Water damage restoration: assessing damage to your home

Water damage can occur in a home or business for a variety of reasons, such as a leaky roof, broken pipes, a flood, or even as part of an effort to put out a fire. However, once your home or business incurs water damage, regardless of the source, you must act quickly to control and contain the damage.

Water damage restoration is performed by professional companies with the aim of restoring the property to its original condition, without damage. The company will go in, assess the damage and what was affected, and assign a value to your loss and its service to restore your property.

Your water restoration company will determine what category of water damage you have on a scale of one to four. Level one damage is minor water damage in an area or room where the carpet is not saturated. Level two damage generally involves at least one entire room with saturated, wall-absorbing carpet 12 to 24 inches. Level three water damage generally involves overhead damage, such as a leaky ceiling and a crowded room. Level four is the highest damage number and is reserved for deep saturation, like a Venice.

In addition to determining the level of damage to your home, the water damage restoration team will also need to determine the level of water contamination. Level one water pollution, for example, is classified as clean water, like that of a broken water pipe. Level two water pollution may contain some pollutants that can cause illness if ingested and considered gray water. This may be due to a washing machine overflow, a dishwasher overflow or a toilet overflow that does not contain feces, but may contain urine, for example. Level three is considered black water and is considered the most unsanitary. This can come from a toilet bowl filled with feces, sewage spills, or flooding from a river or canal, for example. Black water is considered unhealthy and has the potential to cause illness or death if ingested. Standing water can also fall into this category, regardless of the source.

Once these assessments are completed, your water damage restoration team will work to remove the water. This may require pumping standing water out of the house and sucking water out of the carpet and floor. The next step will be to remove any dry wall that has wick and potentially remove and replace the insulation and structural beams if they are damaged. The floor may need to be removed to dry or replaced depending on the type of water contamination that has occurred.

Once the company dries, deodorizes, and disinfects, it will leave its equipment in place for a few days to continue drying the house and returning the temperature and humidity levels to normal. After two or three days they will re-evaluate the house. If you have reached dryness prior to water damage, the equipment is removed and your home is restored.