You might be currently having restoration work done in your home or business, or you will have restoration work started soon. Or maybe you have a bet with someone about “how long does water damage restoration take?”
But regardless of why you need this information, you surely want to get it from a trustworthy source! That’s what we are. We’re Cleaner Guys, a water damage restoration company with over 20 years of experience. We can give you the best and most reliable answer to this question, and all your related questions about restoration!
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How Long Does Water Damage Restoration Take?
Water damage restoration can take anywhere from a few days to several months to complete. It depends entirely on how long it takes to dry out the water, and whether any materials will need to be torn out and replaced.
Sometimes, if the water is only in a small area (1 room) and is stopped very quickly, we can just extract the standing water, dry out the building, and be done! When that is all that’s required, the full restoration process will only take 1-5 days.
But drywall and wood can take less than 5 hours to soak up so much water that they’re no longer savable. If the water damage is in a large area (more than 1 room), and/or the water is not extracted within a few hours, then the soaked materials will probably have to be replaced. This is called “reconstruction”.
If reconstruction is required, then the water damage restoration may take weeks or months to complete. This is for a few reasons. One, because it takes a lot of man-hours to properly remove all unsavable materials. Two, sometimes materials must be ordered online and are not delivered for weeks, which pushes job completion back. And three, sometimes difficulties with insurance claims hold up the repair process.
Example 1: A Small, Fast Water Damage Job
Cleaner Guys is experienced in restoring water damage situations of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes, luckily, the water intrusion is very minimal, and all we have to do is dry out the affected area! We did a job like this where there was a small pipe leak in the second-story floor. The inner wall cavity between the second-story floor and the first-floor ceiling needed to be dried out. But it wasn’t bad enough that we needed to remove all the drywall!
To start, we took a sample of the drywall and ran a quick test for dangerous materials like asbestos. This is because we needed to drill some holes in the drywall, and we need to be careful of asbestos. We didn’t find any, so we set up our Injectidry system and started drying!
The Injectidry system is for drying out the inside of wall cavities. It’s basically a giant fan with several hoses attached to it. We drill small holes in the wall, insert the hoses, and turn on the fan, so that it pumps air into the wall cavity, and dries it!
Lastly, once the wall was dry, we removed our equipment and patched and painted the drywall, like there were never any holes at all. The entire restoration process for this job, beginning to end, including waiting for asbestos test results, was about a week.
Example 2: A Major Water Damage Job
Cleaner Guys also deals with a lot of major water damage restoration jobs that require not just extensive drying, but also removing a huge amount of materials that are too damaged to be savable. We wrapped up a job like this very recently.
Last winter, one of the pipes in the attic of an office building in Sedro Woolley WA froze, cracked, and began slowly leaking water inside the ceiling. But since the leak was in the attic, nobody knew that anything was wrong for months. It wasn’t until the paint on the walls began bubbling and peeling and falling off that they realized something was wrong.
The pipe had been steadily leaking water for so long, it had saturated the entire ceiling of the one-story office, and had dripped down and begun saturating the walls too! The damage was so extensive that when Cleaner Guys was called, we ended up having to tear out almost all the walls and ceilings in the whole office.
We had to set up dozens of large commercial fans and dehumidifiers to get the office dry again, and it took weeks and weeks for the whole building to completely dry. Then, we had to thoroughly spray the entire building with an antimicrobial detergent, to prevent mold, because mold loves growing in water damage.
The entire job took 4 months to complete — and replacing the drywall hasn’t even started yet! Catastrophic water damage of this magnitude takes a long time to dry out thoroughly and clean and restore properly.
Other Common Questions About Water Damage Clean Up
It depends on the insurance company, but usually, yes, most kinds of water damage are covered by insurance. However, there are a couple of very important exceptions. For example, most major insurance companies do not cover water damage caused by natural disaster flooding. Call your insurance provider and ask them about their specific water damage policy.
Water damage mitigation is extracting standing water and drying out affected materials. Water damage restoration is removing materials like drywall and wood that are too damaged to save, and replacing them with new materials. For more specifics about the differences between mitigation and restoration, and a useful infographic, see our full article on mitigation here!
The water damage restoration process is typically 1) extract standing water, 2) dry out affected area, 3) test for asbestos, 4) if no asbestos, remove unsavable materials and replace them. Each restoration company has its own restoration process that may have slight variations to this, but this is the basic bare-bones process of cleaning up water damage. For a much more detailed breakdown of the process, see our full article here.
If you need a water damage restoration company in Western Washington State, consider Cleaner Guys as a high-quality, well-trusted option! We’re proud to boast award-winning customer service, lower prices than others, and top-notch workmanship. Contact us today through the menu at the top of your screen!
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. No part of this article is medical or legal advice, and may not be used as such. For all serious medical matters, consult your doctor. For all serious legal matters, consult your legal advisor. This article contains Cleaner Guys’ experience and opinions only.
