Water Damage Restoration

Follow these steps if the worst does happen and you end up with a burst pipe:

• Use the stopcock to cut off your home’s water supply.
• Drain the water system by turning on cold-water taps and flushing toilets to keep more water from spilling over.
• Move personal possessions away from the flooding and cover your electric main box if it’s anywhere near the problem.
• If the flooding is close to fuse boxes or electrical switches, turn off your electricity at the box.
• Turn off central heating, immersion heaters, and the boiler.
• Drain that system by turning on hot water taps.
• Collect and clear the leaked water with buckets, pans, or any other kind of receptacle.
• Release water from bulging ceilings by standing back and using a long-handled tool.
• Call your insurance company and collect and record as much evidence of the damage as possible.
• Bring in a plumber to repair the broken pipe.

If you have water damage from a flooded basement, you need to get your floor dry with professional water extraction tools. Water mitigation from storms and floods requires an IICRC-certified water restoration company. The presence of water where it doesn’t belong is serious. It can quickly cause water damage, perhaps even to an extent that renders the structure unstable, causing mold growth and mold damage.

Once someone notices water damage occurring in their home, the first thing they need to do is stop the active leaks if possible. Depending on the circumstances, homeowners may be able to accomplish this themselves by shutting off the house’s main water supply or calling an emergency plumber. If you don’t know how to do this, call Five Star now and we can walk you through it.

The next step is to contact water mitigation professionals as quickly as possible. The longer standing water remains in the home, the more extensive and expensive the damage will be. Once the water damage restoration service arrives on the scene, the water mitigation process will begin.

Even an expert can’t determine exactly how to mitigate water damage without conducting a thorough inspection. Our professional team uses special instruments and tools to measure moisture content throughout the home. They poke the instruments into surfaces like floors, baseboards, and ceilings in the affected areas of the structure to get accurate readings. The readings enable the expert to determine if drying equipment is called for as per the Institution of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IIRCC) dry standards that apply in the state where you live.

No phase of the water damage repair and restoration process is more fundamental than getting rid of the standing water. This is accomplished through the use of special pumps and vacuuming equipment.

We prevent further water damage by stopping additional water from getting in where it doesn’t belong. Beyond this, deploying dehumidifiers can help prevent further water damage (like mold growth) while the water mitigation professionals wait for your insurance company to approve the use of drying equipment. Dehumidifiers may be necessary for one night or several.

Once the standing water is gone, it’s time to dry everything out. We use air movers to help with this and may also need to lift up pieces of carpet or concentrate our efforts at certain points to attack the parts of the home that are the wettest. Floor mats help draw moisture out of hardwood floors. It may also be necessary to remove baseboards.

Containment actually happens at the same time as drying. We tape off wet areas to isolate them from the rest of the house. This concentrates heat and suction where it’s needed the most and makes drying occur faster.

Our certified technicians monitor the drying process by checking dehumidifiers’ humidity levels as well as their intake and output temperatures to ensure they aren’t placing wet air back into the home. They also measure the same readings they took during the initial inspection. If the drying process is going well, a comparison of the two sets of readings will show that progress is being made.

Wet personal belongings need to be dried and restored, as well as have all odor eliminated if possible. Our water damage restoration team accomplishes this through the use of special cleaning techniques including antimicrobial applications, industrial air scrubbers, and fogging equipment. It’s common for this to be done offsite, in which case the affected belongings will be inventoried, removed carefully, treated, and returned, all with great care.

Although our expert technicians use state-of-the-art methods and equipment to salvage your possessions, it’s important to be realistic in your expectations. Sometimes materials can’t be saved and need to be replaced instead. Items that may need to be replaced include:

• Walls.
• Floors.
• Ductwork.
• Heating and cooling systems.
• Shelving.
• Drapes.
• Clothing.

Once the home is dry, the drying equipment is removed, and water damage cleanup is considered complete. This, however, doesn’t necessarily mean there’s not more work to be done.

It’s possible that the standing water caused damage that drying and dehumidification couldn’t reverse. If so, it’s at this point that structural repairs get underway. It can be a relatively simple task, for example, simply replacing some drywall panels, or as complicated as rebuilding entire rooms.