If your home has been affected by water damage, it’s critical to identify the cause and act quickly before worse consequences occur. This includes leaking pipes or burst sewer lines and natural disasters such as heavy rains or floods. Water damage can cause structural instability and health risks, so the proper steps must be taken to remedy the situation as soon as possible.
Water damage can cost you money in the long run; many people think they can handle the restoration process alone or ignore the problem, which worsens it.
Regardless of that, there are many things you should know before hiring a company to address emergency water damage removal. Read on to learn everything you should know about water damage cleanup!
What You Should Know About Water Damage Cleanup?
Different Types of Water
Water damage can be divided into three main categories: clean water, grey water, and black water.
Clean Water
Clean water is any form of uncontaminated liquid that poses no threat to human health. This type of water usually results from broken pipes, leaking appliances, or overflowing sinks.
Clean water cleanup requires removing all standing water, air circulation to promote evaporation and drying, and disinfection.
Grey Water
Grey water is any form of lightly contaminated liquid that has the potential to cause illness if ingested or inhaled. This type of water usually results from malfunctioning washing machines, bathtubs, or sinks.
Greywater cleanup requires removing all standing water, properly disposing of contaminated materials, and disinfection.
Black Water
Black water is any form of highly contaminated liquid that may contain bacteria or viruses capable of causing severe health issues in humans. This type of water usually results from flooding due to natural disasters such as hurricanes or overflowing sewers and septic tanks.
Blackwater cleanup requires specialized safety equipment and techniques, such as wearing protective clothing and using specialized pumps to remove contaminated water.
By understanding the different types of water that can cause damage, you will be better able to determine how best to address the problem and keep your home or office safe from harm. Professional water damage cleanup experts can help you assess and address any issues with quick response times and reliable solutions.
When Can I Hire Water Damage Cleanup Services?
The first thing to know about water removal and what a water damage restoration company offers is when to rely on these companies services. Why is this important? Because many people try calling water damage cleanup businesses for things outside their practice areas.
These are some of the issues you can address by calling a water damage restoration company:
Flooded Basement
You may think this won’t happen to you, but any house with a floor drain is exposed to water damage. This happens when leaks get out of control or if you have any leaky pipes there. However, most business owners who face basement floods panic and don’t know what to do.
Fortunately, water damage experts can manage this situation without charging you a lot for it. The drying process for a flooded basement may take some time, but it helps you prevent any major issues from happening. You should also check if your insurance company covers flooded basements.
Leaks
Leaks are some of the most common ways of suffering from water damage, and it’s not uncommon to see people trying to fix leaks themselves. The first step to addressing water damage from leaks is knowing where the leak came from. Toilets are often the answer to that question.
Kitchen and bathroom faucets can also cause leaks, so keep an eye on them. Once you know where the leak is, call a water damage cleanup company to take care of everything. The company you hire may send some workers to check out how the situation is going before trying to fix it.
Burst Pipe
Burst pipes are slightly more severe than leaks since they can cause more water damage to your house in less time. The best way to address this issue is by locating the pipe and shutting it off. However, only a water damage restoration company will know what to do to keep it from malfunctioning in the future.
Until you hire restoration services, you can leave all faucets in your property on to relieve the water pressure on the pipes. Unfortunately, people noticing water damage from burst pipes may already have a lot of standing water around there, so they will need drying and restoration services from a reputable water damage restoration business.
You should ask the company you hire if everything happened after a plumbing problem since you need a plumber to take care of the situation. Many water damage restoration businesses work with plumbers, so you can ask the workers who go to your house if they have any plumbers working for the company.
What happens if water damage is left untreated?
You need to hire a professional restoration service as soon as possible when getting water damage in your house because standing water there could cause more significant damage. Don’t believe us? These are some of the dangers of not hiring water damage cleanup services to remove water from the affected areas of your property.
Damaged Materials
One of the most dangerous things about ignoring the standing water in your house is that it could damage some floor, wall, or door materials, which costs you more money in the long run.
What materials can affect by water damage?
Water is essential to sustain life but can also cause great destruction. Water damage is not limited to your home’s walls, floors, and ceilings; it can also affect furniture, upholstery, carpets, electronics, and other items. All porous materials, such as fabrics, foam rubber, and cardboard, are especially vulnerable to water-related damage and should be addressed as quickly as possible.
It’s important to remember that even small amounts of water can quickly spread within a home or office building, depending on the type of material involved and the saturation level.
By understanding what you should know about water damage cleanup and the materials that can be affected, you will be better able to protect your home and belongings from long-term harm caused by water intrusion.
Mold Growth
Water damage increases the moisture in your property, and mold spores can grow around leaks, windows, or even pipes. Exposure to mold can cause many things, such as sneezing, coughing, breathing issues, asthma, headaches, fatigue, and other allergic symptoms. We recommend you hire someone to remove excess water from your house if you have this problem.
It’s worth noting that mold’s effect on you depends on your sensitivity since many people don’t even notice mold. Nevertheless, if you are not sensitive to mold and mildew, you should still take care of everything since it could bother your guests in the future.
Structural Damage
Water damage can cost you a lot of money. You can see that in how damaged materials can cause structural damage to your property. One of the examples of that is your door and windows not opening properly.
Fixing structural damage may not be on the list of available services of the water damage restoration company near you, but hiring that company can help you keep that structural damage from happening.
You can also expect water damage after a storm or other severe weather conditions.
What Services Can I Hire from a Water Damage Restoration Company?
Now that you know when you can hire water damage restoration services and the dangers of not doing it, you should know the services you can hire from a water cleanup business. Naturally, those services could change depending on the company you hire, so contact some of them to compare quotes and features.
Water Restoration Services
Water restoration services include everything you need to repair water damage in your house. Hence, when you ask for water damage restoration, you will get mold inspection, area disinfection, roof inspection, water removal, and drying services. Some water damage restoration companies even offer free consultations to clients.
Dehumidification and Drying Process
Regardless of the problem you suffer from at home, water removal is often not enough to eliminate water damage. You need to dehumidify and dry the whole place thoroughly, and contractors need to check how the drying process goes daily to ensure there aren’t any remaining water pockets after removing water damage from your property.
Most water damage restoration companies offer to monitor your house’s drying process and the restoration services you can hire. The same happens with dehumidification since hidden moisture in your house can trigger allergies and asthma.
Water Removal
When people talk about what a water damage restoration business can do for them, they think about water removal services since it’s the process people use to remove standing water from their houses. Professional cleaners should use the finest equipment and solutions on the market to clean your house, so you shouldn’t settle for less.
After removing water from your property, the company you hired will spend some days checking if there are any other areas with moisture. If there is moisture in your house after the cleanup process, it doesn’t mean the company providing you with services is bad since it always happens.
Emergency Water Extraction
While some water damage accidents can wait for water damage experts to get there and study the situation, you need to get help as soon as possible if you get a water emergency. These are some of the most common water emergency causes:
- Storm
- Snow damage
- Faulty plumbing
- Broken pipes
- Frozen pipes
- Leaks
- Clogged gutters
- Blocked drains
- Malfunctioning sprinkler system
- Faulty water heater
When you call a company to hire emergency water damage cleanup services, it will get to you as fast as possible to prevent the problem from worsening. Depending on the severity of the emergency, the repair team may ask you to pay more than what they would ask in a regular case.
Odor and Mold Removal
As we mentioned, water damage can rot wood and other materials on your property, which causes odors and mold growth.
It’s challenging to stay in a place where you smell the odor of rotten wood, so you will have to get rid of it as soon as possible. Water damage restoration businesses can take care of that. Most businesses use vinegar, baking soda, and hot water to remove odors.
Carpet Restoration. Cleaning and Deodorization
Similar to what happens to wood and other house materials, water damage can damage your carpet. Despite not many people knowing that water damage restoration companies offer cleaning services, they can benefit from that to save money on replacements.
Cleaning and deodorizing carpets are also part of the cleanup process.
How Long Does It Take to Dry Out Water Damage?
The truth is that everything depends on the location of the water damage and how much the water damage restoration company you hire monitors the whole process. If you take it room-to-room, the drying time should be three days.
Nonetheless, wider areas with more severe problems have a higher drying time. As we mentioned before, the company you hire needs to monitor the drying process closely to ensure there aren’t any other water damage problems in the future.
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Can I Fix Water Damage Myself?
One of the main issues of water damage is that people take cleaning it as a home project, which only worsens the whole process. Maybe you can fix small leaks or a problem with your water heater, but more severe problems require professional water damage restoration services.
If you, for example, try to remove all the water in your house yourself, you will see how it goes back since you didn’t address the roots of the problem. Even if you do, professional cleaners inspect your house to know if there are any other issues you should take care of, and you won’t notice those problems by yourself.
We know it may be a nuisance to spend some money on water damage restoration services for something you think you can do yourself, but we recommend you don’t take this as a home project and hire someone to solve the problem. Doing that will save you a lot of money in the future.
On top of all, if the issue is more severe than you thought it would be, you could even get hurt while working. No one wants that, so it’s sometimes better to invest money into water-drying companies.
What Should I Look for in a Water Damage Company?
Hiring a water damage cleanup business after a storm or leak is the best way to prevent other issues, but that doesn’t mean you should pick any water restoration company you find close to your location.
All cleaning companies have a unique service, but all of them should offer some general, fundamental features, so here are some of the most important things you should look for in a water restoration business:
Affordability
You need to look for the cleaning company that best adapts to your budget, so don’t pay for restoration businesses that ask for more money than what the services they offer are worth.
The average cleaning bill you will get is $4,000. If you are lucky, the restoration company you hire will charge you a minimum of $2,500.
Time-Efficiency
Regardless of how well a cleaning company cleans your house, you don’t want to hire a cleaning company that spends weeks getting the project ready.
Even if those companies are close to your location, it’s a nuisance to spend weeks receiving strangers at home, so it’s best to find a business that is way more efficient while working. If you hire a decent company for the matter, it will only take a few days.
Enough Water Removal Services
You may think you are good to go if you find a decent cleaning company close to you that offers affordable rates, but things are not as easy as that. As we mentioned before, all cleaning companies offer unique services, and some of them may not have the same features you need to address the issue at hand.
Call the cleaning company you want to hire to ask them if they can do what you need, or check its website. Regardless, most cleaning companies, whether close or far from your location, offer the same main benefits, so don’t worry about that.
Convenience
Convenience is important when hiring a cleaning company to inspect your house since, even if it offers affordable rates, it will be difficult for that company to get to your house in case of an emergency due to how far it is from you.
The only scenario where hiring a cleaning service far from you is appropriate is one where all the companies close to your location are not efficient enough or too expensive for you to hire them. However, you won’t have any problems with companies far from your location as long there’s no water emergency.
State-Of-The-Art Equipment
Cleaning companies can’t help companies if they don’t use the latest equipment and cleaning products they can find on the market. Although there are more and more advanced cleaning gadgets online yearly, successful businesses get them all to show you they only work with the best products on the market.
It’s not that old equipment won’t help you remove water damage after a storm or anything else mentioned on this list but rather that new releases can do wonders compared to them. Besides, those new products often fix some of the issues previous gadgets offered.
Qualified Team
Using the best and most expensive products on the market is useless if the people using them are not qualified to clean your house and tell you what to do to prevent other issues from happening. Therefore, you should hire companies with qualified, experienced, licensed, and insured workers.
You also need cleaners to clean any part of the process you want for you or your family. We recommend you ask the company you hire to tell you the things you can do from now on to keep those issues from happening again.
Conclusion
Now is ideal for finding the best cleaning company near your location. Why should you contact one of these businesses if you don’t have water damage issues yet? Because that lets you know the company’s services and make the whole hiring process more straightforward the next time, you have a water emergency.
FAQ
Does homeowners insurance cover water damage?
Homeowners’ insurance typically covers water damage caused by sudden, accidental events, such as a burst pipe. It may also provide coverage for repairing or replacing any items that have been damaged or lost due to water damage.
Can I fix the water damage myself?
In some cases, it may be possible to fix the damage yourself. Suppose you have a small amount of water damage from a minor plumbing issue or an appliance malfunction, such as a leaky sink drain, broken washing machine hose, or overflowing toilet tank. In that case, you may be able to take action immediately and repair the issue; you may be able to mop up the affected area and repair any damage yourself. However, if you have extensive water damage—such as a major flood—it’s best to call in a professional water damage restoration company.
