Flood & Water Damage Clean-Up

What to do in the first hour, before anyone gets there

What happens before we arrive makes a real difference to what it costs, and none of it is complicated.

• Stop the water. The mains tap is at the meter, usually in the front garden near the boundary. Turn it clockwise. For a hot water leak there's also an isolation valve at the unit itself.
• Kill the power to the affected area at the switchboard if water is anywhere near power points, downlights or the ceiling. Don't touch a switchboard that's wet, and don't stand in water to do it. If in any doubt, leave it and ring an electrician.
• Get furniture up off wet carpet. Timber and metal legs leach into damp carpet and leave rust and tannin marks that don't come out — that brown ring around a bed leg is permanent. Foil, a takeaway lid or a block of wood under each leg is enough.
• Photograph everything before you move it. Wide shots of each room and close-ups of the damage. This is the evidence for the claim or for the owner, and once it's cleaned up nobody can prove what it looked like.
• Lift what you can. Rugs, boxes on the floor, anything cardboard, and papers. Cardboard wicks water upward fast and mould gets into it before anything else in the room.
• Open windows if it's dry outside, and leave the ducted air off. Running the ducted system pushes damp air through the whole house and into rooms that were fine.
• Don't wait to see if it dries by itself. It's the single most expensive decision people make. Carpet that feels dry on top can be sitting on saturated underlay.

Where the water actually goes

The visible wet patch is rarely the extent of it, which is why a job that looks small on the phone can be bigger on the walkthrough.

• Underlay holds far more water than the carpet above it and dries far slower. A carpet that feels dry underfoot is not evidence of anything.
• Plasterboard wicks upward from the bottom plate. You'll often see the paint bubble or the sheet go soft along the bottom 100 to 300mm well after the event.
• Wall cavities and insulation hold moisture against the framing with no airflow. This is where a smell comes from weeks later when everything else looks fine.
• Kick boards and the bases of vanities and kitchen cabinets are usually particleboard. Once it swells it doesn't go back, it crumbles.
• Under vinyl, laminate and floating floors, water spreads sideways with nowhere to evaporate. Floating floors cup and lift at the joins and generally need to come up.
• Subfloor, on a timber-framed house. Water that goes through the floor sits underneath in the dirt or on the sarking and keeps the whole floor damp from below.

The mould question

Mould needs moisture, a food source and time. In a Sydney summer the time part is about 24 to 48 hours, and gyprock, timber, dust and carpet backing supply everything else it wants. This is the whole reason speed matters — not the water itself, but what grows in it.

Proper drying is the prevention, and there's no shortcut. Surface mould on tile, paint or a hard surface can be cleaned and treated. Mould that's got into the paper facing of plasterboard, into insulation, or through a carpet's backing can't be cleaned back to safe, and that section comes out and gets replaced. Anyone who tells you they can spray a mouldy wall cavity and call it done is selling you a problem for later.

If anyone in the property has asthma, a respiratory condition or a compromised immune system, say so early. It changes how carefully the affected material gets contained and removed, and in some cases it's a reason to bring in a specialist rather than us.

The repairs afterwards — the part we do

Once the property is dry, this is the work that turns a dried-out house back into a finished one. It's our own crew and it's scoped and priced as one job.

• Water-damaged plasterboard cut back to sound sheet, replaced, set and sanded ready for paint
• Cornice replaced where a ceiling has been affected
• Skirtings, architraves and door jambs removed and replaced where they've swollen or delaminated
• Doors that have swollen and no longer close, eased or replaced
• Kitchen and vanity kick boards and cabinet bases replaced
• Timber, laminate and vinyl flooring lifted, and new flooring supplied and laid
• Carpet and spot cleaning where suitable after drying. Carpet repairs, re-laying and stretching are not offered.
• Repainting, cut in to a sensible break line so the repair doesn't sit as an obvious patch

Where something needs a licensed trade, it goes to one. A leaking pipe is a plumber's job, and anything that's been sitting near live wiring gets checked by a sparky before we close a wall back up. We'll organise them or hand it to you, whichever you prefer.

Insurance, honestly

Most water damage jobs have an insurer somewhere behind them, so it's worth knowing what we do and don't do there.

We photograph and document as we go, and we'll give you an itemised scope in writing that's set out the way an assessor expects to read it. Plenty of our clients forward it straight through. What we don't do is deal with the insurer on your behalf, argue a claim, or supply the moisture readings and certified drying logs that a large claim needs. That's a certified restoration company's job and they're set up for it.

In practice the split is fairly simple. Small to medium jobs, a burst hose, an overflowed washing machine, a leak that's damaged one or two rooms — we handle end to end. A whole-house flood, a ceiling collapse, or contaminated water — ring your insurer first and let them appoint the restorer. We're happy to come back and do the make-good afterwards if their scope doesn't cover it, and that happens more often than you'd think.