Flood Restoration in Vancouver

If the flood is under the floor, the living room is not the structure we are restoring. We open the hatch, extract standing water between the piers, and photograph the waterline on the concrete blocks and the joists.

Soaked insulation in the bays comes out. Joists that can stay get air in the cavity, not a fan in the hallway. Mount Pleasant and Dunbar houses with the same post-and-beam floors follow that order. The main floor stays in use when it is dry and we can keep the crawl isolated.

Combined sewers still surcharge east of Main in a hard rain. The backup comes up the floor drain or the lowest laundry standpipe. That is dirty water. Pad, baseboards, and the bottom of the plaster or board come out before any drying equipment is worth running.

Hastings-Sunrise basements from the same era get the same category call. We photograph the drain, the standpipe, and how high the water sat on the laundry wall. A supply-line flood in the same room would look different, and the cavity would tell us. We do not guess the category from the smell alone.

Low garages off the lane take overland water, and it walks into the suite if the slab is one plane. We map the garage and the rooms it reached as one flood when the water connected, and as two areas when it did not.

Vinyl and laminate come up so the concrete can dry. There is no basement under a lot of these slabs to vent into. Air and a dehumidifier sit on the concrete after the floor is lifted. Photos of the lane grade and the door threshold show where it entered.

Suite-to-suite water is the downtown and Broadway version of a flood. The ceiling fails first, then the floor of the unit below is wet wall to wall. We lift contents, extract, and dry the concrete. The unit above is named even if we cannot enter it yet.

Belongings on the floor are the loss as much as the board. We list what sat in the water and what can be cleaned. Elevator pads and a path for debris matter in a tower. A plaster house in Kits and a concrete suite in the West End do not share a rebuild schedule, and we will not pretend they do.