You may have heard of service restoration companies. However, have you ever wondered what they do? You usually think of restoration services as restoring old furniture or artwork. Well, that’s part of what restoration companies such as Water Damage Near Me do but not the whole thing. They offer many services, including cleaning, repairs, and the like. Besides this, they also handle restoring valuable items damaged by fires, storms, and other such natural calamities.
How to Deal with a Flooded Floor?
You can follow these steps to clean and disinfect flooded floors.
1. Ensure Safety
The first step is to ensure safety. To prevent electrical hazards, you can begin restoring your floors to their initial state by shutting off the electricity supply in and around the affected areas. If the box is present in a flooded or damp location, it’s best not to do it yourself and call an electrician. However, if you still want to do it yourself, wear gloves, goggles, boots, masks, and other such protective gear.
2. Remove Excess Water
When your floors flood, you will have water all over the place, and you will need to remove this excess water before it does any further damage. The first step to getting rid of the excess water on the floor is scoping it up with a plastic bucket. Subsequently, vacuum the surface using a wet-dry vacuum to suck the remaining water up. A wet-dry vacuum can remove between five and ten gallons of water every minute. However, use only a wet-dry vacuum, not a regular vacuum cleaner, as they are prone to electrocution.
3. Dry the Floor and Sub Floors
Floods can damage your floors in about an hour. Moreover, mold formation can occur within a day of flooding. So, it is crucial to dry the floor after removing the excess water by leaving the fans and air conditioners on or using dehumidifiers. You can also open the windows to let in the fresh air. However, make sure that the weather conditions are favorable. Leaving the air conditioners on helps keep the air present inside cool while driving dry air out, and the fans help circulate the fresh air coming in through the windows. Likewise, dehumidifiers can help remove moisture from the air.
How to Clean a Flooded Floor?
Once you have removed the excess water and dried the place, it is time to clean up, removing any mud, dirt, or debris. You might need to shovel the mud out before cleaning the floors.
There are different house flooring that needs varied cleaning processes.
1. Carpeted Floors
The first step in cleaning flood-damaged floors is to remove the carpets to prevent further damage due to mold formation. Moreover, you may need to replace those padded carpets as they contain contaminated water.
You can then dry the carpets using a wet-dry vacuum and sanitize them using a steam cleaner and disinfectant spray.
2. Hardwood Floors
Once you get rid of the excess water, check the hardwood floors for any dirt and debris or damaged planks or boards, and have them removed using a disinfectant cleaner that doesn’t cause suds, and brush and scrub the dirt away from your floors.
Subsequently, dry the floors using a wet-dry vacuum and eliminate any disinfectant residue using a wood floor cleaning agent.
3. Vinyl and Laminate Floors
Vinyl or laminate flooring can trap water entering them through floods and cause significant damage to the subfloor underneath. So, before cleaning vinyl, laminate, or linoleum flooring, check the subfloor, and make sure that they are dry. Once dry, you can replace the affected flooring or dry them out thoroughly if damaged.
You can clean vinyl or laminate flooring using soap and warm water and scrub or brush to remove the dirt. After that, rinse and dry the floor using water, and a wet-dry vacuum, respectively.
Subsequently, dry the floors using a wet-dry vacuum and eliminate any disinfectant residue using a wood floor cleaning agent.
4. Tile Floors
Tile-flooring is water-resistant and does not absorb as much water during a flood. So, cleaning tile floors is relatively easy compared to wooden, vinyl, or laminate flooring. However, you might still want to pull them up and check for any signs of water damage to the sub-floors, although, in general, the tiles, and grout, prevent water from seeping into them.
You can then clean your flood-affected tile flooring by scrubbing and rinsing with soap and warm water. After that, mop the floors dry, soaking up the excess water.
Disinfection and Mold Removal
Flooded floors tend to attract mold that can be hard to remove in less than a day. However, if there is no mold formation yet, you can prevent it, or if the mold has already grown, you can still remove it and stop it from spreading.
You can prevent mold from growing on your flood-affected flooring by drying them with the help of wet-dry vacuums, dehumidifiers, or air-conditioners.
Then, you must sanitize the floors using a bleaching agent such as diluted chlorine bleach. Mix one cup of chlorine bleach with one gallon of water and scrub the floor by dipping a mop into this solution.
However, if mold has already grown, you might need to remove it. Mold removal requires special skills, and it would be better to call an expert such as Water Damage Near Me and have them deal with the problem.
If you want to do it yourself, here are the steps you must take to remove mold from your flooring.
- Wear protective gear such as an N-95 mask to prevent the spores from entering your body.
- Scrub the floor thoroughly using a solution of one gallon of water and one cup of chlorine bleach or baking soda, and leave it for about 15 minutes.
- Rinse the bleach or baking soda using water and dry the place with the help of a wet-dry vacuum.
You must then sanitize the floor to remove any dirt and other contaminants by following these steps:
- Take a bucket and mix one cup of bleach and one gallon of water.
- Scrub the affected floors with a brush by dipping them into this solution and leaving them to dry.
Conclusion
When you have a flooded floor, it’s best to contact an expert such as Water Damage Near Me and have them assess and resolve the problem, rather than doing it yourself. However, you can still clean up a flooded floor by following the steps outlined in the table below.
| Sl. No. | Steps |
|---|---|
| 1 | Ensure safety |
| 2 | Remove excess water |
| 3 | Dry-vacuum the floors and subfloors. |
| 4 | Clean and disinfect the floor. |
| 5 | Remove mold, if any. |
