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Flood Remediation


Jeff Matthews

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No expert here, but if any of you have flooded or know someone who is getting ready to start cleaning up, I've been helping for 3 days, in 4 homes.  Here are some thoughts, which I think might be helpful:

 

I've seen and worked on 4 homes so far.  

 

1.  I arrived at the first home on the 2nd day.  It took almost a foot of water.  All of their personal crap was out of the way and stored upstairs.  Sheetrock removal had begun.  The wood floors had already been taken up and removed.  I helped remove sheetrock, trim and carpet tack strip.  They were in good shape after lunchtime.  They had the a/c going and some dehumidifiers going.  Now, all they have to do is hurry up and wait.  All the wet carpeting, 2' of sheetrock (used a chalk line and cut straight), insulation and wood flooring was removed by the time I left.  It was a good feeling.  Everything was pretty tidy.

 

2.  Offered myself up to some others.  I got there.  They must have had 10 people in there (all with good intent, I suppose), but these idiots had no idea what they were doing.  It was the messiest, dirtiest, most disorganized and gross clean-up attempt I could imagine.  They just beat the sheetrock all to pieces on the wet floor and trampled it and tracked it all over the silt that was deposited from the receded floodwaters.  The owner has personal crap everywhere to boot.  He wasn't decisive on how to deal with it.  He stacked it and piled it, and it was all wet and in the way.  The place was simply abused.  The clean-up is going to be 4 times harder than it needed to be.  I helped for the rest of the day and went back the following morning for another 4 hours.  The place was, unfortunately, looking very bad when I had reached enough exhaustion that I called it a day.  I did a decent job getting 2 of his rooms somewhat ready to dry.  The rest of the home was in disaster.

 

3.  House 3 was today.  That was just to remove carpet from the master bedroom and 2 closets.  That included moving a little furniture, like bed and dresser.  Not much work.  This was a good friend.  He had flood insurance, and he is going to defer the rest of the work to professional remediators.  It was an easy job for us since it had such a limited scope.  Done in 2 hours.

 

4.    House 4.  Some of my closest friends.  After seeing Home #2, I told my friend do NOT just let anyone volunteer in his home.  It's his wife, he and I.  We might get a 4th guy.  We'll see.

 

This house took the most water.  It's in Canyon Gate subdivision (made the news).  23" deep.  Now that I've experienced a good job and a bad job, we are approaching this one very smartly.  

 

Anyone who has been around flooding knows how much silt those flood waters leave behind when they recede.  You open the door to these houses, and the floor has a thin coat of mud over the entire house.  It's slick and dangerous.  The first thing we do is get the garden hose and use a spray nozzle with a lawn push broom to wash all the silt we can out of the house.  Immediately, it's much improved.  Even the smell is being swept out the front door.  

 

We clean the silt out of the garage, making space so we can store personal things tomorrow.  We clean all the silt away from the door entrance and the top of the driveway.  We can't go tracking all that silt everywhere and need a clean path.  We move some items (not much) and make a list of some things we need to bring tomorrow.  I spray off lawn chairs because these will be what we sit on for breaks as work continues.  We open all the windows and turn on a warehouse-grade fan.  This one's a big one.  It's going to do a nice job .  I borrowed a mop and one of those professional janitor buckets with the wringer built-in.  We are going to use a bleach/water mix on our "now cleaner" floors to start to disinfect and deodorize a bit more.  

 

We are going to start in the master bedroom.  We have to get the bed and dresser out of there.  Then, the carpet.  After the room is free of contents, we are going to remove all hardware from doors and cabinets to save for re-use.  On the premise we can re-use the door casings, we will bundle those with rope, and see how they turn out.  Then, we will remove electric wall plates.  We will remove baseboard.  Then, tack strip.  Now, it will be easy to take down sheetrock as cleanly as possible.  

 

We will take out 4' of sheetrock,, using a chalk-line, and insulation.  All refuse materials will go in great, big, heavy-duty, contractor trash bags.  We can't just throw it all in a big pile in the yard like all the other goofs.  Water is still in the street.  We might have to move stuff twice to get it ready for heavy trash day.  Those big trucks want it curbside or in the street - not half-way up the lawn.  Once the flooded street recedes, we can move the bags to the curb.  Bags are easier to move than an enormous pile of slop.  

 

Once the master bedroom is gutted and in ready-to-dry mode, we will mop it with bleach/water and let the floor dry.  This will be a place where we will stack plastic totes (assuming they are in stock  for pick-up tomorrow morning, and I think they are).  The totes will be for all the crap - pots, pans, toaster, etc.  Got to put it some place.  The center of a clean master bedroom will be the place because there is not enough room in the garage.  We could get the Jeep out, but the SUV had to stay.  It's shot, and we can't get it into neutral.  So, we have half a garage.  

 

Once all the contents of the other rooms are cleared, we will repeat the process of removing hardware, casings, baseboards, wall-plates, sheetrock, insulation, cabinets, etc., and then, do a final mopping.  Room-by-room.  Then, we will go back with one of those pump-up bug-sprayers and spray either bleach/water or borax/water on the studs and brush them down real good.  Followed by another mopping.

 

We are taking a series of photos through the various steps.

 

 

 

 

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Jeff, thanks for the detailed explanation. This may sound silly, but a tutorial/ guide should be prepared for anyone to review before going to help folks who volunteer to help.

 

I can only imagine how exhausting this work is, and doing it the wrong way only makes it worse.

 

Bruce

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Sounds like you're experienced enough now to start a new career in the emergency response service.

I think the problem with House 2 is that nobody had a clue, or those that did, didn't take the initiative to lead.

Here in San Antonio we're all high n dry, but gasoline is in short supply, very short. As of yesterday, there are very, very few places/stations that have gasoline, and those that do..... get in line. There's all kinds of crazy shyt occurring at stations, from stabbings and fist fights, to campouts & picnicks.

Even Laredo had gasoline shortages, 1 scumbag was price gouging @ $10/gal. Laredo's ok now, but San Antonio is not.

well, keep up the neighborly good deeds Jeff.





Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

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1 hour ago, Gilbert said:

 

????  Reason   ?????

 

1 hour ago, JJkizak said:

What if the flood waters reached a level of 4 feet?

JJK

Apparently there's a lot of mis-information out there.  I was repeating what a FEMA inspector told a friend.. When I checked the FEMA web site I found this.

 

• If drywall or plaster has been saturated by contaminated floodwater, it should be removed. Respiratory protection should be worn when removing drywall as some older drywall joint compound contains asbestos. If the water level was less than 2½ feet, the wall material should be removed to a height of 4 feet to facilitate reinstallation of full sheets of drywall. If the water level was greater than 2½ feet, the wall material should be removed to a height of 8 feet or the ceiling junction, whichever is higher. Electrical outlet and wall switch plates and door and window moldings must be removed prior to the tear out of the wall material.

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