Drying out your home after a flood or a hurricane is a time consuming task and while you might think that you can just dry everything as fast as possible and fix all the problems, this is not always the case. There are a few things that you need to be aware of when you go to dry out your home after one of these events and they are important to restoring your home to the way that it used to be.
Most of the time you cannot prepare for a flood to come upon your home, but you can do your best to prepare yourself for it mentally. This is done by equipping yourself with the knowledge necessary to dry out and repair the items in your home after the damage has already been done.
Before re-entering the house, you need to make sure that there is no electricity running to it, since there is probably still some standing water inside. This brings along with it a serious risk of electrocution that you need to be aware of. Do not rely on the condition of your neighbor’s electricity to be an indicator of yours. Switch the power off to the entire house before going back in.
Take a video camera and record all the damage. You can also do this with a digital camera or one that takes traditional film, but a video camera is the most recommended method. Make sure you record all the belongings in the house that were damaged and their approximate value, if possible. This will help you out when your insurance claims adjuster comes to assess the damage to your home and decide how much compensation you will receive.
The entire home needs to be dried out as soon as possible, but do not use artificial heat sources such as space heaters or blowers to accomplish this. This will promote buckling or cupping of hardwood floors, if you have them, and may do more harm than good. Open the doors and windows throughout the house. Odds are good that until your home dries out completely, you will not be sleeping there, unless you have second floor that was not affected by the flood.
Look in the attic and see if your insulation has gotten wet. If it is fiberglass and has gotten wet, you will need to replace it. Wet fiberglass insulation is no longer any good.
Jim Corkern is a writer and promoter of quality
New Jersey mold inspections and other states and cities such as
north carolina mold inspections companies across the united states.
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