Every spring in Minnesota, countless families open their basement doors to see that their home has suddenly gained a new feature: an impromptu indoor swimming pool. Such an amenity would be lovely if it weren’t at the expense of their furniture and their loved ones’ health—if it weren’t a flooded basement, in other words!
Preventing a flooded basement is one thing, but knowing how to act in an emergency is another. Below, Intelligent Design Corporation, your Maple Grove provider of water damage clean-up and more, discusses what to do when disaster strikes.
Assess the Situation’s Safety
Before taking any remedial action, it’s important to thoroughly assess the dangers of taking on the situation. A little water from a burst pipe might not seem so dangerous, but even that can become hazardous in the right conditions—for example, if it comes into contact with electricity.
So how do you know if you’re in immediate danger? Obviously, if you can’t get to your home’s main power source and turn it off, the flood may soak electrical appliances and it may not be safe to even set foot in the water. If the water is coming from a contaminated source—like your toilet—or if you can’t tell where the water is coming from, it’s always safer to keep your family away.
Stop the Water
Once you’ve cut your home’s power and determined the water is clean enough to stand in, you can set to work figuring out the cause. Among the most common during the wintertime are best pipes; as it freezes, water expands, causing a buildup of pressure behind it and consequential breakage. Such a spew can easily be stopped by cutting your water’s main supply line.
More dastardly, however, is the water damage that comes from an actual flooded basement. If your sump pump isn’t working or you’ve suffered soil erosion, meltwater can enter your basement and begin to accumulate. This usually requires calls to multiple pros to fix.
Contact Water Damage Restoration Services
Don’t try to bail your basement out of this one on your own. Not only is doing so manually backbreaking work, but the average homeowner lacks the equipment to do a true water damage repair job. If even trace amounts of the stuff remain, mold can begin to grow in as soon as 24 hours, according to FEMA. Such mold is a health hazard, hence why professional water damage repair services are critical.
Intelligent Design Corporation: Top-Notch Maple Grove Home Restoration
We’re always here when disaster strikes to lend a helping hand. Give our water damage repair team a call now at 763-315-0745.