Why Is It So Important to Respond Quickly to Flood Damage?

A flood damage team is an essential service if ever your home has suffered from serious water damage, but they aren’t miracle workers. Called in too late, and the damage to your floorboards, carpet, plasterboard, and more could be too severe to resolve without costly replacement.

Why is it so important to respond quickly to flood damage? There are a few reasons which we’ll discuss below:

Perhaps the most important reason to respond immediately to flood damage is to prevent the onset of mould. Various types of mould exist, but what’s important to know is that you don’t want any of them in your home. Mould can set into porous surfaces like plasterboard, carpet, and fabric within 24-48 hours after exposure. While it may not always be visible to the naked eye, it is nevertheless a danger that must be eliminated.

Exposure to mould can aggravate asthma and other respiratory illnesses, as well as lead to chronic breathing difficulties, sneezing, coughing, and allergic reactions. Dealing with water damage within the first day of exposure is therefore a must simply to mitigate the risks of mould.

Although mould is a clear and present danger whenever water is permitted to lay stagnant in the home, there may also be a foul odour left behind, even after the water has been absorbed and damage has been mitigated.

If you’ve ever left your laundry in the washing machine overnight and forgot to dry them, you may have noticed a pungent smell that’s pretty tough to get rid of. This type of smell will certainly overpower your home if fabrics and carpeted areas have been soaked and not dealt with right away.

This means you’ll have to purchase odour removers and put up with the nasty smell until you’ve disposed of any rotten or ruined items such as floor mats or sections of carpet.

Lastly, floods that are caused by sewer mains will naturally bring in all sorts of organic waste into the home that you really don’t want. These types of floods will leave a powerful odour as one would expect.

Although the best way to save money as a homeowner is to simply not have the flood happen in the first place, in the real world they do happen even with proper care. If the inevitable does happen, taking action sooner rather than later is a sure way to minimise your expenditures.

Porous surfaces like carpets and plasterboard require more urgent attention than hard, non-porous surfaces, but even these can be permanently damaged if exposed for enough time.

If you wait too long, furniture, carpets, and even hardwood floors can be completely ruined. The cost of replacing all of these items can be quite prohibitive, so any efforts undertaken to reduce the chances of having to replace items is worthy of exploring. There’s no guarantee that a quick response will save each and every item in your home, but at least the chances for irreversible damage are lessened significantly.

The friendly professionals at Floodcare are adept at dealing with flood damage and can have your home and carpeted areas salvaged, repaired, or replaced depending on the extent of the damage. Call us immediately if you’ve experienced a flood in your home.