Have you become the unlucky victim of flooding? Maybe a broken pipe or an overflowing river, flooding brings contaminated particles in your home and can be a significant risk to your house’s structure and your family’s health. Bad things happen, but you must learn how to deal with them efficiently.
In this post, learn how to start flood clean-up and water damage restoration in a safe and well-planned manner.
Be Careful While Entering your house:
Make sure the main power is switched off else there are high chances of electrocution. Flooding from rivers or streams can bring reptiles and small animals inside your home. So, pay extra attention when you enter and then carefully assess the situation.
Wear protective gear:
In the case of severe flooding, you must wear an organic vapour respirator, rubber gloves, protective eye gear and proper clothes. Then begin with opening windows and doors of your house to let the air inside.
Throw away the porous items:
If you’re dealing with high level of contamination which happens because of flood or sewage water, try to get rid of the porous materials like mattresses, carpets, rugs, pillows and drywall. Or just keep them in a side to deal with them later.
Start by cleaning the fabrics:
Once the water level clears off, you must begin with removing possible contaminants. The wet clothes and fabrics must be machine washed for 10 minutes in detergent and hot water. It usually removes all the contaminants and stains.
Assess what needs to be removed:
Apart from the porous items which should ideally be removed, anything that is below 15-20 inches of flood water level must be cleared off. Even the flooring can have pockets of saturation underneath it. Therefore, you would need to go deep with cleaning and water damage restoration here.
Clean and clear:
If you’re dealing with highly contaminant water aka flood or sewage water, it is important first to clean off the exposed durable materials through pressure washing. Then use disinfectant. A trained water damage restoration professional may be required for this purpose.
Prevent mold growth:
People often get fooled by this for it usually takes a day to appear. Be ready for it and take appropriate actions to prevent it even if there aren’t any visible signs of mold growth around your place at present. Keep the entire place well ventilated. Maybe use a fan and dry everything as soon as possible.
Dry well:
Don’t cover anything unless the moisture content falls below 16%. You can measure moisture content through meters which are readily available online, but we would recommend you to hire a professional for this purpose.
Call up a water damage restoration service:
By this time, you have safely managed to enter your home, assess the situation and take immediate action to prevent further harm. Now, it’s time to fix everything. And it’s obvious that this task requires a professional service that can provide you adequate workforce to act quickly. Being quick and following a proper strategy is important. Therefore, look for a licensed water damage restoration company immediately.
Water damage is severe. Not only it poses a risk to your building’s structural health but it can also be a health risk for your family. Be careful. Follow the safety procedures mentioned above and take quick action.
