FAQ

It is priced by the square foot and by the day, and every figure here is an estimated range rather than a quote. Extraction runs an estimated $0.50 to $1.50 per square foot of affected area industry-wide, and the drying that follows is charged on an estimated mitigation rate of $3.75 to $7.50 per square foot, plus equipment at an estimated $25 to $50 per air mover per day and $75 to $125 per dehumidifier per day. Both units are easy to follow: you can measure a room and you can count machines. The written quote comes once the wet area has been measured.

Some of it, yes, and the part you can do is the part that matters most. A small spill of clean water on a hard floor, caught quickly, is a mop, a wet vacuum and fans. What you cannot do without a meter is know whether the water stopped at the surface: under carpet, inside a wall or below a raised floor, materials can stay wet long after they feel dry. If the water reached any of those places, or was not clean, that is the point to call.

It is real, and it measures something slightly different from what most people assume. The window is how long clean water stays clean and how long porous material — carpet, pad, drywall, insulation — can usually still be saved rather than removed. The clock starts when the material got wet, not when you found it. That distinction matters most where ground drains quickly, because the standing water can disappear while the structure stays exactly as wet as it was, which reads as a problem solving itself.

Because drying removes water, and your problem is water arriving. In a space that refills from below, every day of equipment runs against groundwater that is still coming in, and the readings never settle. The fix is drainage: a sump, a sealed vapor barrier, grading away from the building. None of that is drying, and we would rather say so than sell you days.

Often yes, if the water was clean and it has been less than a day or two — and the decision is about the pad underneath rather than the carpet. Clean supply water over a pad that can be lifted and dried, or replaced on its own, is the routine case. Contaminated water or groundwater is not: at any age, the porous material comes out. The failure worth knowing about is a dry carpet over a wet pad. It passes a hand test, it passes a look, and it returns as a smell about two weeks later. A meter reading taken through the carpet into the pad is what settles it.

Typically three to five for a straightforward job, and longer for hardwood, plaster or anything cavity-built — but the number of days is not something to agree in advance. It is something the readings decide. The way to follow it is daily written moisture readings for as long as the machines are in the building: if the numbers have stopped falling and the target is met, the equipment comes out. Ask for them on day one, not at the end.

Pulling the standing water out is usually a matter of hours for a room or two; the drying that follows is what takes days. Extraction removes the water that can be pulled out with pumps and extractors. What is left inside the materials then has to be dried with air movers and dehumidifiers, and that part runs until the moisture readings say the materials are dry. A larger area, a crawl space with poor access, or water that is still arriving all stretch the extraction itself.

Four things, all free, and together they do more for the final bill than anything you can buy. STOP THE SOURCE — the main shutoff, or on a rural parcel the breaker feeding the well pump, which stops a supply leak faster than any valve you have to find in the dark. GET WATER OFF HARD FLOORS toward a drain or outside, because every square foot you keep dry is a square foot nobody measures. MOVE AIR: open interior doors, run fans you already own. And LIFT WHAT YOU CAN — furniture legs off wet carpet, boxes off the floor, rugs off hardwood. None of it requires a decision you might regret.