Dealing with water damage can become necessary due to a variety of factors that may cause your house to suffer from water damage. It can be caused by flooded basements, spring rains, or even something as simple as overflowing faucets.
The potential sources of extensive water leakage and damage cannot be counted on your fingertips, folks. Whenever water damage does happen, it can cause a plethora of problems. It makes for one of the most stressful situations for homeowners. Here are the 5 steps that you should take when you are dealing with water damage.
Steps in Dealing with Water Damage at Home
1. Shut Down the Electrical Supply
Even if you have replacement coverage for your home, you actually may only have “actual cash value” for the personal items that were lost. When you call your insurance company, your agent should notify you about this and suggest buying an endorsement so that your belongings will be covered under a replacement policy.
2. Find and Stop Water Source
The next step that you need to take when dealing with water damage is to figure out where all the water is coming from and stop it. Once you figure out the source of the problem, try to minimize the water coming into your home. If it is an overflowing faucet, you can just turn it off but if there’s a broken pipe or something worse, you might just want to shut off the water supply to your home. It always helps to call in a plumber for such a situation.
You might be able to clean up and dry out some of the areas that have been affected by the water damage. The problem is the larger areas. Wooden flooring, carpets, drywalls, linoleum, and anything that is below the water-damaged area are going to need professionals to clean up and dry out.
3. Call Your Insurance Company and Professional Restoration Company
Immediately after you’ve stopped further water from coming in, you should make it a point to make two very important phone calls. The first call should be to a professional water damage restoration company. If your home is in the Temecula Valley, Corona or Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange County, Inland Empire, or San Diego, you sure are in luck. Contact the professionals from Superior Restore and you can rest assured that you will get the fastest possible response to have the water damage problem dealt with. The faster the restoration work is done, the lesser the damage incurred will be.
The second phone call you need to make is to your insurance company. While you wait for the technicians from Superior Restore to come in, call the insurance company and notify them of the situation.
4. Document Water Damaged Areas
Once you get off the phone, take pictures of all the areas that have been affected by the water damage. This also needs to be done immediately so that you and your water company can easily walk through the process of your insurance claim. If it is possible, take pictures of the place where the water was coming in from. Take pictures of everything affected by the water damage, including ceilings, walls, furniture, carpets, electronics, and any other items that you want to have documented for your insurance claim.
5. Remove Movable Items
The first four steps need to be done in that order and as quickly as possible. After that, you need to remove any and all items from the affected area that you can move. Clothes, furniture, and any other items will make it possible to help the technicians deal with the damage easily. Remember that items do become heavier when they’re wet so don’t put in too much effort if something is too heavy for you to remove. The technicians from Superior Restore will handle it.
Final Thoughts
Now that all of this is done, just allow the water damage restoration professionals to do their job and clean up the house. Aid them in any way that you feel is necessary. It helps if you can remove as much water as you can before they arrive but rest assured that the technicians from Superior Restore will do a good job.
