Sump pump failure, finished basement in Elmhurst, IL

The sump pump in this Elmhurst basement failed, and the water reached every finished room on the lower level. Diego, our project manager, walked the space and found the walls wet to roughly four feet throughout. The scope rated the water Category 3, the grade for contaminated water, which meant soaked drywall and insulation could not be dried and kept. Diego also noted a film on the wall surfaces that kept his layout stickers from holding, so the written plan simply called for a four-foot cut on every wall.

Nine areas were on the list: a bedroom and its closet, the living room, a hallway, the utility room, a small electrical-panel room, the laundry and sump closet, the space under the stairs, and a bathroom. In each one the crew covered the contents in plastic, pulled the baseboard and trim, took off the outlet covers and cut the drywall at four feet. Insulation behind the cut came out with it. Where drywall was trapped between floor tile and a steel plate, the crew dug it out by hand so no wet gypsum stayed in the wall. In the bathroom they detached the vanity, sink and toilet and capped the water lines; the walls there were cut everywhere except the shower. Every opened cavity was cleaned and treated with antimicrobial before the drying equipment went in.

The scope sized the drying set at four dehumidifiers and thirty-eight air movers, spread room by room. Demolition took two days. At the first monitoring visit many spots still read high, so the crew pulled three air movers and left everything else running. At the next visit the meters found no wet spots left, and the whole set was removed one week after the crew first arrived. The owner was left with a basement opened to the studs, cleaned and dry.