Water Damage and Flooded Basements in Marietta Roswell

Yep, we occasionally get flooding here in the Marietta and Roswell areas.

Here’s a great article I came across from Des Moines, where they had some of the same problems with basements.

Three nights of heavy rains have been a triple whammy for Des Moines-area basements, many of which have flooded and backed up this week.

Austin Rice, one of the owners of a carpet cleaning service in Clive, said his business had received more than 600 calls this week, and was bringing in workers in Kansas, Missouri and Illinois to help.

Many calls were from people who woke up to flooded basements Monday, cleaned up and then watched them flood again Tuesday and Wednesday.

Brian Burkle, general manager, said his company was also bringing in out-of-state workers to help with a 300-person waiting list, and an “extreme team” to deal with some of the larger structures.

“I feel bad for a lot of people,” he said. “You can’t help everybody, but we’re trying.”

The Home Depot on University Avenue in West Des Moines was running low on small wet/dry vacuums (the kind used to suck water out of flooded basements), though the Carver Ace Hardware still had some.

Area professionals gave the following advice on how to clean, disinfect and repair a flooded home.

• Remove water, dry and clean carpet and walls. Try removing standing water with a wet vac ($30-$150 at hardware stores). If there’s too much water for a wet vac to handle, call a cleaning service – they have powerful truck-mounted units that extract the water. They then remove the carpet pad and use professional-grade fans and dehumidifiers to dry carpet.

Normally, professionals don’t recommend that homeowners pull up wet carpet themselves because the tacks under the carpet can pose a danger. But Rice said that if wet carpet has been sitting for a few days, it’s best to pull up the carpet and remove the soaked pad. If the carpet’s starting to smell, it may need to be trashed as well.

If the walls are wet, workers will have to remove the baseboards and punch holes in the wall so air can get all around to the drywall. Drywall and carpet can be saved if they’re not badly damaged.

A cleaning service can apply an antimicrobial product to disinfect the carpet and prevent molds and fungus from growing. This can be reapplied later if the carpet continues to smell.

“On the average basement, it takes three to four hours with a two- to three-man crew,” Rice said of the cleanup process. “It’s usually dry in three days or less.”

The cost for all of that is $3 to $5 per square foot. For carpet cleaning only, the cost is 20 to 36 cents per square foot.

• What to do if the sewer backs up: Burkle, recommends wearing protective gear (rubber boots and latex gloves) when near the sewage.

Initial cleanup and sewage removal by professionals takes a few hours, but the drying process takes three to five days. Drywall must be sanitized and sealed to kill bacteria.

Altogether the cost is $5 to $7 per square foot; more for after-hours work. Burkle said insurance companies usually require endorsements to pay for sewage backup and sump pump failures.