Steps to Take If Your Home Floods
With hurricane season upon us, many homes across the country are dealing with floods. Rain comes, saturates the ground, and the excess water comes pouring into our homes. Basements can fill up with a large amount of water, destroying appliances, furniture and family treasures alike, and cleanup is not an easy task. If your home has flooded, you may be at a loss as for what to do next. Below are a few steps that you can follow to ensure your home is safe, and that you get it back to living conditions as quickly as possible.
Make Sure Your Family And Home Are Safe
The first thing that you should do is ensure that everyone living in your home is safe. If your home is flooded, and the water continues to pour in, then you will need to get to a safe area. Flooding is dangerous, and you will not want to be in your home if the water levels continue to rise. Once the situation is under control, then you should inspect the home to make sure that everything is safe. If you do not feel comfortable doing this, then you should call an expert to inspect your home for you while you and your family wait safely some place else.
Check Your Insurance
Each person has their own insurance policy when it comes to their home. If your home floods, be sure to know what your plan covers, and what it doesn’t. This will help you to figure out what costs are going to be covered, and what you will need to pay from your pocket. You should also take pictures of everything that was damaged right away, so that you can have some proof for the insurance companies, should you need it.
Save Any Valuables You Can
If your home is safe to be in, then the next thing you should focus on is saving any valuables that you can. One common flooding spot for homes is the basement, and this is where many of us store things like old photo albums and family heirlooms. These are the types of things that cannot be replaced, so if your home is flooding, make an effort to get these things to safety, as long as it does not put you into any danger. While it would be great to save these personal treasures, do not do so at the risk of your own health.
Remove The Water
Before you can begin getting your home back in order, you need to remove the water that currently inhabits it. If there is only a small amount of water, you can try vacuuming it with a wet-dry vacuum, or simply allowing the room to air dry over time. For the times when there is more than an inch or two of water covering the ground, you will need more drastic measures. Get yourself a submersible pump and begin pumping the water outside your home. Be sure to have a long enough hose that the water is directed far from your home, preferably into a nearby storm drain. You don’t want to pump the water on to your lawn, just to have it enter the home again.
Start Your Repairs
Now that the water is out of the way, you can begin focusing on the larger repairs that might be needed. Flooding can destroy flooring, walls, and can mess with the electricity in your home. These repairs could be beyond your skills to fix, in which case you will want to hire some professionals.
An emergency water damage cleanup crew will be able to help you get your home back in order, and get the repair process started as soon as possible.
Replace And Redecorate
With all of the hard work out of the way, you can begin to piece your home back together. Chances are you lost some furniture or appliances in the flood, so you will want to replace those first. After that you can start redecorating any rooms that were damaged, slowly getting your house back to normal. You can even use this opportunity to renovate a room, since you will essentially be starting from scratch.
No one wants their home to flood, but sometimes it is unavoidable. If this happens to you, try to remain calm, and simply follow the steps listed above. It is not a fun process, but if you take it step by step, you will find that it is a little easier to manage, and that your home will eventually be back to normal.