Basement Flood Update #2

Well, ServePro is nearly done. All the demo is finished and now they have set up 16 (!) blowers in the basement plus 2 "air scrubbers" to help clean the air and reduce humidity levels. These will run for the next two days, and they will be back to pick up all their equipment and haul away everything Kristi and I have decided is "a loss" (like the wood furniture, pillows, throw rugs, etc).

Here are some of the latest pix from the disaster:
   

Yeah... total disaster.

The rebuild will take a while - but at least we'll be able to start fresh.

Basement Flood Update #1

Flooding in your basement - even only a few inches - seems to be a great reason to do a complete remodel. After I took some initial pictures of our flooded basement, ServePro showed up and assessed the situation. Apparently I was wrong - the source of the flood water -was- from the septic system. Or as ServePro said, "This is a Category 3 Flood". Basically I should have been wearing rubber booties rather than walking around in the poop water barefoot in my Crocs.

They quickly went to work tearing out carpet and moving furniture. Today they'll be back to cut drywall and tear out the linoleum flooring that was under the carpet.

A view from the dining room. All our stuff is out on the pool deck - probably contaminated by the "Category 3" materials (poop water).

Yuck

First Post - A Flooded Basement

Last night we returned to Willow Hill from a week long vacation in New Jersey and a few days in Boston. All in all - it was a hectic, but otherwise good visit with family. The trip was marked, however, by two things: our timing chain on our Chevy Traverse started going bad, and when we returned to Willow Hill we discovered our basement was flooded with 2 inches of water. Fortunately, the Chevy's timing chain was fully covered under warranty. The flooding, however, is another thing. It's wall to wall, in our basement bathroom, HVAC room, storage room, and all the living spaces.

Here's some photo's of the mess

   

Yeah. Soaked. 

Seems like the flood was caused by a faulty toilet lever that left the toilet running the entire time we were on vacation. It was running the whole time we were away. Since our house is on a septic system - I think the toilet eventually backed up because the septic was full. Not sure - in any case, the basement is a wreck. I immediately jumped online and checked out a few decent resources for how to clean up a basement flood - including this really good PDF from Washington County, Michigan. Meanwhile, my wife got on the phone with our insurance company. Once I had read through the PDF from Washington County, I headed out to Sunbelt Rentals and picked up a couple of blowers and a large shop vac and got to work right away on sucking out all the water.

The good news is that it looks like our insurance company is going to cover everything, even hire ServePro to come out to do all the restoration work. We do have a deductible of course, but I guess it pays to have good insurance because I don't think this is going to be cheap.

I returned the equipment to SunBelt after only a couple of hours (I had rented it for a week, thinking I would be doing everything myself), and they refunded me 100%. 

Hopefully we'll have a good story to tell after we have a chance to talk with the ServePro people.