My house is exposed to freezing temps in the winter and no one was in the house at the time of the break. The house sitters left the thermostat way too low, a pipe froze, and water sprayed through our drywall, flooding the lower level of the house. The break was caught more than 24 hours after it occurred when the water company started searching the street due to lost water. When I finally received a phone call from my neighbors telling me my house was found with water pouring out from under the garage door, my heart sank. I could only imagine huge bills, irreparable damage and mountains of work to do in fixing this problem, all with me not physically present. This was a nightmare, but would have been eased by having a specialist I could turn to for help.
Immediately following the break, emergency actions took place. The water to the house was turned off (water company did this) and the house was dried out. A water mitigation company came in, set up blowers, turned the heat way up and opened windows to dry the house and to rid it of humidity that could cause mold or cause our interior ceilings to collapse. Then they left, and the painful process of fixing the house began.
To start the repair work, I needed to solicit bids for repairs. It would have been nice to have one company that could have moved right from emergency actions to repair, but instead I had to collect bids from general contractors. This back and forth bid process took months, with the house just sitting uninhabitable.
Eight months after the break, my repairs were finally complete. I went to the house to inspect the repairs and turn the water back on and to my dismay, water started leaking through the top of a bathroom doorway and half of my plumbing fixtures were inoperative…all residual damage from the pipe freeze that the general contractor had not checked. Two more weeks went by before the job was finally done.
In sum, water damage is an unpleasant experience, but having a water damage specialist you can turn to for timely, trusted repairs would surely have lessened the pain and shortened the duration of this ordeal.
