What is flood damage repairs exactly?  Most people would have a mental image of the Mississippi river running over its banks and pouring in the basement windows. That is for TV but in real life that type of flood damage is rare. So what do we get around here? That varies from job to job.  Most of these jobs are caused by some sort of basement waterproofing problem. That could be leaky rod holes and wall cracks in concrete walls and water filled cinder blocks. Most of the damage and flood repairs come in finished basements where there was carpet and drywall that got wet.  In these cases we have to dry the place up and replace the carpet (especially if there was carpet pad involved), remove the base trim and doors and casing. Then we rebuild the walls and doors and paint everything and put in new carpet. Lots of times the water does not get deep enough to effect the walls. Carpet with pad is a sure fire way to get a house full of mold so it almost always has to be removed. We have had better luck in this way with glue down carpet, especially some sort of indoor-outdoor carpet.

You can get the same result with a bad sump pump. The thing here is that the water can and many times does get deeper. Flood damage like this can happen to anyone at any time especially when you are gone on vacation, but for right now it is happening to all these abandoned homes all the time. This is a huge problem for people buying these foreclosures as an investment.  The key to fixing this kind of flood damage is speed. Carpet starts getting moldy in only a couple days. Cardboard boxes are the same thing.

Call Bob @ 248 341 3900 for more info.

In the old days before dual systems floods used to be caused by the sewers backing up into the basement. Now that was a disaster. In this type of flood you get the worse of both worlds, raw sewage and mold from everything getting wet. Luckily this sort of flood damage is not gone but getting more and more rare.

A couple of other problems would be leaky hot water tanks. Especially where the whole bottom of the tank blows out all at once. Then there is the broken washing machine water lines and on and on.

There are so many things that can leak and cause problems in a basement that insurance companies don’t like to insure against them.  You pretty much have to buy special flood insurance and special sump pump insurance. It is not extremely expensive but when you need it you can have a huge payoff. These flood damage repairs can get expensive especially in a finished basement.

Call Bob @ 248 341 3900 for more info.