Water Damage Restoration Checklist

Nothing gets touched until the building is safe to work in. Standing water and live circuits share the same floor on most losses, so power to affected areas gets shut off at the panel before anyone walks a wet room. The inspection that follows sets everything downstream: what got wet, how far the water travelled, what the materials are, and whether anything overhead is holding water. Photograph the whole loss before moving a single item — the photo taken at hour one is the only version of the scene nobody can argue with later.

Stop the water first — an active supply line makes every reading meaningless. Then classify twice: Category describes how contaminated the water is, Class describes how much material got wet and how hard it will be to dry. Both decisions drive money and method, so write down the reasoning, not just the number. Category can degrade over time and with contact, so re-evaluate on each visit rather than treating day one as final. The Categories and Classes guide explains what separates them.

Mapping turns "the room feels wet" into a number you can defend. Take a dry standard from an unaffected area of the same material first — without it, every later reading is just a figure with no meaning. Then map the affected area on a consistent pattern and mark the points on a sketch so the same point can be found on day three. Readings taken at random spots, or at different spots each day, cannot show a trend. The moisture mapping template gives you the grid and the point table.

Extraction is the cheapest water removal you will ever do — every gallon lifted mechanically is a gallon the dehumidifiers do not have to condense. Work the wettest areas first and keep passing until the tool stops producing, not until the passes look neat. On carpet over pad, slow weighted passes remove far more than fast ones, and pad usually holds more water than the carpet above it. Wet vacuuming ends where absorbed water in structural materials begins; that part belongs to the drying system.

What comes out depends on the Category and on whether the material can be dried in place in a reasonable time. Porous material that has absorbed contaminated water is removed rather than dried, and carpet pad is the usual first casualty on anything worse than a clean-source loss. Cut lines get set where they can be rebuilt cleanly and recorded before the saw runs. Bagging and routing debris matters as much as the cut: carrying wet contaminated material through dry rooms spreads the loss you were hired to contain.

A product applied over contaminated debris does not make the debris clean. Cleaning and physical removal come first; any antimicrobial goes onto surfaces that have already been cleaned, and only where its label allows that surface and that use. Label dwell time is part of the application, not a suggestion — a product wiped off early has not done what its label claims. Record what was applied, where, and at what dilution, because that entry is the one an adjuster or an occupant asks about months later.

Air movers create evaporation, dehumidifiers remove what evaporates, and running one without enough of the other either stalls the drying or floods the building with vapour. Air movers go along wet surfaces at a low angle so the airflow sweeps the boundary layer instead of hitting the wall head-on. Dehumidifiers go where they can pull from the whole chamber, with intake and exhaust unobstructed. Close the chamber: open doors and windows undo the equipment. The free drying calculators size the equipment and check what it is producing.

Monitoring is what proves the equipment is earning its unit-days. Every visit takes the same readings at the same numbered points: outside, unaffected, affected, plus dehumidifier intake and exhaust to show the machine is actually pulling grains out of the air. Flat readings for two days in a row mean the system needs changing — more capacity, more heat, better containment or access to a trapped cavity. Log it the day you take it, because a log reconstructed at the end of a job reads like one. Use the drying log template to keep it consistent.

A drying goal is a written target moisture content for each material, set from the dry standard taken in the same building. Drying is finished when the materials reach that target and hold it — not when the calendar says three days or when the equipment is needed on another job. Verify with the same meter, at the same numbered points, on the same material. If a point will not reach the goal, the answer is usually trapped water or a cold surface, and both have fixes that beat leaving the fans out another day.

Contents get decided item by item, and the inventory is written before anything moves. Wet items sitting on wet floors keep both wet, so blocking or relocating buys drying time for the structure as well as the item. The salvageable and non-salvageable split needs a stated reason per item — material, contamination and replacement value all feed it. Photograph each non-salvageable item with any model or serial detail before disposal, because that photo is the whole claim for that item.

Closeout is where the file either supports the invoice or leaves it open to argument. The package pulls together the daily log, the moisture point history, the equipment unit-days, the photographs and the written reasoning behind Category, Class and removal decisions. Have the occupant sign the completion acknowledgement while you are still on site. Anything left for another trade — rebuild, cabinetry, flooring — gets written down and handed over rather than mentioned at the door.