When you first discover a flood, especially a basement flood, your first instinct is to panic. However, taking calm, quick, and decisive action can help reduce your stress and the overall damage. Let’s walk through exactly what you need to do.
Cut the power first, no exceptions
Before you go into the basement, locate your electrical panel and turn off the circuit breaker for the entire basement. If the panel is in a wet or flooded area, do not touch it – get a qualified electrician out before entering. Water and live electrical current are potentially deadly, and standing water can conduct electricity across an entire floor with no visible signs. This is not a safety precaution to ignore for expediency’s sake.
Confirm the power is off, then put on rubber boots, gloves, and eye protection. Sewage, chemicals from stored items, and other hazards could be in the water. Assume it is dangerous until you can prove it is not.
Identify your water source before you touch anything
The cleaning method you should use depends entirely on what the source of the water is. Water is broken down into three categories:
Category 1: Clean water. This is water from a broken clean water supply line or faucet which is safe to drink or wash with.
Category 2: Gray water. This is water that is discharged from a major appliance (e.g., dishwasher or washing machine) or a sump pump which may contain some contaminants but is largely safe to handle.
Category 3: Black water. This is the water that actually stops everyone from being a DIY flood recovery wannabe. It’s grossly contaminated. It could come from the sewage pipe, a toilet overflow with feces, or a flood that has grown and has become visibly contaminated plus likely inundated with microbial growth. If you see sewage, smell sewage, or even suspect sewage: stop. Everyone leaves. Call for professional help.
Extract standing water as fast as possible
Just one inch of floodwater in a home can cause a great deal of damage, when it’s left to sit. But that’s when extraction is delayed. The game plan is to get the water out within 24 hours.
For standing water in a depth greater than two inches, you’ll want a submersible pump. Let it run and, for goodness sake, discharge it far from the foundation so the water doesn’t flow right back in. Once your water level is at its shallowest, use a wet-dry vacuum to suck up the rest. Start at the perimeter and work your way to the drain or center.
If it’s muggy outdoors, keep the windows closed during extraction. You’re trying to remove water, not add moisture.
Dry aggressively and track your humidity
Once you’ve gotten the standing water out, you’re in the homestretch, but this is the most critical part to get right. Wet concrete, wet drywall, and wet insulation keep the relative humidity in the area very high – in that situation, even the wood framing can be wet. Mold feeds on any of these materials, and in some cases can begin digesting them within a week. For homeowners dealing with significant flooding or contamination, Water damage restoration Denver, CO professionals carry the equipment and certifications to handle structural drying and mold remediation safely – but if you’re going the DIY route, you need effective drying to start the same day the water is gone.
“Drying” is done with industrial-grade dehumidifiers and high-velocity air movers. You need to rent these if at all possible – a standard box fan doesn’t move nearly enough air to effectively dry out building materials. You will be amazed at times by the volume of water these machines will pull from the structure – and that’s the water you want to remove because when it’s gone, mold can’t grow. Run them continuously – and I mean 24/7 – until everything is dry. Test with a meter – you want to be below 50%, which is the level where mold spores stop germinating.
Leave all your interior doors open so that air can circulate, and prop open the wall cavities and bottom plate cavities as necessary so that air can reach the framing.
Document everything before you discard it
Take photos and videos of the damage before you throw anything away. Go from room to room and cover each wall, floor, and damaged item. Your chances of being paid for something you dispose of improve dramatically with thorough documentation.
Check your homeowner’s insurance coverage: Flood damage is not only not required to be covered by your homeowner’s insurance, your homeowners policy often physically can’t cover it. Sewage backup is often a separate additional rider. Find out what you’re entitled to now, not after you’ve hauled everything to the curb.
As a general rule: concrete, metal, and solid wood framing can usually be dried and saved as long as they haven’t been structurally compromised. Carpet, carpet padding, drywall, insulation, and particle board cannot. Porous materials can’t be cleaned adequately after exposure to sewage and dirty floodwater, and shouldn’t be kept in your home. Just bag and trash them.
Recognize when to hand it off
Certain basement floods may be something you can address yourself or one that a DIY-inclined neighbor or coworker can help you bail out from, sweep up after, and place fans in the windows to manage the resulting mildew. Many others are a glug or a flush away from the risk that an entire room won’t be fully functional again for a year or more.
If you see sagging in support beams or obvious warping in subfloor panels, you need professional help. Those items are either a high risk of collapse or require meticulous attention to interstitial drying – room air whistling through cracks in the concrete isn’t good enough. The first three days are critical to prevent mold, and mechanical drying is necessary to address more than what soaks up on the surface and gravity-drains downward. Closets and wall cavities need to be opened, insulation often removed or replaced, subflooring pulled, and perhaps even part of a wall or ceiling stud replacement is necessary. You just can’t save any areas that get heavily waterlogged and mold quickly. They’re gone.
Getting water out fast is the whole game. Everything after that – the drying, the sorting, the documentation – builds on that first window. Miss it, and the secondary damage often costs more than the original flood.