Water damage contractors are getting a lot of calls as snow and rain saturate homes, and they say the worst is likely yet to come.
“I really think that it's barely even started in terms of the cleanup portion of it,” said Luke Draeger, sales manager for Aramsco, a company that rents water cleanup equipment to contractors.
He ordered a truck full of fans, filters, and dehumidifiers from California last week as an ominous forecast came into focus.
“We brought in about eight to 10 times more than what we would normally keep on hand in anticipation of a big spike in demand,” Draeger said.
Ben Surdi, owner of Pure Dry Restoration in Woodinville, was working on chaining up the tires on one of his response vans Tuesday morning as damage reports stacked up.
“This is probably the highest volume of work that we've seen, because we haven't seen a winter like this for a long time with this amount of snowfall,” said Surdi, who has crews working around the clock.
Most of his business right now is from burst pipes, but Surdi is anticipating more calls related to flooding and melting snow in the coming days.
“Unfortunately I think we're probably at the beginning of what's to come with water damage,” he said.
Contractors recommend homeowners turn off the water supply to outdoor faucets and cover any fixtures exposed to cold air. Clear any outdoor drains of ice and debris, so water doesn’t pool and leak into nearby buildings.