I Have Water In My Basement!!!

Unfortunately we hear this phrase all too often.  Believe it is not just the rain around here that causes this wonderful discovery, but it definitely doesn’t help.  Failed water heaters and backed up drains have ruined more than one afternoon around here, so what to do if this happens.  To start, nothing can replace a professional that is trained in water damage restoration but sometimes we need to tackle these problems on our own.

When you find that you have a water problem no matter what the cause, the first step is always to get rid of as much of the standing water as possible.  If you have inches (or feet!!) of water you obviously have a big mess,  but pumps become your friend.  The most common pump we rent out for these applications are submersible electric pumps.  They do a good job of getting rid of most of the water down to a more manageable depth.  Especially the pump we call a puddle sucker which pumps almost down to ground level.

Now we get to play with vacuums, specifically a wet/dry vac.  There are a couple of different options here to help in the drying process.  First the vacuum themselves a standard wet/dry vac works great but only holds about 10 gallons of water, which might be fine for smaller jobs but if things have gone from bad to worse you may need something larger.  The most impressive vac we have for this application is called a de-watering vac.  Sounds cool right!  Well it actually is, it has a pump built into it so it actually pumps out water as you vacuum, so you don’t have to keep emptying the unit.  Now for another cool tool, the water claw!  This is a unit that hooks up to the vacuum, you actually stand on it to help compress the pad under the carpet and get more water out.  You can also use a standard extraction wand to help get that water out of the carpet and the pad.

Now that you are sick of using a vacuum we move onto the drying phase.  To start you are most likely going to either pull all your carpet up to dry it or pull up a section so that a carpet fan can be placed underneath to help lift the carpet and dry the pad.  The pad is the hardest to dry and usually sees the most moisture so drying that pad is very important to preventing mold.  You may have glue down carpet, in which case you may be OK going through the drying process without completely removing it.  Hardwood floors or “floating floors” can be dried, but unfortunately take special drying equipment that we do not carry.  You want to make sure the room is at least 70 degrees or better, if heat is needed I would recommend an indirect diesel heater (heater sits out side and pumps in fresh hot hair while exhaust remains outside)

Time to dry, now we need to bring in plenty of airmovers and dehumidifiers.  One way to look at fans (airmovers) is that they are the muscle behind the operation and the dehumidifiers are great helpers. When you blow air across a wet surface it pulls moisture from that surface and puts it into the air, the dehumidifiers then pull moisture from the air and remove it.  It sounds simple but the mistake most people make is to skimp on the fans.  As I said before, they are the muscle and you can never have too much muscle!  We even offer a discount on fans when you get them in a kit with a dehumidifier (1 dehumidifier and 2  fans).  Also with every dehumidifier and or fan rental we will send you with a free moisture probe rental to help you determine if things are dry enough so that you know when its time to bring back the equipment.  We even offer more advanced moisture meters if specific moisture level readings are needed.

During the drying process it also recommended that an air-scrubber be used, an air scrubber is basically a large HEPA air filter that “scrubs” the air clean.  With all these fans blowing stuff around it can send microscopic particles through the air that may pose as a health risk to the people in the area.  The

This was just a quick overview of the drying process, for more information check out a DriEaz Products, we carry their equipment and they are a local company up in Burlington, Wa.

Give us a call or stop by, we are here to help you.

Aurora Rents
Shoreline   –  206.368.7368
Greenlake  –  206.729.7368
Lake City   –  206.362.7368
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No matter what the project Aurora Rents has the tools you need!