HOly Fuck! THE WATER MAIN TO MY SINK EXPLODED! (warping)

delphinus

its about 340am now, and the water main to my sinks hot water just cracked. got the valves shut off and the main water line to the house shut off, but now my room and bathroom are flooded. got an industrial vaccuum to suck up the water, but now im worried about warping since i got a wood floor. any way to reduce it?

techniques? hair dryers?

ill be pressing f5 for a while since im still vacuuming up all the water on the floor

delphinus

so i just put baking powder around the sides of the room to suck up water.
would this even work?

Fizban140

Do you have a fan? Just let the fan blow at it for a few hours. Same thing happened to me a few winters ago, water pipe cracked and flooded my room. I just vacuumed it out, cleaned up a little with some towels and then I let it air dry.

delphinus

like i have wood you put down in long tiles (too tired to think of the name) there was a LOT of fucking water everwhere. its a small fan in the ceiling, doubt itll stop the warping fast enough. thanks though.

ive thrown baking soda onto the cracks in the floor. it looks like im trying to cast a fucking wiccan spell or something. im already seeing some of the boards warp. shit.
hairdrying isnt hot enough to dry it all and its pjust pushing the water around.

ANY comments are welcome. looks im not sleeping till work in the morning

The Cat

Fizban140 wrote: »

Do you have a fan? Just let the fan blow at it for a few hours. Same thing happened to me a few winters ago, water pipe cracked and flooded my room. I just vacuumed it out, cleaned up a little with some towels and then I let it air dry.

And that means there's a solid chance that any carpeting affected by that will be mouldy and horrible. If it was all tiles or whatever you're fine, though.

OP: unless you want major, major, expensive grossness, any carpeted surfaces need to be dried out by professionals. Any carpet cleaning service will be able to provide blowing machines that pump air under the carpet for a few days to dry it and the spongy underlay out properly. Not exactly cheap, but really unavoidable - my washing machine flooded my laundry and hallway last year, so I've been there. If it's all timber only, simple airing for a day or two plus lots of mopping up should be enough - I'd be more worried about the skirting boards and similar plastery things than the floor. Also, baking powder won't do shit. Kitty litter would be more useful.

delphinus

okay vacuumed up the baking powder after i read this and picked up a science journal saying that basic solutions degrade lignin faster (fuck! i shouldve known that im a bio major.) i dont have sand handy, but im throwing down salt to soak up as much of the water as possible inbetween the cracks.

got some heaters going already (power already tripped twice, so i had to shut down the comp and move to the lappy.
no danger of carpet damage since none was around.
what i wouldnt give for a bottle of a common drying agent from the lab.

japan

How much water are we talking?

Basically you just want to get rid of the water and then dry anything that's soaked as quickly as possible (I see a lot of this, I work in home insurance). There will be disaster recovery firms somewhere near you (I don't know where you are, but in the UK we use three companies called Chem-Dry, Belfor, and Rainbow), their approach would be to point space heaters at it and run dehumidifiers.

Turn your heating on full tilt (if you can with your water shut off), and put any portable heater you happen to have in the affected area, also running full blast. A fan or an open window to move the humidity about would help as well.

delphinus

sweet.
so fan+heater then?
we're talking about a shit load of steaming hot water
trying to stop the water felt like a Mr. Bean episode. the knob for the water main on the sink busted off so i couldnt stop it at the sink end, then i tried to stop the tubing manually but burned my hand trying to reseal the tube. had to run upstairs to call my dad to turn off the main water to the house.

thanks so much for the replies.

RoyceSraphim

I am sorry, I had to post and say I LOLed at the title. Be happy it isn't some musty pipe that leads to the sprinkler system that bust open when you were playing hallway footballl and flooded by old, musty sprinkler water. Happened in a neighboring dorm when I was in school and those guys were the talk of north campus.

BomanTheBear

Hm. If you still got standing water, throw sawdust on it. Or just go outside and get dirt.

YodaTuna

BomanTheBear wrote: »

Hm. If you still got standing water, throw sawdust on it. Or just go outside and get dirt.

If his water main is freezing, I doubt he has easily accessible dirt.

delphinus

well its morning now i just got back from work.

warping has become minimal after leaving 3 heaters on in a closed room with the bathroom fan on

warping is very minimal after i threw salt on it all night.
i have to say that the baking soda, even though bases wreck wood, worked insanely well. it got between the cracks and soaked up lots of water. i vacuumed it up and threw salt everywhere which is supposed to act as dessicant (thank you ancient egyptians). i wish i had sawdust around. when water is flooding your room at a rate like that, the last thing you want to do is run outside with a shovel.

thanks all.
im glad humor came out of it.
when i see this moment flash before my eyes, ill request the lord play yakkity sax.

[/problem]

Tahnka

I realise this issue is closed but I thought I'd throw in my experience with this for future reference. I've had this happen on two occasions in 1000sf homes with carpet on top of wood slats, and carpet on a concrete slab. First, I learned that water on a carpet pad will trigger the rapid growth of some of the craziest little colonies (In a corner that was missed). Second, I learned that it takes a tornado to dry things out. My insurance people sent out professionals that installed these monstrous sideways impeller fans in multiple locations within each room both above and beneath my carpet and pad. It took 3 full days of those things on all the time for the carpet, the pad, and the sub-floor to dry; after they removed the bulk of it with a carpet vacuum.

Pheezer

If you drive a car in a winter climate you should have a small bag of kitty litter in your trunk. Even a small, say, 5 lb bag, would be enough to soak up a LOT of the water you had on the floor.

Buy a bag of kitty litter. It can prove to be astoundingly useful in all kinds of situations.

The Cat

Also, supermarkets (here at least) have those high-powered water-vacuuming machines for hire for super-cheap, like $25 for 4 hours or so. They're a lifesaver.