanent the potential damage can become. Mold and bacteria can grow unseen under flooring and behind dry wall long after the water itself is gone, causing respiratory problems and making a long term impact on the quality of your health if left untreated.

So if your home has been flooded, you need to get professional services to restore what can be salvaged and remove potential health hazards before they become a permanent problem.