Water damage is often unexpected, making it incredibly devastating to your home and everyone inside it. A natural disaster, burst pipe in the basement, sewage backup, or several other unknown problems can cause floods that carry water at high pressure and may consist of dangerous contaminants. When the bathtub overflows and water pours onto your couch through the ceiling, or the basement becomes your new indoor pool, you must learn how to assess the situation quickly and take care of it immediately to prevent further damage.
Consult Your Homeowner’s Insurance Policy
Before you do anything to get the water cleaned up or you try to move anything, call your insurance company and find out what you need to do to file a claim. It’s possible that you’ll need to photograph the incident yourself or have the insurance company come out to do it before you can file the claim that will pay for your cleanup and repair. Without that claim, you may not be able to pay for damage. The insurance company may have guidelines about which approved professionals can handle the problem. Failure to comply with these rules could result in you not getting any money for your claim.
Observe Safety Precautions
Contain the damage by closing doors, creating barriers, or doing whatever you can to keep water from flowing out into other parts of your house. Be careful, though, that you don’t move anything that could fall on you, step into contaminated floods, or attempt to work with fixtures and piping as these things could cause serious injury to yourself or anyone around you.
Once the damage is contained, keep children, pets, and everyone else away from it until the professionals can get there to help you. DO NOT try to handle this problem on your own. The tools required to fix this damage are very expensive even to rent, and they are not very easy to operate. Attempting to do this on your own might mean even more damage to you home as well as bodily injury to yourself.
Find a Professional
The professional that you hire will largely depend on the services that you need. Simple water removal could be less expensive and may require a professional company that provides fewer services. However, if you have water damage from sewer backup or a natural disaster that has led to contaminants taking over your house, you may need an extensive array of services. You might need a professional who can offer everything instead of having to go to several different companies to get your damage fully restored.
Make Sure the Problem is Completely Resolved
Cleaning up water, waste, and contaminants is not the end of restoring your water damage. You need to also make sure that everything that was affected is dried completely. If damp conditions remain, your home can become a breeding ground for mold and fungi that cause other types of damage later down the line. Your water damage restoration service may also provide drying services, but if they don’t you can use a wet/dry vacuum to ensure that the problem is fully resolved.
