If you start searching the internet for information on flooding and storm damage, you’ll come across many articles discussing what to do if your basement floods. A flooded basement is a serious problem—but if you live in Southern California, it’s not a problem at all. Because you don’t have a basement.
Instead, what our homes have—if they don’t sit directly on a concrete slab—are crawl spaces, a narrow area between the ground floor of a house and the ground itself. If you’ve ever had to enter the crawl space for your house, you know why it’s called that: it’s a tight space that requires moving on your hands and knees to navigate—if you ever need to navigate it.
If your home has a crawl space, it can flood just like a basement and create a serious danger of water damage. This flooding can happen from rainfall, but also because of plumbing leaks—so there’s no time of the year when you’re totally out of danger of flooding in the crawl space.
We’re the local experts for handling water damage in Orange County, CA, and in this post we’ll talk about what to do if you have a flooded crawl space.
Turn off the electricity
Crawl spaces often contain electrical wires (it’s often one of the reasons to have a crawl space). To prevent electrical damage to the house and to yourself, shut off the electricity to your home as soon as you discover flooding in the crawl space.
Access the crawl space to survey the damage
Once the flooding has ended, go down to the crawl space (carefully!) and do a visual inspection. Don’t go too deep into it: use a flashlight to get a sense of what kind of damage the water has done. If you have a sump-pump in place, a good amount of the water will already have been removed, but this doesn’t mean your home has escaped serious damage.
Remove any standing water
If you have a wet/dry vac, this is what you bought it for! Remove as much of the standing water as you can.
Document the damage
This is always a key step after your home has suffered any type of fire or storm damage. Take photos and videos of the damaged area to thoroughly document it. This will be important during the restoration and insurance claims process.
Call us for water damage restoration services
Leaving behind a damp crawl space doesn’t resolve the issue with flooding! Just doing a DIY clean-up with a wet/dry vac isn’t sufficient. Water is insidious and will get into wood, insulation, and other areas. You need our professional services to do a full clean-up, starting with completely drying the area. Otherwise the moisture in the crawl space will lead to mold, creating even more serious damage to your home. We’ll take care of the restoration work necessary to ensure your home still has a solid foundation to sit on and that any other damage is repaired.
For comprehensive home restoration services you can rely on, contact Jarvis Restoration today!