What kind of water was it?

It is the first question a restoration crew asks and the one homeowners least expect, because it decides what can stay in the house. Clean water that was extracted quickly leaves most things recoverable. Water that came up a drain does not, however clear it looked. These five questions place your situation.

This is about water and building materials, not about health. It reads what you tell it about where water came from and what it touched, and nothing else. If you have a health question, that is for a doctor and not for a website. It is also not an inspection: it cannot see inside your walls.

Nothing is sent anywhere. This runs entirely in your browser, there is no form, and nothing you choose leaves this page.

Water source check

Where did the water come from? How long was it in contact with the building? What did it reach? What did the water look like? Has it happened at this address before?

Six ways in, and gravity gives them all the same address. In most of these houses the furnace, the panel and the laundry sit in the same room the water reaches first, which is why the source question comes before the drying question.

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1 The ceiling stain. The wet spot is the end of the path, not the start of it.
2 A burst supply line. Under pressure, so it does not wait for anyone to notice.
3 A frozen line. The run inside an exterior wall is the one that gives in January.
4 The washer hose. Braided or rubber, behind a machine nobody moves for years at a time.
5 The water heater. The tank opens at a seam, and it opens without warning.
6 Groundwater and backup. A high table pushing at the footing, and a drain that runs backwards in a heavy week.

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Describe where it is coming from and what it has reached, and you will be connected with a provider covering your area.

Why the source outranks the appearance

Water that has come up through a drain can look completely clear, and water from a clean supply line can look filthy after a day in a dusty basement. Appearance is the weakest evidence available, which is why a crew asks where it came from before asking what it looked like.

The practical consequence is about materials rather than anything else. Hard, non-porous surfaces can be cleaned and kept in almost every case. Porous material that met drain water is removed rather than dried, and no amount of drying changes that, because the question was never whether it could be made dry again.

The clock changes the category

Clean water does not stay clean water indefinitely. Sitting in a building, in contact with dust, soil, contents and whatever a basement floor holds, it changes character over roughly a day. That is why a supply line caught in the first hours is a different job from the same supply line found on the third day, even though the pipe failed the same way.

It is also the reason a fast extraction is worth more than a thorough one that starts late. What is being bought in those first hours is the category, and with it the list of things that stay in the house.

Use this page

This tool may be reproduced or linked to freely, with attribution to njwaterdamageandmold.com. If it is useful to a tenants association, a landlord group, a municipal office or anyone putting together recovery information after a storm, it is meant to be shared.

If the water is long gone and the question is what it left behind, that is the inspection side. If material has to come out, the removal side covers the order that work follows.