Cleanup and drying after a storm drives rain or wet snow into a roof, wall, window or cellar.
Fastest: call (833) 490-5225. Or send this and we call you back.
Storm water damage is water a storm pushes into a building rather than water that leaked out of it: wind-driven rain through a wall or window, wet snow melting through a roof, or runoff into a cellar. The work is extraction, opening what holds water, and measured drying. Phones here are answered 24/7 across Worcester County.
A nor'easter tests a house sideways. Ordinary rain falls on the roof, which is designed for it; a storm with a long easterly fetch drives the same rain horizontally into wall cladding, window heads, door thresholds and any joint that was only ever shedding water downwards. Clapboard, old trim and a porch roof tied into a wall are where it tells.
The wet-snow version does the other half of the damage. Heavy, dense snow sits on a roof, loads a gutter until it pulls or packs a valley solid, and then melts slowly into the house instead of running off it. Add a few hours of power loss and a cellar sump that has stopped, and one storm produces three separate wet areas in one building.
Through a storm the first jobs are the simple ones: get contents out of the way, keep away from anything electrical the water has reached, and get a container under a drip. Then call so a crew can be sent as soon as one is free. In a region-wide storm many houses are calling at once, and we will tell you where things stand rather than promise an hour.
Stay off the roof and off ladders during and after a storm: a wet or snow-loaded roof and a gusting wind are the two conditions that cause the worst falls, and nothing on a roof is worth that. Keep clear of anything electrical the water has touched, treat any downed wire as live, and shut circuits off at the panel rather than at the switch. Run generators and gas pumps outdoors only and well away from windows and the bulkhead, since carbon monoxide kills people in cellars and closed garages every winter. Do not stand under a sagging ceiling, and leave a flooded furnace or boiler for a technician.
The signature nor'easter failure. Hours of rain at a steep angle gets behind clapboard, past a window head or into an old trim joint and wets sheathing, insulation and the back of the plaster. There is often nothing to see on the roof at all, and drying means opening the wall from inside, because a closed cavity has no route out.
Dense snow at the end of a storm loads roofs, packs valleys and bends gutters, and then releases water for days as it melts. Damage appears after the weather has cleared, which makes people assume the storm is not the cause. It is also the condition that sets up an ice dam once the temperature drops again.
Summer and early autumn bring cloudbursts and tropical remnants rather than nor'easters, and the water arrives from the ground instead of the sky. Roadside ditches and driveways deliver it to the lowest foundation on the slope. A local television report described a state of emergency in Orange after a past record-rain event damaged roads and dams, which is the scale these storms can reach.
Tell us what's happening and we'll tell you honestly whether it's a quick fix, and what nor'easter and storm water damage should cost.
Roughly September to April for nor'easters, which bring wind-driven rain and wet snow, with cloudbursts and tropical remnants possible from summer into early autumn. Treat it as a pattern rather than a measurement: the storms that drive water into a wall here come mostly in the colder half of the year.
Autumn storms find the things left over from summer: a gutter full of leaves, a loose piece of trim, a window that has not been painted in years. Midwinter storms arrive as snow and hold their water on the roof instead of delivering it at once, which delays the damage rather than preventing it.
Late-summer storms behave differently again. The ground is often already saturated by the time a tropical remnant arrives, so the water runs rather than soaks, and cellars at the bottom of a slope take it. Each season fails a different part of the same house.
Because the rain did not come from above. A storm wind pushes water sideways into cladding joints, window and door heads, and penetrations such as vents, lights and hose bibs, where ordinary gravity flashing does nothing. The water gets into the wall cavity and travels down inside it before appearing at a baseboard.
Older houses have more of those joints and less behind them. Wood clapboard, plank sheathing and painted trim rely on paint and caulk rather than a modern water-resistive barrier, so a failed caulk line at a window head can take in water for hours during a storm and look perfectly normal the next morning.
The practical consequence is that the opening has to follow the readings. A crew that cuts only where the stain is will miss the top of the cavity, leave the sheathing wet and be called back. Structural drying and dehumidification covers how a wall cavity is dried once it is open.
Protect the room and yourself, and leave the outside alone. Move furniture and anything paper or fabric away from the wet area, put a container under drips, take the circuit off at the panel rather than testing the switch, and photograph everything. Do not go onto a wet or snow-loaded roof, and do not hold a ladder in a wind.
Inside, a towel line at a threshold and a bucket under a ceiling drip really do limit the damage, because the volume reaching the subfloor is what decides whether flooring has to come up. Lift rugs off wet floors and get boxes off a wet cellar floor while you wait.
Then make the call early rather than after the storm has passed, so the house is in the queue while the water is still arriving. Call (833) 490-5225 and say what is wet and whether the power is on, which is what decides what the crew brings.
It changes the job. With no power the sump stops, the heat stops and drying equipment has nothing to run on, so the first visit is about getting water out and preventing more rather than starting the dry. Generators and pumps are used outside only, because the exhaust of either indoors is lethal.
Hill towns here know this combination. In the December 2008 ice storm about 350,000 Massachusetts customers lost power, the Governor declared a state of emergency, and about 77,000 were still without it five days later; a federal emergency declaration covered nine Massachusetts counties.
That is why a storm call includes questions about the panel, the sump and the heat. Power outage and ice storm water damage deals with what happens to a house when the electricity goes rather than the roof.
Sometimes, and only the policy and the insurer can say. Massachusetts policies generally respond to sudden and accidental water entry caused by storm damage to the building, and generally exclude flood and surface water unless flood coverage was bought, and backup or sump failure unless endorsed.
Where the storm actually broke something, documentation of that damage is the whole case: the lifted shingles, the pulled gutter, the broken window, dated and photographed before anybody tidies up. Where water simply came up through a cellar floor, expect a different conversation.
The Massachusetts Division of Insurance Consumer Service Unit takes complaints about how a claim was handled but cannot decide the cause of a loss, and readers in Rindge, Fitzwilliam and New Ipswich go to the New Hampshire Insurance Department. The claims guide sets out the general pattern without quoting any policy.
The technician takes the circuits serving any wet fixture off at the panel, relieves a bulging ceiling with a small controlled hole so the trapped water drains into a container, and checks whether the active entry point can be covered temporarily. Covering in a storm is a holding measure to limit what comes in, never a repair.
Meters and a thermal camera find where the water travelled through cladding, sheathing, cavities, plaster and flooring. Wind-driven water often enters at a window head and shows up at the baseboard, so the crew reads the whole wall rather than the visible mark, and checks the rooms either side.
Wet batt or blown insulation inside a wall cavity is removed. Drywall that has lost strength is cut back to a dry line, and baseboard and flooring are lifted where water has got beneath them. In an older house, damaged plaster and old compound are left alone until they have been checked against the asbestos rules.
Cellar water is pumped and extracted, then air movers go on the opened framing and sheathing while dehumidifiers carry the released moisture out of the air. Readings on studs, sheathing, sills and subfloor are logged on each visit, so the end of drying is a number rather than an opinion.
You get photographs, the meter log and a list of what was removed, which is what an insurer asks for and what a builder needs. Siding, roofing, window and carpentry work are separate quotes; ask whoever gives them for their Home Improvement Contractor registration and look it up yourself on mass.gov.
Baldwinville is a mill village in the Otter River valley, and the storm-facing side of a house here is usually the one with the oldest paint. Clapboard, plank sheathing and painted trim handle vertical rain well and a fourteen-hour easterly far less well, which is why so many winter storm calls in the Templeton villages turn out to be wall damage rather than roof damage.
Exposure varies a good deal across the area we cover. Open hilltops in Ashburnham, Westminster and Princeton take the full wind and lose power readily, while the valley centres of Athol, Orange and Winchendon sit on the Millers River and get the runoff from everything upstream of them.
Storms here also arrive on top of each other. A wet-snow storm followed by a cold snap becomes an ice dam, and a thaw with rain on it becomes a cellar problem, so a single December can produce three different jobs in one house. Ice dam water damage and snowmelt and spring thaw basement water cover the two sequels.
Not sure if you're covered? Check your ZIP code.
Cleanup and drying when an ice storm takes out power and leaves a house without heat, pumps or circuits for days.
Drying and cleanup when meltwater backed up behind an ice dam and ran into ceilings, walls and insulation.
Drying and damage assessment after a roof leak, bathroom plumbing or upstairs appliance wets a ceiling or the framing above it.
Cleanup, sanitising and drying after river water or ice-jam backwater reaches a cellar or a ground floor.
Call during it. Phones are answered around the clock and a crew is sent as soon as one is free, and in a region-wide storm the queue is real, so being in it early matters. What you can do in the meantime is limit the volume: containers under drips, contents out of the way, power off to the wet area.
Probably. Wind-driven rain that got into a wall cavity does not leave when the weather clears; it sits in the sheathing and the insulation where there is no airflow. The surface can look dry within a day while the cavity stays wet for weeks, which is how storm damage becomes a mold question months later.
Temporary covering is sometimes used to limit what is still coming in, and it is exactly that: a measure to reduce the water, not a repair and not a guarantee it stops. It is not done in a gale or on a snow-loaded roof. The roof itself is roofing work and is quoted separately by whoever does that trade.
By where the water is and when it appeared. Storm water follows the weather, concentrates on one elevation of the house and is often widest at the top of a wall; a supply or waste leak runs regardless of weather and is usually worst nearest a fixture or a pipe run. Meter patterns and timing settle it quickly.
The lower few feet are worth taking off with a roof rake from the ground, which removes the water supply and some of the load. Do not climb up to do it and do not chip at ice. If the roof is deep in heavy snow and you are worried about the structure, that is a question for a builder, not a drying crew.
What is wet and where, whether the power and heat are on, whether water is still coming in, and whether a cellar is involved and how deep. If you have a sump, say whether it is running. That is enough to decide what equipment comes, and it saves a wasted trip in the middle of a storm.