Hurricane Flood Cleanup & House Mucking

Clean up – House Saving Notes From the Mucking Trenches…

With the recent devastating hurricane, it’s time to re-visit some Fix It Wise Tips from our time mucking out homes in Houston. Four homes in ten days… it was both heartbreaking as well as uplifting to see a community come together to start to rebuild.

Hurricane Harvey. We had seen the pictures in the news. But nothing prepared us for what we witnessed when we arrived. The subdivisions that we had grown up in. Subdivisions that our mother and the families of many friends that we grew up with were devastated. Entire homes, emptied of all their belongings, piled up to the rooflines in the front yards. Every house, every street… It was surreal. After the initial shock settled in, we knew we had our work cut our for us.

As we now know, Hurricane Harvey was a particularly nasty hurricane that made landfall in the Houston area in August of 2017. Notably, the vast majority of the damage was not caused by wind, but by the catastrophic flooding as the storm stalled over Houston dumping and more than 60 inches of rain within four days. Harvey’s rainfall was so extreme that the National Weather Service had to update the colors on its weather charts to account for it. The storm also caused one-third of Houston to flood, and the weight of the water temporarily sank the city by nearly an inch! Unfortunately, the storm caused 100 deaths and was the costliest natural disaster ever recorded in Texas.

I am never surprised by the things you can learn down in the trenches… in the practical / real world. However, a few things that we learned in Houston did surprised me…

What To Expect – Mucking Out A Flooded Home

For sure know that stores will be out of ALL supplies needed, as far as probably the next state. Try to get friends and family to bring you supplies from outside of the affected areas. As soon as the storm hit, I ran to a store in the Central Texas area where we lived and bought every large fan that they had. I knew we had our work cut out for us!

The number one goal in a house with one, two, three, eight feet of water damage is to GET IT DRY ASAP! First the carpet has to be pulled. Then open ALL wall cavities. All the way up to the water line, probably a bit higher to completely remove anything that is wet. In Houston this primarily meant sheetrock, floor trim, cabinets, tile and of course any insulation within the wall.

This has to be done as soon as possible. Even a few days of wet walls can cause dangerous mold, unbearable stench and structural rot. Pull out the wet insulation and get the air moving into the walls with fans. You would be surprised how quickly you can dry out a house this way. In as little as a couple of days, if you can get the air conditioner working, (or a dehumidifier if you are so lucky). Even without the dry air provided by an AC or dehumidifier. Simply getting the air moving inside those wall cavities will eventually dry them out and prevent mold. If you get it dry quick enough, before nasty things start happening in all of that wetness, you can usually live in the home, until the final repairs are made.

Speed is the key here… Usually it’s fastest just to break the sheetrock out with your bare hands after punching a few holes in it with a blunt tool. We used hammers, crow bars, pry bars. Just be aware of hidden, live electrical wires running behind the sheetrock. Therefore, DO NOT USE SHARP TOOLS! We saw people using axes, hatches, wrecking bars. Do not use these sharp tools!

You might get lucky finding the first seam, four feet up, on the first sheet of 4′ x 8′ sheetrock. Although this usually takes someone familiar with sheetrock construction. These 4×8 sheets are usually installed laying sideways. Cut along that tape line at approximately four feet high with a utility knife. Your really don’t have to cut all the way through. If you can just score it, it should tear along that score line, whenever you pull the lower piece out with your hands. Just start punching holes in the lower sheetrock, grabbing sections with your hands and pull it out. The wetter the sheet rock, the easier it is to pull out. This whole process is easier and faster than you would think. Sheetrock is incredibly weak!

Note: The whole purpose of removing only the first 4×8 sheet of sheetrock is that the upper wall sections can be reused. Therefore, whenever a contractor comes back in, all they have to do is replace the bottom sections with a whole new 4×8 sheet. It’s easy (much less expensive) to tape and finish the seam to make the old match up to the new. Of course this all assumes that you had less than four feet of water in the home. Any higher and the entire wall of sheetrock must be removed.

Removing the first layer of sheet rock is the easy part! Also note that the walls need to be opened behind base cabinets as well. Everywhere… even behind tiled areas. All walls must be opened up at the bottom wet areas. This way the fans can get the dry, moving air into it.

You can do this. My wife and I mucked out a stranded elderly lady’s house in one day – whole first floor… by ourselves.

NOTES FROM THE TRENCHES

1. Wet / Dry Shop vacs are invaluable. Try to buy the most powerful one you can. Bring two filters. AND CLEAN THE FILTERS OFTEN, BY REMOVING THEM AND BANGING THEM OUT! Do this outside, with a dust mask on and empty the container outside as well – its messy. Usage tip: A shop vac has an exhaust port, if you try to start your work at an entry door (with the exhaust port pointing out the door) and then move in the direction of cleanup, the exhaust will only hit clean floor and not stir up as much dust – your volunteers’ lungs will thank you.
2. Brooms stir up too much dust – use them sparingly.
3. Oddly… People that would never think of smoking have an aversion to wearing a dust mask. Just remember that you are breathing 40 years of pesticides that have ever been sprayed in the house – same reason I can’t stand having carpet in the house. If the home was built before the 70’s it also contains asbestos and lead paint! 100% guaranteed!
4. Muck out crews are forgetting about the A/C filters. You’ll need to bring extra of those too. A tremendous amount of dust will be created during this muck out process and it’s imperative that you keep the air conditioner working properly to dehumidify the house. All the dust clogs up this most efficient de-humidifying machine. We noted at one house they just removed the filters because they were clogged… a really bad idea! All that dust will clog your evaporator coil and possibly ruin it.
5. We saw people leaving doors and windows open and they are just sucking in more humidity and the dry cold air is escaping. However, in one house we pulled sheetrock and insulation from, the stench was so bad, we had to open the windows. (Note: Beware of HAZMAT situations – if a structure has been sitting too long and dangerous molds and toxins / smells have built up, you must open windows for fresh air. We gutted one home that had been sitting for over a week with wet sheetrock, and we had to open the windows… and it even had the A/C on! A friend told a story of going into a house that had been sitting for over a week with no A/C and no doors or windows open, they could not stay in the house for 30 seconds, the stench and hazard was so bad.
6. Every homeowner was reluctant to hack out cabinets. You must know that no cabinet can withstand a flood, accept that it’s now trash and you have to open up the back, especially where they are attached to exterior or garage walls that will have insulation in them. (As a muck out crew – be prepared for this emotional talk with the homeowner.)
   Two great tools for this: A RotoZip and a Reciprocating saw. A reciprocating saw makes quick work of it. The Ax blade (Google it)The blades can cut through walls that contain wood, plaster, nails and aluminum. By Milwaukee (Saws-all) brand. It’s aggressive, so hold on tight! JUST NOTE TO WATCH THE DEPTH OF CUT – ELECTRICAL WIRES ARE BEHIND THOSE CABINETS AS WELL.
7. You’re going to have to take out either 4 foot or 8 foot of Sheetrock. It’s easier for the Sheetrock contractor to put up whole sheets during the remodel. And you don’t really have to cut in a straight line. Just keep it under 4 feet, if your wet area is below that. I’m finding that it’s pretty easy to punch through in a “somewhat” even horizontal line at the highest “soft” portion with a blunt tool like a hammer or crow bar. (A RotoZip with its ability to set the depth of cut comes in handy in tight spaces but this creates a ton of dust.) For the punching through with a blunt instrument, you just need enough to get your hand in and pull off the bottom section, then pull off the portion above where you punched, and if you are lucky, it will just break along the 4 foot seam line.
8. Cabinets: Just rip the doors off the hinges and hack out the bottom back area to access the Sheetrock and possible insulation behind it, might save expensive granite countertops for reuse.
9. I’m shocked at how many people don’t know that flood insurance only covers rising water. Not runoff water, not water from a roof or window leak – nothing but rising flood water. (Homeowners insurance might cover these others issues – this is not meant as insurance advice – talk to you insurance broker – I’m not one.
10. Be aware of exposing live electrical outlets. Warn others not to touch them. I am not licensed to give electrical advice (so use the at your own risk) AND I’m sure OSHA would not approve of exposing live electrical outlets. All I have to say is that I’m not sure how you would get all of this done in time – without exposing them.
11. Bring two wonder bars (it’s a pry bar – Google it)
12. A Long Handle, Heavy Duty Floor Scraper is a fantastic tool to scrap / pry off those nasty wooden carpet strips along the floor at the walls. These are full of very sharp, very rusty little nails. Please, for your safety remove these as soon as the carpet is ripped out. The same floor scraper can be used to make quick work of removing the baseboards. They can not be reused!
13. Bring a long flat blade screwdriver for scraping Sheetrock out of tight spaces.
14. A good goal is to have the entire wooden 2 x 4 floor plate (AKA bottom plate or Sill Plate) exposed to air flow all around it and so you can bleach or apply fungicides. This is the 2 x 4 that the studs connect to and is anchored to the concrete slab. Believe me, it easier said than done in tight spaces!!! See the attached pic of the wall I opened that was sandwiched between a fireplace and the kitchen cabinets.