When your home is hit by a massive flood, you are left with a myriad of problems that all need to be dealt with at the same time. But before you do anything, you need to begin to repair the damage. The sooner you do so, the faster you prevent further damage from taking place. While it may not look all that threatening, water can actually be an extremely destructive force on most areas within the home.

But the thing about water damage repair is that you have a lot of things to remember if you are going to be effective at the task. You must keep the water from getting absorbed into or penetrating the floors, walls, beneath carpets, and into the complicated internal functioning systems of the house. In some cases, too much water damage can create a hazardous situation, one that you want to be far away from for fear of being injured or, worse, killed.

So here are six cleanup tips for anyone dealing with water damage centreville to help minimize the effects of a flood, no matter how big or small.

1. Shut Down the Electricity

Before you do a thing, do not set foot in a flooded home without shutting off the electricity. Cut the power supply in the home to avoid getting electrocuted if there is a substantial amount of water sitting in the home. Smaller levels of water may just require you to disconnect or unplug any electrical appliances that could pose a threat if they become submerged.

Always be careful before stepping into standing water as electrical devices and power outlets could also be underwater and a live current might be active.

2. Record Everything

That’s right, you may feel like you’re delaying the inevitable but taking this critical step before you begin the cleanup process can make filing a claim with your insurance company much easier and more effective in helping your recovery efforts.

Take photos of everything around you. You can never get too much documentation proving that you were in a flood and your home and personal belongings were damaged or destroyed. So get plenty of pictures, you can even try to document the source of the flooding. All of this photographic evidence will be invaluable when you file your claim and provide your statement of loss. If you know where the flood originated, be it broken pipe or a faulty appliance of some kind, getting visual evidence to support your claim will be highly beneficial.

3. Moving the Water

You need to get it all out, no matter how much has moved indoors. So once you’ve taken care of the previous two issues with respect to documenting the damage and avoiding possible electrocution, now you may begin the arduous task of flushing the water out.

There are a number of ways to go about doing it, each one largely dependent on how much water you have standing in your home. You can go about it by picking up the water and removing it with buckets if you have a lot of water to remove or get your hands on a good wet-dry vacuum and suck up the water if there is a small amount to eliminate.

But however you decide to do it, do so as fast as you can. The longer you allow water to stand in your home, the more damage you are doing to areas that can be very expensive to repair and replace.

4. Proper Airflow

You have removed all of the water. Now the next step is to dry out all of the parts of the home that were wet. Residual and excess moisture can be just as damaging to your home as gallons of standing water. That’s how you start to develop mold and mildew, both of which can be incredibly hazardous to the health of you and your family.

So now that the water is gone, it’s time to get airflow moving through the affected areas that were flooded. All you need are some fans, some open windows, anything that will speed up the evaporation of moisture that can have devastating consequences on the interior of your home.

5. Total Cleaning

Speaking of possible mold and mildew, once you have completely dried the areas affected by the flood, you need to do a full cleaning of those areas in order to prevent that mold from growing. That means disinfecting anything that was in the water for any length of time. Whether it was your furniture, personal belongings, even the walls and cabinets.

Remember to be thorough, leave nothing to chance. Clean it all with powerful cleansers as even the smallest, most minute detail missed could be a breeding ground for mold later on.

6. Professional Help

Above all, know when you’ve been beat and you are unable to do this work yourself. Hire the right experts to do the cleanup for you, otherwise you could be living in a home that is ultimately unfit for inhabitation.