So, we just discovered our hot water heater is busted and leaked out all over the unfinished area of our basement.
Service company will be coming tomorrow. In the meantime, we need to clean up all the soaked stuff to avoid mildew/mold problems.
Good news - it confined itself to the unfinished area and there is now wetness in the finished area.
Bad news - we had plenty of crap down there that is now wet and needs to be thrown out.
Because I’m brain dead after being on 7 hours of Zoom meetings today, if you have any suggestions and tips, let me know.
My plan is to just toss anything wet or damp into a heap in the backyard tonight and then we can haul it to the transfer station tomorrow. And try to mop up as much as the water as possible to avoid mold/mildew.
Am I missing any steps we should take? Thanks in advance.
So sorry, @doschicos! When this happened to us, we used our shopvac to vacuum up the water. Many of them are wet/dry. If yours is, just dump out whatever dry stuff you might have in it first.
Just asked my husband what else we did, since I’ve pushed it far to the back of my mind. If you haven’t already done it, shut off the water supply to the heater. (But I bet you already have.)
You might want to call a company that specializes it taking care of drying out things. They usually bring in the huge fans and they run for as long as it takes to dry everything out - especially if your finished side is carpeted. Look closely at the drywall, too (if you have that in your basement, as the water can get into it.)
My mom’s new dishwasher was installed incorrectly and slow leaked for weeks underneath all the hardwood in her kitchen, living room and dining room (and seeped down the walls into the apartment below hers.) These huge fans were run for at least a week 27/7. I happened to be going down that week to visit and we had to hang out in her bedroom, the whole time, to be away from the noise.
Remove wet all stuff and do just as you suggested - pile and deal with it later.
Mop up all water you can possibly mop up.
Get every fan in the house and get them going (if this basement has a window, open it for better air exchange).
So sorry you have to deal with this late at night. Ugh!!
Unfortunately we don’t have a wet vac. Husband says he’ll mop once we move the stuff out of the way which has soaked up a good deal of the water. Small puddle in one area only but some saturated stuff. Unfortunately, a lot of my artsy kids art work.
I’ll ask him if he turned off the water.
I don’t think we even have fans. We have central air so never had a need for them.
We do have windows to leave open but currently in the 40s and getting down to the 30s tonight so I’m not sure if that will help or make it worse due to dew points.
Fortunately, I haven’t seen any drywall damage yet. The side of the basement it seemed to hit is all foundation walls and the water drained in that direction.
Thanks again for all the advice.
Sucks even more to have it happen because of course we’ve been extra careful to isolate due to my health related risks re: Covid-19. At least the service guy won’t need to visit the main part of the house.
If you’re able to get your hands on one, a portable dehumidifier has made a huge difference in our basement. It helped dry up the water that had soaked into our concrete floor from our Christmas-week-with-company boiler leak.
I hear you re worries from people coming into the house. Aren’t bulkheads / separate entrances grand?
I take that back about the drywall. There is a 10 foot stretch that is damp along the bottom 3 or so inches. We have a space heater that we put there pointing to that area right now. Hopefully that will help.
Is it possible that the drywall will be okay? Or will it definitely need to be removed.
Spouse keeps saying some items are fine. I keep feeling stuff he says is fine and it feels damp to me and I tell him we need to put it outside. He’s getting irritated.
Things happen at inappropriate times, don’t they? Not that this stuff is appropriate anytime.
Walkout lower level fortunately so it sure makes hauling out the wet/damp crap easier but my back is already hurting so popped two Aleve and taking this small break.
I’d bet it is covered (damage) but I’m hoping there isn’t much damage. Seems minimal. I can’t imagine they’d cover the water heater. That’s on us. Crap happens. Fortunately, we’re in a situation where it’s not a crisis for us and for that we are fortunate.
The kiddo’s artwork makes me sad. And we have 2 boxes of photos that got damp on the bottom. Trying to salvage the majority of them but had to toss a few.
What a pain to have to deal with this now! So sorry.
There’s a local appliance/equipment rental near us where we were able to rent one of those big fans when we’ve had a leaky pipe behind the wall and later, a broken hot water heater. Cost is about $20/day. Was able to save a lot of time and aggravation. The fans work well and kept us from having to replace drywall that was slightly damp. If you can’t rent one, ask the plumber to bring one. They are noisy, but it was the basement and I didn’t care.
The saving grace from my perspective is that several of DH’s boxes of COLLEGE notebooks were soaked and after 35 years of moving those boxes because he never had time to sort through them, they went to the transfer station.
I’m paranoid about photos and kids’ artwork, so I keep them off the floor. I got a couple of pallets and I store fabric containers and cardboard boxes on them. One of these days (though, it would seem, not during this pandemic), I will sort, toss and scan. Mask making has taken over my cleaning plans – though if I’m housebound through the summer, I may yet get to this!
Well, we’re done with moving crap out and mopping up. Could have been much worse but thanks all for the advice and reading my venting and angst. It was an exhausting day anyway so it was helpful to have a sounding board here.
Fortunately most of our stuff was off the floor on racks along another wall but of course the water didn’t go there. So damage was minimal. Not sure why the ruined stuff wasn’t but oh, well.
We’ll leave the space heater on for now and the HVAC/plumbing company will send someone tomorrow.
Thanks for the fan rental suggestion @CountingDown. If things aren’t dried out in the AM, we’ll look into that or have the guy bring a fan for us.
So sorry. What an awful thing to happen at this time.
We had a broken hot water pipe in the wall (water heater is in the garage) that was slowly leaking for days. We had water damage in the wall, the sub-flooring and the crawl space - none of it visible or obvious till the wall was opened.
As it almost always happens to us, it was on a Sunday afternoon so no one was able to come immediately. The next day we had a plumber fix the pipe.
He recommended a local restoration firm (similar to ServPro) that came immediately and brought the heavy industrial fans to dry the water soaked sub-structure.
We had fans inside the house, under the house and in the garage. We had to replace our flooring and redo one wall of the garage, so it ended up being a big ticket job. All costs covered by the home insurance.
The noise from the fans was terrible but the results worth it. No mold growth.
I hope you’re right about your damage estimation being minimal but to be cautious I would advise to have someone come by and check there isn’t any hidden damage.
We’ll definitely ask the HVAC guy his opinion. We have a great company we use for all these systems and I’m sure they have more knowledge than we do. If he is at all concerned, we’ll take the extra steps. Definitely don’t want mold!
