Floors lie. A shiny plank can be swollen at the click joints. A carpet can look ‘just dirty’ and still be a sewage sponge.
Category of water matters more than your attachment to the rug. Bayou and backup are not a steam-clean away.
Decide room by room. Document before you rip. Then rip what will not dry.
Do this now
- Photograph floors with a tape at the water line and a wide shot of each room.
- Pull soaked carpet and pad. Do not leave pad on a Houston slab ‘to dry.’
- Check laminate and vinyl click joints for swelling. Those usually come up.
- For hardwood, start drying the air and ask a pro before you sand anything.
Carpet and pad
Pad holds everything the water held. After a flood, it goes. Carpet sometimes gets a second life after a clean appliance leak. After Brays or a backed-up cleanout, treat it as debris.
Cut it into strips you can carry. It is heavier than you think. Do not block the street inlet with a mountain of wet wool.
Keep a sample with the label if you will claim it. One square in a labeled bag beats a shrug at the adjuster.
Wood and the plastic woods
Solid hardwood can cup and then settle if you get serious dehumidification fast. It can also be done. A flooring pro with a meter is worth one visit before you demo a whole oak room.
Engineered and laminate often delaminate. Once the core is swollen, it does not go back. Floating floors after a flood are usually a pull.
Tile on slab can hide a wet mud bed or wet underlayment at the edges. If the baseboards are stained, look under them before you celebrate the tile.
Sequence that actually stuck
Photograph, then pull water, then get wet porous stuff out, then dry the framing. Power only from a dry location. Do not run a flooded HVAC. Do not close walls because you are tired of looking at studs. That sequence is what Houston cleanup threads kept repeating after Harvey.
Do this next
- First 24 hours: pull water, move stuff, start airflow
- Shop vacs, pumps, and what to borrow from a neighbor
- Water cleanup hub
More in Getting water out & drying now.