Do I Need To Do Anything After Hiring Professional Restorers To Handle A Flooding Incident In My Seal Beach Home?

9/3/2020 (Permalink)

Let SERVPRO work with you and your flooded home. We can get your Seal Beach home back in no time.

SERVPRO Works Closely with You to Find the Best Solutions for Flood Damage at Your Seal Beach Home

The level of damage caused by flooding after a storm is usually extensive, necessitating assistance from a team of professional restorers to help save your home. Although a professional crew lifts the burden of handling the different renovation tasks necessary to restore your Seal Beach home to its preloss state, your input might still be necessary for some stages of the restoration to guarantee a positive outcome.

What contributions can I make while a professional crew restores flood damage at my Seal Beach home?

• Taking protective steps while awaiting the crew
• Identification of personal items
• Giving approvals for various renovation tasks

Professional flood damage restorers are highly skilled from the training they receive regularly. However, there are inevitable gaps that might require your input to ensure a better outcome. For instance, during the lead-time between notifying the restorer and the time restoration crews reach your property, there are actions that you can take that might help limit the damage. Our SERVPRO technicians usually arrive within 4 hours after the initial notification. 

Our customer service representatives help you identify protective steps that you can take as you wait for the restoration crew to ensure we do not miss opportunities that lead to a positive outcome. Some of the actions you can take during this window might include:

• Turning off power at the mains 
• Moving vulnerable items from exposed areas  
• Notifying your insurer of the loss

Such steps may seem trivial, but they have a significant impact on the running of the renovation process.

What is considered a personal item?

The term personal items can sound confusing, considering you own all the items in your house. However, by considering the monetary or sentimental value of the items, a clear distinction emerges. Items that have a sentimental value to you or high monetary value fall under the personal category since it might be hard to replace in case of damage or loss. Therefore, the restoration crews must consider your opinion before deciding to throw away or use specific restoration procedures to fix such items.

Even simple input, such as pointing out to the crews where you have stored highly valued items, is crucial, especially when the house is heavily flooded, making it risky for you to wade in and retrieve your items. Our technicians collect all the items then confirm from you that everything is accounted for before moving them for storage away from the site. 

What sort of approvals do I need to make?

One unique advantage of hiring restoration crews is the use of advanced skills and state-of-the-art equipment, which improve the speed of performing restoration tasks or the outcome of such processes. For instance, self-priming trash pumps automate and thus speed up the removal of water with debris such as 

• Leaves
• Pebbles
• Twigs
• Mud
• Sand 

Despite the superior resources, they might not deliver the exact results you expect due to several reasons. Sometimes there might be pre-existing conditions in the areas that they have to renovate, or the incident might cause irreversible damage.  Some examples of these issues include:

• Presence of asbestos-containing materials
• Deep contamination of materials
• Undiscovered mold

Such issues interfere with the restoration in different ways. In some cases, crews working at your loss site may require you to make some approvals before they pursue specific actions to restore your property. The presence of ACM, asbestos-containing materials, may lead to delays in the restoration process since disturbing such materials can pose health effects. When porous materials are affected by contaminated floodwaters, cleaning is not a viable solution to remove all traces of the contaminants. Informing you about these problems so that you can evaluate the restoration decisions we make helps ensure that you are comfortable with the outcome. In the case of ACM, you need to decide which materials we should use as replacements once we remove the hazardous ones. 

Can I give deadlines for the restoration?

Knowing how long the restoration of your property is likely to take after a storm floods, it is essential. However, you cannot impose random timelines or rely on information from other restoration projects to issue deadlines to the restoration team. However, you can ask for an estimate of how long the restoration is likely to take. Our SERVPRO of Seal Beach technicians perform a walkthrough with you at the loss site then we do a preliminary scope from the information we collect during the walkthrough. After that, we can give you an approximate timeline.

Restoring property to its preloss state after a flooding incident requires several steps. Call SERVPRO of Seal Beach / Los Alamitos / Cypress at (562) 431-9400 to help manage an incident at your property, "Like it never even happened."