Burst Pipes, Water Damage, Flood Recovery, Drying out the house

Pieces of the ceiling collapsed onto the floor
because of the flooding from the broken pipe

There is something about a disaster like this that can overwhelm you. Your footings are swept out from underneath you literally and metaphorically. It takes some time to right yourself and plot another course. Of course repairing your home is the goal, but it is a full time job that you didn't have yesterday. So, in addition to your usual job and responsibilities you are now a contractor, like it or not. Some insurance companies give you a choice of how much you want to be involved. A friend had this same event befall their home, on a smaller scale, yet their insurance company offered them the choice of hiring their own contractors or, to choose to let the insurance company send them preapproved competent contractors who would just take up the lead and fix it all. She wisely let the insurance company organize the attack on the problem and it was solved rather quickly. We were not given that choice. We became our own contractors, like it or not. When you know no competent contractors...this is a painful learning experience. Interviewing contractors, and sizing them up, is a daunting task.

If the house is not dried out quickly enough,
mold will grow and require mitigation

Blower on right was installed to dry out the house with
large fans and heat sources

When dealing with a flood, time is of the essence. You must deal with the flood in its entirety immediately. Drying out and ripping out the damaged wet building parts are essential to controlling mold. The drying starts immediately, the ripping out starts once the drying out has proven impossible to achieve. Three days is the limit pretty much accepted as the time it takes for mold to start growing. If your flood damage sat for three days before it was discovered or dealt with, mold is surely part of your problems. By day three you have a mold seeds planted and growing. Mold mitigation is a whole other deck of cards that requires another skill set, one you learn along the way. Step one is to bring in a mold hygenist. I think that was her title!. She tested surfaces for mold to know what mold will have to be exponged. You will need a demolition crew in to remove all damaged building materials, like sheetrock, insulation,flooring, moldings. Next a mold mitigation company comes in to clean up all the blooming mold spots. Bleach alone will not solve your problems. Bleach used alone provides the mold with a host upon which the mold can thrive. The mold mitigation company will apply by sprayer, either ice or sodium bicarbonate solutions, at high pressure, to remove the mold from the previously flooded surfaces. This kills all mold that remains. Until this mold work is done, nothing else can be done...NOTHING!

.

Gutta House, Gut job, Gutted Out, Complete House Renovation

All on the first floor has been gutted out. All electrical has been soaked and had to be removed. The main electrical box was not in that area and was preserved.


Nothing is left on the first floor, it is bare to the dirt of the ground.  The blown in insulation has been completely removed.  The fiberglass bats have been removed, all flooring in the home has been removed and discarded.  Wind roared through the space for about two months because the crawl space hatch was left open to the inside of the house by the demolition contractors. It was exposed to the elements because of the removal of the floors which went right down to the removal of the sub-floor.

All upright interior walls will be removed. This space is going to be restored by creating an open floor plan. One bedroom will be reconstructed. It will be moved to the opposite side of the downstairs floor of the home. The bedroom-livingroom wall is being moved to create clear view of the body of water behind the home. The home will have a clear wide broad water view of a cove that opens onto Tangier Sound of the Chesapeake Bay. Moving the bedroom forward will free the back walls for installation of more windows to see the beautiful view.

Disaster pix...yuck, Renovation needed

Bathroom spewed with iron sediment from burst hot water piping

Iron sediment dripping down walls from flooded floors above

Ceiling and floor damage..it all had to go

Note the footprints in the water soaked carpeting

soaked ceiling tiles dropped to the floor below

Bathroom below flooded by burst pipe upstairs

Before and After, In the beginning....

Before: the burst pipes disaster

We did have a beautiful cottage. Everything was clean and perfect. We worked tirelessly to save the money to buy it, and very obsessively to make it perfect, clean and up to date. It was a perfect residence for escaping the world and tuning into nature and the water. It was bright, had beautiful water views and beautiful waterfront location in a lovely community of delightful neighbors. Then the damned nut on the hot water faucet split open and ruined the whole house while we were away to New York on vacation. Nightmares in day time soon prevailed. I will record what is happening here for our friends and family. It is really unbelieveable to anyone who knows the place and knows us, to think it has come to what it is right now. We might as well have been located in hurricane Katrina, when you look at what the burst pipe wrought. http://housedamagephotos.blogspot.com/

Here our story and photos begin. They will go on, and the tale will go on while the whole reconstruction and demolition continues. Drama, that's all I can say to describe it. Lots of drama.

We entered through the kitchen door, on the left is what it looked like when we left for vacation. Below is what we found when we came in the kitchen door.

After:ceiling on floor, inches of water, iron sediment from the hot water tank which emptied after the pipe burst

The floors are flooded and the ceiling is disintergrated onto the floor. It soaked and then collapsed crashing onto the floor below.  As I said, lots of drama.... 

Kitchen flooded with water seeped from flooded bathroom abov,e resulting from a bust water pipe