I came down this morning to see that a water pipe burst underneath my sink and there was an inch of water covering the whole of my kitchen floor. Oh no! I think it must have been spilling out water for at least a few hours before I came down in the morning.
After I turned off the water main the standing water drained into cracks in the tiled flooring after about 5-minutes, so there must now be a lot of water inside the flooring. I've opened all the doors and windows and turned on the central heating and put a fan heater down, and cleared out the remaining standing water.
I spoke to a local company for a quote for a professional drying service. They've told me they think I need a large industrial dehumidifier and an air mover for a week to dry everything out so I don't get damp, mould, rot etc. They quoted me £552 for this, and made clear that I pay for the electricity also! This was a lot more than I expected.
Any advice on whether this is a reasonable fee, how necessary this service is, whether I can do something myself (ie. if I keep the heating on and windows open for a couple of days and the fan heater is that likely to be enough?) etc. would be greatly appreciated.
(I notice you were lucky enough to get a sneaky peak of my toes in the last photo, haha)
Best Answer
Big fans and heaters (heat). That's basically all you can do at this point. If you act quickly the dehumidifier isn't really needed. You can open up windows as it gets drier to do that.
The two issues I see is the water potentially holding (and not drying) underneath the cabinets and getting the carpet padding dry.
We do not know how your cabinets were made but if you could pop out the toe kick that would be ideal. It does look like you do not have tile under your cabinets... And normally water would find its way out through the grout line, here it could be trapped. So either you drill a couple of small relief holes at the very bottom - which still may not be the "real" bottom - or you just leave it and risk it.
A couple of hours of clean water is not a huge deal. It's not like it sat there for days or was sewer backup. I would just raise heat and buy/rent an industrial fan (or like 6-8 box fans).
The carpet... easiest way to get up water out of a pad is using a steam cleaner vacuum (hoover makes an $80 variety in the US). These suck up water the best on carpet. Note that you want to move this thing around because water will drain to probably one spot and it could be 10 feet away from your kitchen. Drying out a pad is easy and relatively little chance of ruining the carpet and pad as long as it is dried in 1-2 days. After you aren't getting any water in steam vac you just make sure a fan is pointed at the wet areas.