Flooded Basement? Here are some tips...

The Loss Reduction Specialists™


July 26, 2010

There are a lot of people with flooded basements that have no insurance coverage. You can still provide them with some help by passing along these tips:

All of these tips are considered to be opinions from RESTORx Northern Illinois and are the property of RESTORx Northern Illinois. The Insurance Industry has our permission to pass this information along to their Insured as long as it is passed on in its entirety. Sharing of this info to others is prohibited.

Professional Restoration Companies are swamped and will not get to everybody in a timely manner. That means you need to be proactive to minimize property damage.

Do not enter a wet basement if the power is still turned on. Even a very small amount of stray voltage can immediately kill. Damaged property is not worth dying for. Turn off the power main or pull the meter base. If you have rubber insulated boots, wear them.

Consider all water in the basement as toxic. This water could be mixed with sewage, chemicals that were stored and tipped over into the water, chemicals from the ground, and all kinds of other nasty things. Do not put anything into your mouth that you touched with an unsanitized hand. If your eyes or nose starts to water, get out. If your respiratory system feels tight or congested, get out.

Hand sanitizers only work if you follow the label directions. Most labels tell you to rub it for 30 seconds. What they are not telling you, is that if you rub it on for less time, it probably isn’t doing anything except giving you false security.
Turn off the power to the furnace, water heater, freezers, and any other electrical device that is in the water. Many of these items will make it through the flood, however some of the problems will not appear for a few months.

Get personal items out of the water and dry them as much as possible. Irreplaceable things like photos are first. Then go after expensive items such as furniture and clothes. Particle board furniture is probably now junk, so go after solid wood furniture first.

Extract as much water as possible. That means using a wet vac if you have one. Towels work also. Any wet materials you can remove, such as carpeting, will minimize the amount of water that is inside the basement. Put these items in the garage as many of them will be salvageable.

After you have removed as much of the water as possible, run fans to evaporate the water into the air, and then use dehumidifiers to pull the moisture out of the air. If you see condensation on any of the basement surfaces, slow down on the fans and increase the dehumidifier use. Failure to do this could do serious damage to otherwise unaffected areas of the house.

When running your dehumidifier, set the humidistat around 45% to 50% relative humidity. If you do not have a digital readout, set the humidistat around 2/3 or a max. of ¾. Never turn the humidistat 100% open or it will not be effective.

If you smell musty odors, you have mold growth. If you smell dirty sock odors, you have bacterial problems. Either way, malodors are not good. While using disinfectants is never a substitute for remediation, this is a time to use them as it will minimize health problems and buy you time before it gets real ugly. Here are some potentials:
Bleach is not a disinfectant. However, if the surface is clean it works well. Wash the surface first, and then use a mixture of about 1 cup of bleach per gallon of water. Be careful not to get it into your eyes. This would be bad, so wear goggles. Also, bleach can ruin textiles as it can damage colors. Therefore, only use it on items that are not damaged by bleach.
Iodine is similar to bleach in most respects. The differences are: It does not smell bad and actually smells good. It takes only a couple ounces per gallon of water, is very good on bacteria, and the potential damage to textiles is less. The main problem is that you can get an orange color if you over apply the product. See the note in the next paragraph on how to obtain.

Use of a disinfectant is the best thing to do, but the most expensive. Also, many of the good ones are not obtainable by the general public. Anybody can buy Lysol disinfectant or Pine-Sol disinfectant, but remember that it has to be applied heavy enough so that the material stays wet for at least 15 minutes. If you go this route, look for products that actually say “disinfectant” on the label. The disinfectant we use cannot be sold by us for use by a consumer. However, we could make larger quantities available to Agencies to provide samples for their Insured. Due to the high volume of phone calls and traffic at our office from this flood, if you would like more info on this or on iodine call our Marketing Director, Lorrie Gitz, at 815.541.0317.