The Ways That Water Damages Your Home Over Time | SERVPRO® of Cedar Mill/Oak Hills

5/6/2022 (Permalink)

SERVPRO of Cedar Mill/Oak Hills is your 24/7 water restoration expert. Call us right away if you need immediate service.

Home maintenance should be a regular occurrence for everyone, or at the very least a routine inspection. However, many people overlook the warning signs of water damage because it seems like a very minor issue.

Anything from leaky faucets to bubbling paint in your bathroom or shower can indicate that you have water actively soaking into your home’s structure. It may seem absurd, but the average household leak can waste up to 10,000 gallons of water in a year.

We all know that water moves fast, but in Cedar Mill and the Beaverton area where we see a yearly average of over 50 inches of rainfall, the risks are even greater. Leaks in your faucets, walls or roofs will cause water to soak into any soft surface that it touches.

Here’s what you should know about a typical timeline of water damage:

In the First 24 Hours

Being a homeowner is wonderful, but there are a lot of risks associated with this achievement as well. In fact, there is a one in four chance of facing flood damage in your home over a 30-year period in a high-risk area. So, knowing how to proceed when it does happen is critical.

The most important timeframe by far is the first 24 to 48 hours. This period can either make or break your hopes of restoration, because of how vulnerable many items in your home are.

Whether it’s furniture with fabric coverings, carpets, rugs or wooden structures, they will all soak through and/or swell from the moisture. It’s best to keep any important documents or personal artifacts in a waterproof container, but if these items do encounter water, you have to act fast.

Our SERVPRO experts focus on restoring your items rather than simply replacing them. This strategy allows you to save money while keeping your valuable items preserved.

Within the First Week

Once the initial 24-hour mark has passed, water damage really begins to grow exponentially. At this point, furniture and wood structures have fully absorbed water and begin to lose structural integrity rapidly. Your drywall, insulation, and flooring can support fast mold growth, and the home will develop an odor even faster.

Metal surfaces that have been exposed to water for this long will begin to oxidize and corrode or rust. This can ruin key pieces to the structure of your home and increase the pressure put on your walls and floors.

After One Week

When water is left to sit for an extended period of time, the damage is often catastrophic and potentially irreversible. Your home’s structure will have likely suffered major damage requiring expensive renovations and teams of people to rebuild.

If at all possible, avoid stagnant water in your home for this long, or the damage may be too far gone.

How SERVPRO Will Help

We begin our SERVPRO restoration procedure with an initial call, ideally inside the 24-hour mark. Once we have set up a time and gained the necessary information, we will begin service with a complete extraction of water. Our specialized equipment can even remove water that you can’t see.

We prefer to thoroughly remove any standing or soaked-in water to prevent moisture from spreading further and to speed up the drying process.

Odds are that many items in your home like furniture, flooring, fabrics and personal belongings will be very dirty and require deep cleaning. We will also ensure that everything is sanitized and deodorized properly to help you preserve your things.

However, these initial steps are just the beginning. If your home has sustained serious structural damage, it may require large-scale construction work to restore it to preloss condition. When you address the problem quickly, this could be minor repairs, but if the problem is widespread, you may have to rebuild entire sections.

At SERVPRO, we are able to simplify the process of restoration to help ease the stress. We take care of the damage mitigation and the rebuilding so that your cleanup and restoration stays on schedule and is done correctly.

SERVPRO will keep you up to date on every step and have you back in your home or business in no time.

Regardless of the type of water damage sustained, SERVPRO has the tools and teams to help your home or business recover. Contact us ²⁴⁄₇ when you need a dependable team to help you recover.