Bad Restoration!!!

[sweendogg]

We have a customer we installed very nice Karastan Frieze through out the entire house.

In January of this year, she had a pipe break in the basement. Flooded her old carpet downstairs.

Restoration company came out and extracted the water, and put some fans in and called it good, statefarm lady said checks ok but wanted to save the (moldy backed) carpet. Customer says no way just give me a settelment check and I'll get new for down there so she puts the same frieze downstairs. It was over a month after that we put the new carpet in.


Get a call in June, carpet feels wet and the dehumidifer she was running was running non stop and filling up every hour.
Turns out the contractor did not do anything to dry the walls out or put any dehumidifiers in during the initial drying to pull the moisture out. Water in the foundation froze and cracked it in several places and caused seeping moisture with hydrostaic pressure to leak during summer months with record rainfalls and rain every week.

Insurance wouldn't cover anything. We pulled the carpet and pad and found cracks all over the floor and moisture sitting under the pad on the concrete. She had a new dewatering system put in all around her foundation. Several areas pulled back and grades corrected to slope moisture away from the foundation. And with all of the humidity still in the house, and outside, the moisture is stuck between the finish basement cieling and the carpeted floors upstairs. The carpet is over a premimum rubber pad. The pad is creating a moisture barrier and not releasing the humidity fast enough to dry it out quick enough and the customer is saying the carpet feels cold and damp. (its not damp, but it is cooler to touch).

Talk about a bad combination all around. Bad weather, bad restoration company, bad insurance experience, and other house problems arrising to make our product perform poorly. This lady has spent a small fortune and is at wits end mainly because the original restoration contractor did not do a quality job of removing the moisture and remediating the situtaion properly.

Anybody else have a situation like this?

 

[tmdry]

So many hacks doing that each and every day, and the funny part is that they think they're doing it right.

Is the homeowner going to sue the contractor now?

 

[sweendogg]

Unfortunately,,, Statefarm in all of its legal tape signed off on the project and then refused to pay anything further. So who would you go after? Its rediculous mess because yet again the insurance company wanted a rush job to keep their payments to a miniumum. Guess where the heaquarters for all of Statefarm is... yeah Bloomington, IL. They would squash any case faster than the blink of an eye.

 

[-JB-]

interesting situation, from the water damage point of view.

thanks for posting it.

 

[kmdineen]

Interesting story sweendogg, it gave me something to think about today while I was pushing the wand. Because I was not there or have access to any readings or job report my comments are for entertainment purposes only.
If the foundation was in good shape prior to the pipe burst I doubt the slab absorbed so much water that it froze and cracked. If the basement was below grade the slab would not freeze, if the slab was above the freeze line the heat from the structure would prevent it from freezing.
I assume the WD company removed the pad from the affected carpet because they noticed a "moldy backed" carpet. A moldy backed carpet is a red flag for pre existing conditions, so is having a dehumidifier in the basement.
Extracting the carpet and removing the pad leaves little water to be pulled out of the structure. January in Bloomington IL means the heating system was running almost non stop and changing out the moist air, the GGP is also very low this time of the year probably in the 20's or 30's. Not having a dehu on the job may not have been as big mistake as some may think as long as there is enough air movement to cause evaporation.
Not drying the walls is a rookie mistake, but can be remedied by replacing the sheetrock.
I think the basement is damp and has had a water problem for sometime. Hydrostatic pressure cracked the floor and water vapor is entering the structure making the situation worse.
Now that she has a system to keep the water away from the house she needs a adequate dehumidifier to remove the water vapor, look at the Santa Fe line for a unit with a auto pump out and dehumidistat. The pad on the slab should not have a vapor barrier to allow the moisture to get to the dehumidifier. If you control the moisture at the slab you don't have to worry about secondary damage.
I would use a hammer probe with insulated pins to determine were the moisture in the basement ceiling, first floor carpet and pad is. Then dry as needed.
I think the WD company walked in to a bad situation and may not have handled the situation correctly but did not cause the situation. I also think the insurance co believes as I do that this is likely a pre existing condition there for not covered on this loss.

 

[sweendogg]

Those are some interesting comments and if I was in your shoes I was be thinking exactly the same. Here is some more details to chew on. They removed only part of the pad. When the repaired the pipe they did no other inspection. of the dry wall surround and only removed the area next to the pipe instead of the piece all the way to the floor to inspect the rest of the pipe that runs into the ground. Its a bi level so only 50 inches is in the ground. We had hit -31 degrees (no winchill) which caused the burst pipe. She had never any existing moisture problems before. Even a month later when we installed the new carpet there were no signs of cracking through the floor. Yet when we went back in June, cracks were abundant and she had standing water on the floor under th bad that was leaching out from beneath the wall were the pipe burst. The area behind that particular part of dry wall had a piece of visquine as a moisture barrier. 24 years and no water problems ever. She had a sump pump but its never failed and still has not failed.

Like I said, its a bad situation, The major crack in the foundation that caused the most water problem post pipe burst was right above the free/thaw line for our area, so that became pretty evident (not our observation, rather the dewatering and concrete speciliasts.

 

[sweendogg]

Yes the second leak developed after the the pipe bust, as the water saturated the concrete behind the drywall and nothing was done to mitigate this moisture. either dehumidification or drying of the slats/drywall either which conveniently had a piece of visquine between the slats and the drywall. And we had more below 0 degree weather not including whinchill.

 

[sweendogg]

Ok so an update: Statefarm is finally stepping back in after a house inspector found 45% plus moisture meetings in frame members and more moisture finding its way into the house. We'll see what they find.. stay tune!! The funny thing is their claims guy checked humidity only and found only 45% humidity.. (after we pull up alot of the carpet for a week and have had two dehu's resi models running for 8 months. (Granted the wettest year on record)) He tried saying that 45% humidy was the same as the 45% moisture level in the frame members and it was normal. :roll: