You just found standing water in the house: the first 48 hours, step by step

The sound of water where water should not be

Sometimes it is dramatic: a supply line lets go behind the washing machine and you walk into a quarter inch of water across the laundry room and the hallway beyond it. More often it is quiet. A water heater in the attic has been seeping for days and the ceiling below has a brown ring. The dishwasher drain has been dripping into the cabinet base. Either way, you are standing there with wet socks and a dozen questions, and the first one is whether this is a mop-and-fan problem or something bigger.

We are SERVPRO of Park Cities. My husband Juan and I own the franchise, we have lived in Dallas for more than fifteen years, and our crews answer water calls around the clock in Dallas, Highland Park and University Park. This guide is the order of operations we would give you on the phone at two in the morning, written down so you can follow it with dry hands.

Where the water came from changes everything

Before you think about cleanup, think about the source, because the source determines both how dangerous the water is and what has to be done with everything it touched. Water from a supply line, an ice maker or a water heater is clean when it leaves the pipe. Water from a dishwasher or washing machine discharge, or from an aquarium or a toilet bowl without waste, carries contaminants and is treated more cautiously. Water that has come up through a sewer line, a floor drain or in from outside flooding is contaminated and should not be handled without protective equipment.

The second thing that matters is time. Clean water does not stay clean. It picks up whatever is in the carpet pad, the drywall and the subfloor, and in a warm Dallas house the conditions for microbial growth arrive quickly, in our experience within a day or two. That is why the industry treats the first 48 hours as the window where the outcome is decided. Water that is extracted and dried in that window usually means replacing a little pad and some baseboard. Water that sits means cutting out drywall, pulling flooring and opening walls.

The third thing is where it went. Water travels down and sideways through anything porous. A leak on the second floor is a ceiling problem on the first floor and often a wall problem in between, even when the wall looks dry from the outside.

• Supply lines to toilets, sinks, ice makers and washing machines
• Water heaters, especially units installed in attics or closets
• Dishwasher and washing machine drain hoses
• HVAC condensate lines and drain pans in the attic
• Roof leaks after a storm, which show up as ceiling stains
• Slab leaks, which appear as warm spots or damp carpet with no visible source
• Sewer backups through tubs, showers and floor drains

What to do yourself in the first hour

Stop the water first. For a fixture, close the valve under the sink or behind the toilet. For anything you cannot isolate, close the main shutoff, which in most Dallas homes is at the meter near the street or where the line enters the house. If the water is anywhere near outlets, a panel or appliances, turn off power to that part of the house at the breaker before you walk through it. If the water came from a sewer or from outside, stay out of it.

Then document. Take photos and video of the standing water, the source, the ceiling, the baseboards and anything that is wet before you move it. Your insurance adjuster will want to see the loss as you found it, and the pictures also help us trace how far the water traveled. Only after that should you start moving furniture, lifting rugs and pulling up anything you can safely lift. Set wet cushions and documents somewhere dry. Put foil or plastic under furniture legs on wet carpet.

Mop and towel what you can reach, run the air conditioning to pull humidity down, and point fans at the wet areas if the water is clean. Do not run fans on contaminated water, because you are spreading it into the air. And do not assume the surface being dry means the structure is dry. Under the carpet, inside the wall cavity and under the floor are where the real problem lives.

Can this wait until morning, or is this a call right now?

A small spill of clean water on tile that you have fully wiped up can wait. A cup of water from an ice maker that never reached the wall can wait. Most everything else cannot. If water reached carpet, wood flooring, drywall or cabinets, if it came from the floor above, if it is anywhere near electrical, or if it is sewage or outside water, it is a tonight call, not a tomorrow call. The cost of a professional drying job is almost always lower than the cost of the demolition that waiting creates.

Call an emergency plumber at the same time if the leak is still active and you could not fully isolate it. We dry structures; a plumber fixes the source. The two jobs often happen the same day and we coordinate with them constantly, but one does not replace the other.

What our crew does when it walks through your door

The first person on site inspects and measures. We use moisture meters and often thermal imaging to map how far the water has traveled behind what you can see, so the plan is based on readings, not guesses. We identify the water category, decide what can be dried in place and what has to come out, and walk you through it before anything starts. If the loss is going through insurance, we photograph and document every step from here forward because that documentation is what your claim rests on.

Next is extraction. Standing water comes out with truck-mounted or portable extractors, and wet carpet pad is usually removed because it holds water and will not dry evenly. Then we set the drying equipment: air movers to move moist air off surfaces and dehumidifiers to pull that moisture out of the room. Where water is trapped inside a wall or under a hard floor, we may drill small holes behind the baseboard or use specialty drying mats rather than tearing the wall or floor out. We also apply antimicrobial treatment where the water category calls for it.

The equipment stays for several days, and we come back daily to take readings and adjust. The job is done when the structure reads dry against an unaffected reference area, not when it feels dry to the touch. After drying, our reconstruction team takes over: drywall, paint, trim, flooring, cabinets, back to how it was. Because we do both halves, you are not managing a handoff between a drying company and a contractor.

• Inspection with moisture meters and thermal imaging to map the wet area
• Water category identified and the plan explained before work starts
• Extraction of standing water and removal of saturated pad or materials
• Air movers and dehumidifiers placed and monitored with daily readings
• Antimicrobial treatment where contamination requires it
• Documentation for the insurance claim throughout
• Reconstruction by the same company once the structure is dry

What makes one water job cost more than another

We do not quote water losses from a price list, because two leaks of the same size can be very different jobs. The largest factor is how long the water sat before anyone acted; that single variable decides whether we dry materials in place or remove and replace them. The second is the water category, since contaminated water requires more removal, more protective measures and more cleaning. The third is what the water touched: hardwood, cabinetry and plaster are slower and more expensive to dry or replace than carpet and standard drywall.

Beyond that, the size of the affected area, how many floors are involved, whether contents need to be packed out and stored, and how much reconstruction follows all move the number. If the loss is covered by your homeowners policy, your out-of-pocket is usually your deductible, and we work alongside the claim with documentation the adjuster needs. Coverage depends on your policy and the cause, so talk to your agent or adjuster about the specifics.

How to choose the company you let into your walls

Ask whether the technicians are IICRC certified, which is the industry's training standard for water restoration; ours are. Ask whether they will show you moisture readings and explain the drying plan, and whether they come back daily to monitor rather than dropping off fans and disappearing. Ask who handles the rebuild, because a company that only dries leaves you to find a contractor while your house is torn open.

Ask about availability honestly. A company that says it is available around the clock should be able to tell you who is coming and when. And ask whether they are local. Our office is in the Park Cities area, our crews live here, and the owners answer for the work. Storm chasers who roll into Dallas after a freeze or a hail event and leave two weeks later cannot say that.

• IICRC-certified technicians on site, not just in the brochure
• Moisture readings shared with you and a written drying plan
• Daily monitoring visits until the structure reads dry
• Cleanup and reconstruction under one roof
• A local office and owners who answer for the job
• Experience documenting losses for insurance claims

The mistakes that turn a small leak into a large one

The first and most expensive mistake is waiting to see if it dries on its own. Surfaces dry; cavities do not. The second is running a few box fans on soaked carpet for a week and calling it handled, which often leaves the pad and subfloor wet and gives mold the humidity it wants. The third is pulling up flooring or cutting drywall yourself before anyone has photographed and measured, which removes the evidence an adjuster needs and sometimes removes material that could have been dried in place.

We also see people fix the plumbing and forget the structure, assuming the dripping has stopped so the problem is over. And we see people wait weeks for an adjuster to come out before calling anyone to dry the house. Your policy generally expects you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, and drying the structure is exactly that step. Call your carrier, and call a restoration company, the same day.

From your call to a dry, finished house

When you call us, a real person answers, asks where the water is, where it came from and whether it is still running, and dispatches a crew. On arrival we inspect, measure, explain the plan and get extraction started. Over the following days we monitor and adjust the equipment until the readings say dry, and we keep you and your adjuster informed with photos and reports throughout.

Once the structure is dry, our reconstruction team scopes the repairs, agrees the plan with you and with the insurance company if there is a claim, and rebuilds. If your contents needed to be packed out, they come back cleaned. If ducts took on moisture or odor, we clean those too. The goal from the first call to the last walkthrough is the same: a home in Dallas that looks and smells the way it did before the water, with one company responsible for the whole job.

Questions people ask me