Drying out your home after a flood or a hurricane is a time consuming task and while you might think that you can just dry everything as fast as possible and fix all the problems, this is not always the case. There are a few things that you need to be aware of when you go to dry out your home after one of these events and they are important to restoring your home to the way that it used to be.
Most of the time you cannot prepare for a flood to come upon your home, but you can do your best to prepare yourself for it mentally. This is done by equipping yourself with the knowledge necessary to dry out and repair the items in your home after the damage has already been done.
Before re-entering the house, you need to make sure that there is no electricity running to it, since there is probably still some standing water inside. This brings along with it a serious risk of electrocution that you need to be aware of. Do not rely on the condition of your neighbor’s electricity to be an indicator of yours. Switch the power off to the entire house before going back in.
Take a video camera and record all the damage. You can also do this with a digital camera or one that takes traditional film, but a video camera is the most recommended method. Make sure you record all the belongings in the house that were damaged and their approximate value, if possible. This will help you out when your insurance claims adjuster comes to assess the damage to your home and decide how much compensation you will receive.
The entire home needs to be dried out as soon as possible, but do not use artificial heat sources such as space heaters or blowers to accomplish this. This will promote buckling or cupping of hardwood floors, if you have them, and may do more harm than good. Open the doors and windows throughout the house. Odds are good that until your home dries out completely, you will not be sleeping there, unless you have second floor that was not affected by the flood.
Look in the attic and see if your insulation has gotten wet. If it is fiberglass and has gotten wet, you will need to replace it. Wet fiberglass insulation is no longer any good.
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Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Cell Phone Water Stickers
While we have to deal with water every single day in some form or another, it can be a nightmare for anyone who has a cell phone or a blackberry. Getting these items wet by rain or dropping them into a sink of dish water is the last thing any owner of one of these wants to do and most of the time, they think that if this happens, they have to get a completely new phone. While this is sometimes the case, it is not always true.
If you have one of the newer cell phones on the market, odds are good that if you get it wet and it stops functioning, your warranty will not cover it and you will not be able to cover up the fact that the phone was in fact damaged by water and not some other means. This is because most cell phones and small electronic devices whose warranties do not cover water damage now come equipped with small stickers on the inside of the phone’s battery compartment that trigger when they get wet. There is a powdered dye on the underside of the sticker and when it gets wet, the dye coats the sticker and changes its color. This is good for the manufacturer to keep people from claiming that there was a problem with the product originally and that it was not submerged in water. This is bad for the consumer, however, because these stickers have been known to trip and change color in areas with high amounts of humidity. This means that if you live in such an area and your phone stops working for some hardware or software-related reason, you cannot get a new phone under your warranty because they will say that the phone was water damaged, often without even doing any real looking at the phone components for signs of it.
If you do drop your phone into water, get it out as quickly as you can. Do not leave it under the water for more than 20 seconds, but if it is plugged into the AC in your house, unplug the adapter from the wall first. Wipe off the exterior, remove the battery, and place both in a bowl of uncooked rice overnight (at least) and wait until the phone is dry before you try to use it again. Try both the AC and the battery; if the battery does not work and the AC does, then you just need a new battery, which can be purchased for a small amount compared to the value of your phone.
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If you have one of the newer cell phones on the market, odds are good that if you get it wet and it stops functioning, your warranty will not cover it and you will not be able to cover up the fact that the phone was in fact damaged by water and not some other means. This is because most cell phones and small electronic devices whose warranties do not cover water damage now come equipped with small stickers on the inside of the phone’s battery compartment that trigger when they get wet. There is a powdered dye on the underside of the sticker and when it gets wet, the dye coats the sticker and changes its color. This is good for the manufacturer to keep people from claiming that there was a problem with the product originally and that it was not submerged in water. This is bad for the consumer, however, because these stickers have been known to trip and change color in areas with high amounts of humidity. This means that if you live in such an area and your phone stops working for some hardware or software-related reason, you cannot get a new phone under your warranty because they will say that the phone was water damaged, often without even doing any real looking at the phone components for signs of it.
If you do drop your phone into water, get it out as quickly as you can. Do not leave it under the water for more than 20 seconds, but if it is plugged into the AC in your house, unplug the adapter from the wall first. Wipe off the exterior, remove the battery, and place both in a bowl of uncooked rice overnight (at least) and wait until the phone is dry before you try to use it again. Try both the AC and the battery; if the battery does not work and the AC does, then you just need a new battery, which can be purchased for a small amount compared to the value of your phone.
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Common Water Damage Prevention Tips
Water damage is a very common problem in most older homes these days, but most of it can be avoided if you simply know what to look for. You should do your best to safeguard the investment that is your home and making sure that the interior does not become water damaged to the point that it cannot be repaired without a large sum of money and quite a lot of work is important. Avoiding the causes of water damage is the best thing that you can do to prevent this.
When your bath tub, toilet, or washing machine overflows, you probably are not thinking about the integrity of the structure of your home. To you, this is probably just a big inconvenience most of the time, but the truth is that if you let it happen over and over, it could do some serious damage to your floor and lower walls. It is alright to be a little forgetful every now and then, but try to pay attention to these things.
The steam in the bathroom and kitchen can cause problems for the ceiling and walls, since steam is composed of water vapor. This adheres to your walls and ceilings and keeps them moist almost constantly, which will eventually discolor them and cause mold to grow. Mold is a problem all by itself, but it seems to go hand in hand with water damage. Purchase a steam vent for the bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, and the basement and have those installed either by you or a professional to help keep the humidity in the home down.
Rain gutters need to be cleaned out as often as necessary, although this is usually every fall. These collect rain water and channel them down through downspouts that will carry the water away from the foundation of your house. If they are not cleared out, then the water simply falls to the ground at the base of the house and tends to settle in pockets, which can seep down into your basement and cause cracks in the walls.
Keeping your hot water heater checked on is also a good idea. It should be installed on the lowest floor of your house and sit elevated off the floor in a drain pan connected to the water system of your house. If it starts to leak, the water will be transferred to your home’s plumbing system instead of all over your floor.
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When your bath tub, toilet, or washing machine overflows, you probably are not thinking about the integrity of the structure of your home. To you, this is probably just a big inconvenience most of the time, but the truth is that if you let it happen over and over, it could do some serious damage to your floor and lower walls. It is alright to be a little forgetful every now and then, but try to pay attention to these things.
The steam in the bathroom and kitchen can cause problems for the ceiling and walls, since steam is composed of water vapor. This adheres to your walls and ceilings and keeps them moist almost constantly, which will eventually discolor them and cause mold to grow. Mold is a problem all by itself, but it seems to go hand in hand with water damage. Purchase a steam vent for the bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, and the basement and have those installed either by you or a professional to help keep the humidity in the home down.
Rain gutters need to be cleaned out as often as necessary, although this is usually every fall. These collect rain water and channel them down through downspouts that will carry the water away from the foundation of your house. If they are not cleared out, then the water simply falls to the ground at the base of the house and tends to settle in pockets, which can seep down into your basement and cause cracks in the walls.
Keeping your hot water heater checked on is also a good idea. It should be installed on the lowest floor of your house and sit elevated off the floor in a drain pan connected to the water system of your house. If it starts to leak, the water will be transferred to your home’s plumbing system instead of all over your floor.
North Carolina Mold Remediation
New Jersey Sewage Damage Cleanup
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