Drying Out Water Damaged Properties

As you can imagine, drying out a home or other building that’s been submerged in water, whether it’s flood water or rain water, can be quite a daunting task. Here we’ll discuss a few different ways to begin the process.

A flood can happen in almost an instant, but drying out a home or other property can take a long time. Depending on the property you’re trying to dry out, using hot air drying techniques may damage the building, especially if it’s a historical one.

Before beginning the drying process, be sure to address the electrical hazard. Make sure all power to your home is completely off. Just because the power is off for all your neighbors, don’t assume that yours is off, too. This could be a very fatal mistake. Not only should you be careful of electrical hazards, but biological ones, as well. Flood waters such as those caused by Hurricane Katrina can be contaminated with human and animal waste, all manner of chemicals, and even cadavers. Protect your eyes, mouth, hands, and wear a respirator. Wash your hands in disinfectant soap after a session of cleaning and again before you eat.

Take pictures of the damage with a camera or if possible, videotape them. This documentation will make it easier when you begin negotiating with your insurance adjuster on what compensation you will be eligible for.

Make any repairs necessary to keep water from re-entering the home. These repairs should only be temporary while you get the majority of the building dried.

Any effort to begin drying out a home is the attic. Any wet insulation should be removed as quickly as possible; it is no longer useful, but it is heavy and holds moisture for quite a long time and will continue to cause damage to wood, metal, and drywall. If anything in the attic is soaked with water, remove it. These waterlogged items are heavy and can cause the ceilings to crack. Fresh air circulating through your home is a good way to begin and if you have any fans, turn them on once you’re confident that you can’t become electrocuted simply by walking around.

Opening the windows throughout the house (as long as it isn’t raining) will help and at this time you should begin to wash down any wooden items in the home in order to remove mud, silt, and other debris.

Dealing With Water Damaged Documents

Marriage, birth, and death certificates are only a few of the hundreds of different important documents and items that we have in our homes that can become damaged by flood waters or other kinds of leaks and most of us don’t know how to safely deal with these items once the damage is already done.

The first thing that you should know is that there isn’t any reason to panic, unless you’ve been away from your home for more than two days. It takes two days for mold to begin to grow on these items, so one of the first things that you should do is make the environment unfriendly to mold. Keep the house around 65 degrees Fahrenheit if you can and reduce the humidity. If there is any standing water still in the house, remove it as quickly as possible. Be careful, however, of any electrical hazards that might still exist and make sure the electricity to the house is off before you go rushing into any soaked areas. The possibility of electrocution is very real if the power isn’t off.

Air circulation in the house should be increased with fans if the air outside isn’t warmer or more humid than the air inside. If there are any emergency repairs that need to be made inside the house to ensure your safety, do them immediately.

The next thing you should do is figure out what documents in your home are going to need to be salvaged. This will include the documents listed above, marriage, birth, and death certificates, along with any insurance papers, divorce papers, and almost any other legal documents you have on hand. If the materials are not completely soaked in water, it’s possible to just air dry them and they will be fine. If they’ve been submerged for long, the best bet is to have them frozen and freeze-dried by a local facility.

Buy some freezer wrap from your local grocery store if they have it and use it to separate documents and books from each other when you pack them into boxes. Remove the most important items (i.e. legal documents, antique books of any value) first and if there are any less important items that you want to save (high school diplomas, anything that’s “one-of-a-kind”, books), remove those second. Don’t pack anything tightly in the freezer paper, just tight enough to keep the items from sticking to each other or to the inside of the box. Label each box with its contents and your contact information and have them transferred to the nearest freeze dry facility.