Water is a highly destructive substance, seeping into every crack and hard-to-reach crevice of your home. It saturates and damages every porous thing it comes into contact with – and the longer it’s left, the worse the damage!

Whether due to flooding, hurricanes, storm surges, burst pipes, or simply leaving your tap running, a professional residential water damage restoration company will easily and quickly deal with this disaster.

However, while you wait for your restorers to arrive, there are some things you can do to prevent the water damage from worsening!

Our residential restoration experts recommend that you take the following steps:

#1 Safety First

First things first, safety should be your top priority before diving head first into hazards that may lurk beneath the water.

Cut The Power

Water and electricity are the perfect ingredients for dangerous, even fatal, electrocution. Turn your power off ASAP!

However, if you need to wade through water to do so, do not do it! Even stepping into potentially charged puddles can be dangerous.

In this case, call an electrician immediately before entering your home.

Protect Yourself

Make sure you’re armed with protective gear before walking through your home, like rubber boots and gloves.

From sharp objects to bacteria, sewage, broken glass, and debris, you have no idea what’s hiding beneath the water’s surface.

Protect Your Valuables

If you could cut the power and gear up, you can safely start to save your belongings from worsening water damage.

Remove any rugs, curtains, books, clothing, and other absorbent items sitting in water. You can even lift wooden furniture off of soaked carpeting and insert tin foil underneath to prevent staining.

#2 Contact Your Insurance Company

Your insurance provider will send an adjuster to inspect and assess the damage to determine if your losses are coverable.

While you wait for them to arrive, which can take some time, our restoration experts recommend that you take multiple photos before, during, and after the cleanup to help the adjusters’ assessment.

It’s also advised that you document the value of every single affected item to ensure a successful, stress-free insurance process.

Pro tip: Depending on the cause of water damage, your home insurance policy may not cover it. Luckily, our restoration experts can still help you – click here.

#3 Start Restoring What You Can

If you’d like to start the process yourself, it may be possible.

Get your protective gear on and begin going through the aftermath. Remove any salvageable items and let them dry out in the sun. Discard any items that are damaged beyond repair or no longer safe.

Depending on the severity of the damage, you may need to remove flooring, drywall, and even insulation to prevent the growth of destructive moulds and mildews.

In most cases, however, the water damage is too extensive or expensive to be dealt with by you alone.

You’ll likely have to call a residential water damage restoration company, like Al-Care DKI, to help you – especially if water needs to be extracted!

Our thoroughly trained and IICRC certified technicians will be at your door no matter the hour, armed with extraction pumps, industrial-grade dehumidifiers, and other specialist equipment. With our pack-out services and direct insurance billing, you can rest easy.

Call us now for immediate, expert residential water damage restorations!