Drying Out A Flooded Crawl Space

7/23/2020 (Permalink)

When you have water damage to your home, it can go down to your crawl space as well. Water damaged crawl space is many times difficult to access. The access door is generally small and challenging for equipment from a remediation company such as SERVPRO to get through. Even when the door of your crawl space is big enough for equipment, the crawl space could lack enough room inside of it for a dehumidifier to stand upright under the floor system. Working could be difficult as well. Removal of insulation might be necessary, the floor could be mud or dirt, and you might need to have the foundation of the house, or the HVAC system inspected.

With all of the complications, you definitely do not want to handle cleaning up water damage in your Orland Park crawl space by yourself. One thing our technicians will need to be careful of is electrical hazards being present, so we need to ensure that the electrical circuits running under the home have been deactivated. We’ll also need to check to see if the structure has been affected and could collapse. The ground setting could affect the footings and foundation walls. The water in crawl spaces is generally black or gray because of dirt flooring, so proper equipment has to be worn.

Our SERVPRO technicians will remove any standing water from the crawl space, and if a plastic vapor barrier isn’t present, pumping or extracting water could be from a muddy surface of the crawl space. We’ll find the lowest point in the area and use the right submersible pump to get a majority of the standing water out. Once most of it is removed, the next step is to figure out the best way to dry the structural components of the floor.

When our equipment won’t fit, an option we have is to use flex hose as a duct to move air from dehumidifiers to the crawl space. A piece of light gauge sheet metal can be cut to fit the dehumidifier outlet to vent dry air into areas that are small.

Crawl spaces can be tricky to dry out, but the technicians at SERVPRO of Orland Park are trained to handle these situations.  Call us at (708) 532-3377 if your crawl space becomes flooded for any reason.