house flooded - what to do first?

[Gulfcoastin]

In for this. Had a copper pipe bust and called insurance today. Ceiling fell in and all. Pretty much flooded 4 rooms.

[mavrick]

I had to gut the bottom floor of my house, rip all carpet up on both floors. Up stairs we had to rip a vanity out, take base boards up and doors then cut dry wall up 2 feet. It took 4 days to gut the house. I rented a roll off open top dumpster. I then rented dehumidifiers from home depot and ran them along with fans 2 weeks. Then did 4 bleach/water treatments before we started the rebuild.

Why would you do this? The water should have never got to the insulation or soak the drywall where you can’t dry it out.

OP get a bunch of cheap fans, order a couple of self dumping dehumidifiers and let them work. You can buy a cheap moisture meter.

[RRagan83]

Why would you do this? The water should have never got to the insulation or soak the drywall where you can’t dry it out.

OP get a bunch of cheap fans, order a couple of self dumping dehumidifiers and let them work. You can buy a cheap moisture meter.

You would be surprised what water will do while your on vacation for 2 weeks and you come home to water running out your front door, ceilings completely dropped to the floor, and water wicked two feet up and that was the walls that didn’t get it that bad. Believe me man we didn’t do all of the above for the fun of it. Our house was not inhabitable. A couple cheap fans would have not done it here.

[Yak’n Aggie]

Serve pro will use up all your insurance money. Rent equipment and do it yourself

2nd if you have the time and effort

[kmitchl]

We were flooded twice in Katy. The first time we paid Servpro to do the initial mitigation. Spent a lot of money with them and they tore out all the lower cabinets on the bottom floor. Next time we tore out the drywall, drilled large holes in the cabinet kick boards, and knocked out the drywall in the back of the cabinets and hired a company to bring in dehumidifiers to dry everything out. Much better solution the Servpro or Blackmon Mooring. Spry down with a strong bleach solution to kill the mold. There is a product called Sporocdin available through Amazon which is what the pros use to treat mold after a flood. Take more pictures than you ever think you will need. Good luck.