Questions people telephone about

The telephone is answered at any hour by somebody on the crew, and for most of the neighbourhoods on our service list we are on site within the hour at night and often faster in the day. We will give you a real time on the telephone rather than a marketing one, and if we are already on a job and the honest answer is three hours, you will get that answer and a suggestion of what to do in the meantime instead of a promise that we cannot keep.

If it is safe to do so: stop the water at the stopcock, turn off power to the affected area at the consumer unit, lift what you can off the wet floor, and take photographs of everything before anything is moved. Do not use a household vacuum on standing water and do not walk into a flooded basement while anything electrical in it is still live. If there is fire, gas, or any question about whether the structure is sound, ring 911 and stay out — that is not a restoration decision.

We document for them, thoroughly, and we attend the adjuster's inspection and answer whatever they ask. We do not negotiate your settlement, because in New York a contractor who negotiates a claim on your behalf is acting as a public adjuster and needs a licence from the Department of Financial Services to do it. We do not charge you anything for dealing with your insurer. If your claim needs somebody to argue it, what you want is a licensed public adjuster, and that is not us.

No, and you should be wary of anybody who offers to. In New York, a contractor who absorbs your deductible and bills your insurer as though you had paid it is committing insurance fraud, and so are you if you agree to it. The Department of Financial Services has published exactly that position. An offer to make your deductible disappear is an offer to put your name on a false invoice.

We genuinely do not know, and nor does any contractor who tells you otherwise on the doorstep. Coverage depends on your policy wording and on the cause — as a very rough guide, sudden and accidental discharge is commonly covered and long-term seepage and groundwater flooding commonly are not, but your policy decides and your adjuster applies it. What we can do is document the loss properly enough that the decision is made on facts.

Most residential water losses we attend land between $1,800 and $9,400 for mitigation through to dry standard, and every service page on this site publishes the range that job usually falls in. Those are honest ranges rather than teaser numbers: the low end is a small clean-water loss caught early, the high end is contaminated water that sat for days across two floors. The assessment visit is free and we will tell you which end you are at once we have looked.

Most residential water losses dry in three to five days. We will tell you which end we expect yours to land on and we will be right most of the time, but it is a forecast from readings rather than a promise, and the readings decide when the equipment goes. Anybody guaranteeing you a number of days before they have taken a reading is guessing in public.

Sometimes. Modern drying saves a great deal that used to be demolished, and we would always rather try the mat system on a hardwood floor than tear it up on day one. But water behind a wall, under a cabinet or inside insulation cannot be reached by air movement alone, and drying around trapped water is how a water job becomes a mould job in a fortnight. We will tell you which of the two you have.

Often not. If you can see mould and you know where the water came from, a test mostly tells you what you already know. Where a test genuinely helps is when something is wrong and nobody can find it, or when you need an independent record of the condition before and after. What matters more is who does it: in New York the company that assesses cannot be the company that remediates the same project, so we will not test a job we want to win.

Because Labor Law Article 32 does not allow it, and because it is a bad idea even where it is allowed. A company that writes the report and then quotes the work described in the report has a direct financial interest in the report being alarming. We hold a remediation licence, we work to an independent assessor's remediation plan, and that assessor comes back to verify our work. It costs you a separate fee and it is worth it.

That is a question for your doctor, and we will not answer it. Nobody here is medically qualified, and a contractor who tells you what your symptoms mean is selling you something. What we can tell you is what we can measure: where the water is, how far it has gone, and what is growing over how large an area. Ring your physician first and us second.

No, and the honest version of this trade says so on day one. Smoke sorts belongings into things that clean up completely, things that can be restored for less than replacing them, and things where the cleaning would cost more than the object is worth. Porous items soaked in contaminated water, most soaked mattresses and upholstered foam, and some heat-warped electronics belong in the third group. You get that assessment in writing before we clean anything.

An oil-fired furnace that misfires can push a cloud of oily black soot back through the ductwork and into every room the system serves. It is not a fire and there is often nothing visibly burnt, which is why people live with it for a week before ringing anybody. It is also greasy rather than dry, so it smears rather than lifting, and cleaning it properly means the ducts as well as the rooms.

We do not abate either, and in an older building we stop before we cut. New York City requires an asbestos investigation filed with the Department of Environmental Protection before the Department of Buildings will issue a permit for work in a building put up before 1 April 1987, and a great deal of the housing we work in is older than that. Paint in pre-1978 housing falls under the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule. Both mean bringing in the right licensed party, not pressing on.

Water that is grossly contaminated — sewage backups, rising floodwater from outside, and any clean-water loss that has been standing long enough to go bad. It changes the job: porous materials that took it generally come out and are disposed of rather than dried, protective equipment and containment go up, and the cleaning standard is different. Most of the cost of a sewage job is disposal and replacement, not labour.

Yes, and it is usually the right first call after a fire. An open building loses more to weather and to strangers in the following two nights than most people expect, and insurers generally expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage. We secure openings and tarp roof sections the same night, and it is quoted by opening rather than by how distressed you sound.

A pack-out is moving your belongings off site so they can be cleaned properly and so the building can be dried and rebuilt. Everything is photographed and listed before it leaves, you keep a copy of that inventory, and you can visit the store and collect anything from it during office hours. The first month of storage is in the price.

No. Your insurer cannot require you to use a particular contractor unless your policy says so, and a preferred-vendor arrangement is a commercial relationship between that contractor and the company paying the claim. You are entitled to choose. We are not on anybody's panel and we do not claim to be.

Anything you have not read, at any hour, including ours. Specifically: do not sign an assignment of benefits, which hands your claim to a contractor; do not sign a work authorisation with no scope and no prices on it; and do not sign anything whose signature page is separated from the terms. Emergency measures fit on one page. Everything else can wait until the morning, and a contractor who says it cannot is telling you something useful about themselves.

No, for water and fire losses inside our service area. It is worth saying plainly that a free assessment is not a free opinion — it is a sales visit, and ours is too. The way to tell a good one from a bad one is whether you are left with written findings you could hand to somebody else, or only with a price and a pen.