One of our most recent water damage restoration jobs is a classic example of something we come across so often in the restoration industry: water damage that leads to a severe black mold problem. And this mold problem could have been completely avoided had the clients called us for water mitigation and dry out services.
The clients, Jill and Mike, had recently sold their home and are in the process of building a new home. In the interim, they found a home to rent. Upon moving in, they placed a lot of their boxes in the basement for storage. Once moved in, Jill and Mike didn’t have any need to venture back into the basement. About two months later, and coincidentally after a lot of heavy rain storms, Jill needed to get something from one of the boxes in the basement. Upon heading into the basement, she was horrified at what she saw!
“There was over an inch of water covering the entire basement floor,” Jill told us, “I was completely mortified.”
All of their boxes were sitting in over an inch of standing water. The worst part was that neither Jill nor Mike knew for exactly how long.
“We had been experiencing a few weeks of serious rain so I am not exactly sure when the basement flood would have occurred,” Mike explained.
Jill and Mike proceeded to take the boxes out of the water and move them to one area of the basement that wasn’t affected by the flood damage. Regarding the remaining water, they left it because they assumed it would seep back into the ground.
“The basement floor is just a concrete slab so we though it would be okay to just let it figure its way out,” Jill told us.
“Interestingly enough, we found a hole dug out for a sump pump. The cap was on it but there was no sump pump. This obviously alerted us to the fact that the landlord/home owner of our rental property must have known there would be flood and water issues in the basement. But why were we not told of it and why was there no sump pump?” Mike explained.
Read the rest of: Basement Flood Damage
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