Hello, Lots of water in the basement due to the NE floods. RI got creamed. I ripped down the sheetrock, took up the subfloor and laminate. All in a dumpster now. Fans and dehumidifier are running. I am going to rebuild the basement.
How long do I need to wait until I can begin rebuilding? I was thinking at least a few months to ensure everything is really dry. (wood studs down there)
Thanks for your time.
If your going to rebuild, you should protect yourself for next time by putting in a French drain, otherwise you'll be ripping it out again.
YES, but if victim lives in a flood plain where water came in door a french drain wouldnt help.
if french drain is installed drain to daylight if at all possible or add a standby sump pump for backup with SEPERATE drain line
That's OK for the occasional heavy rain and a leaky basement, but when the flood water level is above the ground, a french drain is useless.
If you can vent from outdoors that would help as then you don't have to remove the water with the dehumidifier. Put fan in a window and open another way for the air to get in. If you can't do that then the dehumidifier is the only way to go. It might be worthwhile to get a hunidity gauge. I agree about the couple months idea, if you don,t have any constraints that force you to fix it now there is no downside to waiting longer.
In R.I., his basement flooded because their was probably 2 feet of water in his yard. French drains would have made no difference. This was a true flood.
"Jack" wrote in news:Wu_un.91842$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe23.iad:
yeah, you don't want mold to grow underneath the new build.
a long article here:
Get a moisture meter, monitor concrete moisture and wait. Id use a garden sprayer with laundry bleach about a 25% mix and spray now and before you build so mold is killed. Did you have any pumps
Yeah, once the humidity levels off in hopefully a few weeks, then you can watch it closely and should be able to start rebuilding in June or so. If you wait longer than that, there will be high summer humidity and you might as well wait until after the heating season starts next fall when you are sure that things have had a chance to fully dry out.
Definitely have to get a good commercial biocide anti-fungal/mold inhibiting cleaner as homemade bleach and ammonia cleaners don't completely kill all varieties of mold...
As someone else here mentioned, get a moisture meter and check the levels...
~~ Evan
"Jack" wrote
Sad grin, we heard about it.
As others said, treat the studs now. You can use various products from bleach and water in a spray bottle to commercial products. That is to kill any potential developing mold. Let it all dry out, and a meter is a good thing if you have one for humidity.
You were not soaked long enough to have any true rot from it (unless you did from *other issues*). You just need to treat the wood a bit and let it dry then recover the room.
I agree with the above post...Give it PLENTY of time to dry out...I would wait till summer...If you can , vent to the outside with fans when the weather permits...Have one fan drawing dry air in and another blowing out...HTH...Hope everything works out for you and others that were flooded out...We came REAL close here in Maine..
I'd give it a couple of months. I'd also spray either a bleach solution or some sort of mold preventer before sealing it up in case thee are some spores around. Then, depending on the water source, I'd look at prevention. If it was a rising river, you are SOL, but if it was groundwater seeping, youy may be able to seal it better or divert it.
We had a lower level room at work get wet a few years back. We removed the sheetrock, repaired gutters, pave the driveway next to the building, etc. It was dry for three years. We put up sheetrock a week before the rains. Fortunately, it was not taped and we took it down and watch the water come in along the edge of the floor and wall. Consider leaving a place you can open up and peek in case of water, if it was coming in behind the wall.
It was a FLOOD.....No amount of sealing or diverting would have helped...Google New England floods...Here is one from CNN...
(CNN) -- Anuj Arora's house doesn't sit in a flood zone and isn't covered by flood insurance, but the structure couldn't escape the deluge. The floodwaters inundating Rhode Island this week soaked the floors and walls of Arora's split-level ranch house in West Warwick
Ummm yeah... Ed...
Think of a river whose flood stage is at 9 Feet...
Then think of how far said river will spread beyond its normal boundaries when it rises to 21 Feet...
No amount of "diversion" or "water sealing" will be effective when you have 5 feet of standing/flowing river water in your yard... That is just plain old FLOOD...
~~ Evan
The only real solution for this guy is to demolish the house and start over on higher ground. No sense rebuilding it on the same spot. Next week or next year it will start over again. Get a dozer and flatten the place. That way you can be sure all mold spores are killed. Then either build on higher ground, or just get a trailer house that can be easily moved when heavy rains are predicted. Whatever he does, he needs to get out of there ASAP. The place is unsafe and he and his family will die from mold spores if he stays. No house is worth dying for. Often fire departments need practice, and homes like that can be donated to them to burn. The donation can be a tax write off, and the cost to demolish is less if most of the lumber is burned. Plus the fire should destroy all mold. He should not save any furniture or items either. They are all contaminated.
"Evan" wrote >>
A lot of people have been talking about "the flood" but have had ground water, not rising rivers in the basement. I'm not going to ASSume anything unless the OP specifically says what the source is. I know plenty of people that pumped there "flooded" basements that were nowhere near the rising banks of anything. When you get 10" of rain, water travels through every fissure in saturated ground. Houses that never had water in the basement in 100 years have had it this rainfall.
There is also quite a bit of difference in the cleanup needed for river water than with relatively clean ground water.
Meantime, lets find out for sure what the OP had.
Depends on the territory. In August 1955, our place in CT got flooded to just above the piano keyboard on the first floor, and my family had to leave by boat through the living-room windows. No sure historical record of a flood that severe there, though there may have been a comparable one in the 17th century. The place stayed dry for our five remaining years there, and as far as I know it has never been flooded since.
I hate it when someone here actually makes sense instead of baseless assumptions.
It was ground water. I have two sump pumps, plus a trash pump going. Still was unable to keep up with the water. Neighbors had anywhere from a foot to
4 feet in their basements. I had about a foot.
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