NIU

water restoration

Posted by Stacy on Sunday, June 22, 2008 6:01 PM

When our house flooded a few years ago we had to have a water restoration service come in and take care of our entire basement. It was ridiculous the amount of damage that was done to the carpets and woodwork. The water restoration company came with these huge vacuum machines and had to suck out the water from the basement. After all of the water was gone (like 3 hours later), we had to have the carpet company people come and tear out our brand new carpet, and then the water restoration company had to come back and clean and sanitize everything the water had touched or covered, this process took about another 2 hours or so. They used another machine that looked like a tiny robot that scanned the floor and basically mopped it. Then people came in and cleaned around the walls and the surfaces the water had gotten too. We thought this process would take a few hours only so we planned on still having people over the next day, but we found out that it would have to sit for 12 hours and that the company would come back the next day to finish the work. So as we called our friends and family (we were having a get together since we had just gotten our basement redone) our basement was airing itself out. The next day two people came back to finish up. They cleaned with this suction-like tool around all of the furniture and used an odor removing cleaner so that the furniture and everything around it wouldn't smell and then finally they put this sealant stuff on so that it would prevent it from molding in the future.

Then we had to have someone come in to look at the foundation because it turns out that when they put the carpet in in the first place, they didn't check the way they were supposed to to take sure the foundation was sturdy. So after the foundation was fixed and got the okay, the carpet people came back and put the carpet in again.

The whole process took about a week and a half. The worst part was that we had just moved in a few months earlier and had gotten the basement finished and put a lot of time and money into it. On the bright side I learned a really good lesson for when I move into my own house when I'm older. Always make sure to check and recheck before doing a big project, like putting new carpet in.