Flooded basement in Colorado, do I need professional remediation?

[mom2akm]

We are in Colorado. My basement was flooded with 1 inch of water on Thursday night and by Saturday morning, we have removed all the water and ripped out all the carpet. So the basement was flooded for 1 1/2 day. The bottom of the dry wall is quiet wet and we are running fans and tried to rent a dehumidifier. Please tell me what else do I need to do?

We got a remediation company to give us a quote, he's from out of state so I'm a little cautious. He quoted me $2100 for cutting 2 feet of dry wall (if they are wet in the insulation), then running the dehumidifier for 2 days and spraying some anti-mold solution. My basement is around 800 square ft with no bedroom. Does that sound like a reasonable quote? He said that's standard for flood insurance which we don't have. Please, any advise will be appreciated.

[WatchingThemGrow]

So sorry about this! Others will have more experience, but it sounds about right to me. Happened across the street, and that's what they did.

[BunnyBee]

You can cut out drywall yourself very cheaply. You may not even need that much cut out, and you live in an otherwise non-humid climate. I would call a contractor and skip the remediation personally. (We did with a much larger flood and a humid climate.) Run any fans you have, run your air conditioner, set out a bucket of Damp Rid or similar and see how quickly it fills up...

[mom2binsd]

Always beware of out of state companies, often in disaster situations scammers show up and take advantage.

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[american_mama]

I believe Fairy on these boards posted about a flooded basement. You could try Pming her. Probably many others have been in your shoes too.

[WatchingThemGrow]

The drywall needs to be cut out 24" higher than the highest water mark. You can go get a moisture meter at Lowes/HD to make sure the boards get dry. I think under 17 is okay but don't quote me. I would insist on lower moisture as we've had mold grow b/c of water leaks - at our new house and some rentals.. You can/should rent industrial dehumidifiers and fans. We were going to rent an air scrubber as well b/c of pollutants in the air (mold, dust, etc.) but we ended up buying one instead. The remediation company said we're on the way to being able to do remediation ourselves... You can get antimicrobial spray at the places where they sell remediation equipment. I actually asked for a sample and used it on the affected areas when we discovered wetness in our new house.

[westwoodmom04]

That's about what we paid, but included removal of disgusting wet carpet. I think you are primarily paying for use of industrial strength dehumidifies and fans, was entirely covered by flood insurance.

[jenmcadams]

We're in CO and luckily our basement has stayed dry this time. We did get water during one of the storms this summer, but it just soaked the carpet (no standing water) and we had a company come out and they vacuumed up the water and ran fans/dehumifiers for 4-5 days (coming in every day or two and checking with moisture meters). Without having to cut away any dry wall, we spent $700 (many of our friends thought initially that seemed like too much, but when we got to keep the equipment going for 5 days and they kept coming out to check, it seemed reasonable).

[brittone2]

We flooded during hurricane Sandy last October. We had fully saturated carpet and padding, and we ripped that out ourselves while waiting for professional remediation. We used a local remediation co., but I think that they hired quick teams of short term workers so they'd have enough people on staff. At first they only removed a bit of drywall, and took moisture readings with a meter. I started reading about graywater remediation and was sure we needed to cut more out. They brushed us off. We figured out from the insurance co. that they get paid a specific rate for remediation of every sq foot of finished basement space. My lesson from that? IMO in our case they wanted to do the least amount of time consuming manual work possible (ie drywall removal), get the fans in place, and move on to the next place to make $$. And again, that was an in-state, local co.

They insisted we didn't need to take out additional drywall, but I pushed back and they cut more. When our insurance adjuster came in from out of state, he looked things over and agreed we should cut out more drywall. At that point, DH just did it. It was worth it for the peace of mind. Make sure you are looking at the guidelines for graywater. The drywall wicks up moisture much further than you would expect.

They did take readings with moisture meters, but IMO when the insurance adjuster is coming in and saying more needs to be cut...I don't know, it make me even more cynical about the remediation co. We were very happy with our insurance adjuster and it was really no muss, no fuss, he cut us a check that day for the full amount we could get with our sump rider (the 5K). I suspect in our case the guys who came in from the remediation co. were mostly short term/temp type hires, and the company was interested in dropping the equipment and running as fast as possible to other places to make $$. They did come back 2x to take quick moisture readings, and I think the fans were here for 3 days total. Again, they were paid to remediate based on sq foot of finished space, so in a disaster situation, there is a lot more money to be made going house to house to house quickly vs. taking their time to properly remediate an individual property. So proceed with caution, look up the graywater guidelines, and be cautious.

Ours was covered due to a rider for sump failure (we didn't have flooding down the walls, therefore it wasn't considered flooding). Bill suggested that in a post to someone else years ago, and I'm really glad we listened to him when we purchased our homeowner's policy on this house. In the end I think the remediation co. billed 2500 or so. Total price for cleanup and repair for us (we pullled out carpet and padding on our own, remediation co. took care of (hahaha, not really) drywall (sprayed anti mold solution, cut some drywall), placed the fans, rechecked, cut some more. We also got money toward some of our contents. We had drywall repaired professionally, replaced carpet and padding, painted the basement ourselves. We ended up with a check from insurance for 5K (which is the max of what our sump rider would cover), and total cost was about 7500 to remediate about 500 sq feet (half of my basement is finished, and half is workshop/unfinished space). DH says they billed out insurance about $5 per sq foot for remediation.

[brittone2]

Back to add that if you aren't using industrial fans, at the very least I'd try to rent or buy those...although it is probably tough to find them in your area right now based off of my experience with Hurricane Sandy. Renting or buying may not be much cheaper in the end than having someone bring some in to remediate though. IME those industrial ones move a LOT more air. Way more than a box fan would, for example. I know we had like 5-7 huge industrial fans going in our space and they had them arranged to form an appropriate air flow pattern.

I'm sorry you are going through this. It is very stressful. If you cut the drywall, you want it out asap, especially with gray water. It will keep wicking and mold can start growing rather quickly.

[brittone2]

WTG, I didn't know you were dealing with this at the new house too. I hope it is going okay.

[ha98ed14]

If you've already pulled up the carpet, that is the hard part. Drywall can be cut out with a box cuuter type thing available at the hardware for $20. Then run the fans for a long time. Get a moisture meter if you want. If it's not covered by insurance, save your $ and pay a drywall/painter to come in and replace the drywall.

[WatchingThemGrow]

WTG, I didn't know you were dealing with this at the new house too. I hope it is going okay. We just had surface water/mold in our new place - had to replace subfloor, built-in desks, pad and carpet. I did call ServPro (disaster company- one guy who checked a home for mold for us) when our neighbor's house flooded. He told me a lot of stuff about remediation. We actually bought an air scrubber since we found stuff in our house and we thought we probably would find more wetness when we rip out the kitchen eventually. It was $1000 and is the price for a month's rental.

[mom2akm]

Thank you for everyone's advice.

We did so much today. We cut down 2 ft of dry wall and then just when we thought we were done, it flooded again! It has been raining on and off the whole day. After using the shop vac for 5 hours to contain the flood, we at last decided to just go to bed, we need to get some rest so that we can start again tomorrow. I have been working on the basement since 4 am. The good news is that it's supposed to be sunny weather on Monday. Let's wait and see.

[jenmcadams]

Good luck getting cleaned up - we're in a less affected part of Colorado and I feel for you dealing with this...hopefully the weather finally turns today!