Water damage within the home can be devastating. Carpets, upholstered furniture, flooring, ceilings, and even wall finishes can all be wrecked by water, not to mention fittings and appliances. For this reason, dealing with water problems in the bathroom, kitchen, or anywhere else in the house can be quite traumatic.
When faced with water problems in your home, it’s crucial to know what to do and how to deal with them effectively.
Apart from flooding caused by excessive rain, the most likely source of water problems in the home is the bathroom and any area with taps and appliances that rely on water to operate (e.g., dishwashers, washing machines, etc.).
Common Causes of Water Problems in the Bathroom
While burst hot water heaters and leaking pipes can create nasty water problems in any bathroom (or kitchen), human error or forgetfulness often ranks as the number one cause!
People often say of boredom, “It’s like watching paint dry.” But it would be just as fitting to say, “It’s like watching a bathtub fill up.” Stop watching, and the paint will dry. Stop watching, and the tub will overflow. It seems to happen in seconds.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?
- Just after you turn on the water in the bathtub, your phone rings. You answer the phone and spend the next 40 minutes chatting. Bathing is the furthest thing from your mind… until you see water everywhere. It is even trickling through a light fitting in the ceiling of the room beneath your bathroom. Worse still, in the basement, water is pouring steadily onto your newly fitted woolen carpet.
- Because you don’t have a separate laundry room, you’ve opted for a twin tub machine to wash your clothes in the main en suite bathroom. However, the machine must be filled manually. The dogs start barking, so you run downstairs to investigate. You don’t see anything at first, so you walk around the garden to ensure there’s no intruder. As you re-enter the house, water is streaming down the passage.
- You love fish and have a large, 240-gallon aquarium in your living room. It takes a while to fill, but you’ve perfected the procedure with a hose attached to a bathroom sink in your basement. You’ve been watching the tank fill for a while (like watching paint dry) when you decide to quickly check some work documents in your home office. When you realize there’s still work to be done, you forget about the fish and get caught up in your tasks. The downside? Within an hour, your office is a potential paddling pool. If you’re lucky, your fish have dived to the bottom of the “pond” and survived, even if the temperature is cooler than usual.
Or maybe your hot water cylinder burst! That’s especially messy, watery damage. In all these instances, you’ll need to take action, clean up, and assess the damage to make sure nothing is beyond repair.
How to Cope with Water Problems
In all instances, Step Number One is to turn off the water — at the mains if necessary — and do an immediate mop-up. The method you use for mopping will depend on the depth of the “flood.” If there’s not much water, old towels work well, as they soak up water faster than an old-fashioned spaghetti mop or even a modern squeegee sponge. If the water is deep, you’ll need buckets or scoops to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Depending on the location of the flooded space, and the circumstances of the flooding, you might be able to siphon the water out of your house using a length of hose.
That will remove the water (or at least most of it), but your home will not be dry immediately. If you have fitted carpets, you can try drying them with fans (even industrial units if necessary), but you may need to lift the carpeting. Worse still, water damage may mean you have to scrap the carpets altogether. Heaters can also be used to dry the wet areas, but you’ll need good air circulation as well.
Once the majority of the water is removed, you need to check where else it has spread. Water has a knack for seeping into cracks and crevices that you might not even know exist. Check under and behind everything possible, and dry all surfaces as best as you can. If the water has reached electrical systems, you MUST switch off the power. If the flood is significant, it’s wise to turn off the electricity as a precaution.
Water and electricity are a dangerous combination. In most cases, the water will dry out, and there won’t be any damage to the electrical system. But this isn’t always the case. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so call in an electrician to inspect the system before you use it again.
Let It Dry Out
Regardless of the cause or effect, at the end of the day, if you’ve had a flood in your home (whether you are guilty or not), one thing you absolutely must do is LET THE WATER DRY OUT. If you don’t, you could face issues ranging from wet electronics to tiles lifting because the cement and grout have expanded.
Another major factor to consider is that wet areas will attract mold, which can be a serious health hazard.
So, if you’ve experienced a flood in your home or have been the victim of one, take every possible step to dry out and stay dry until every fiber of your home is dry too.
