In a St. Louis Park house, water damage is usually deeper than it looks. The mid-century construction here — dimensional lumber, plaster or early drywall, block or poured foundations with a cove joint at the floor — wicks and holds moisture in places a visual inspection will not find.
The three categories of water
- Clean water from a supply line, water heater or fixture. Most materials dry in place if the response starts quickly.
- Grey water from an appliance discharge or a sump overflow. Carpet pad and some porous materials come out.
- Black water — sewage or water that has crossed ground. Handled as a health hazard; porous materials are removed, not dried.
Category degrades with time. Clean water sitting three days in a warm finished basement is no longer clean water.
Finding the real boundary
We map the moisture before opening anything. Thermal imaging shows evaporative cooling behind surfaces; pin and pinless meters confirm it numerically. That boundary gets marked, because equipment set only where the floor looks wet leaves a saturated wall cavity untouched behind it.
Then: extraction, removal of unsalvageable material, and a drying system designed to the actual load. Readings daily, equipment adjusted, finished when materials hit the standard rather than when a set number of days has elapsed.
Plaster and old framing
A detail that matters in this city: many pre-1960 homes here have plaster over lath rather than drywall. Plaster behaves differently — it can hold water for a long time without visibly failing, and the lath and cavity behind it stay wet after the surface reads dry. Drying a plaster wall assembly takes longer and needs cavity airflow, and treating it like drywall is how a wall gets closed up wet.
Documentation
We record moisture readings, photographs, the scope of what was removed and why, and which equipment ran where and for how long. That record is what a claim runs on, and it is what answers questions years later at a sale or inspection.
What to do first
- Shut the water off at the source if it is plumbing.
- Cut power to the affected area at the panel if it is safe to reach.
- Get furniture legs, rugs and boxes up off a wet floor.
- Photograph everything before anything moves.
- Do not run a household fan across water that may be contaminated.