Water damage questions East Bay callers ask
These are the questions East Bay callers put to SOS Restoration of East Bay before agreeing to anything. Short answers first, in the order they get asked. If yours is not here, the number below reaches a dispatcher, not a menu, and asking costs nothing.
Somebody answers and a van leaves. Looking is on us. CSLB #1131134 · IICRC #70194273
Does it cost anything to look?
No. The visit, the meter readings and the answer are free.
That includes the times the answer is that you do not have a problem.
How long does water take to dry out?
Usually three to five days; the equipment decides, not the calendar.
A house is dry when the readings say so, taken daily and written down. Clean water caught the same day on a hard floor can be two days. The same water under a floating floor, found a week later, can run a fortnight.
Do I have to move out?
Usually not; it depends where the water is, not how much.
Equipment is loud and runs overnight, so a bedroom above the work is worse than a kitchen beside it. It becomes a real question with contaminated water, or when the only bathroom is involved. We say which on the first visit, not later.
Do I call you or a plumber first?
The plumber, if water is still arriving. Stopping the source comes first.
Once it stops, the clock is ours. Material wet past about two days stops being a drying problem and becomes a replacement one. If you cannot find the valve, call us anyway and we will talk you to it.
Will you deal with my insurance?
We document it; we do not negotiate it.
Dated readings, images before the first cut, and one scope. That is the file a field adjuster for your carrier asks for. It separates a claim that moves from one that stalls.
We will not tell you it is covered. We are not your insurer, and that sentence has cost people money. The claim side has its own page.
I rent, is this my problem?
The deed-holder owns the wall and the choice to open it.
A tenant cannot authorize demolition in someone else’s home, and an owner who delays gets a bigger loss. In stacked buildings, the master policy and the unit policy split one wall. That answer is in the governing documents, not an opinion.
Do I need a mold test?
Often not, and anyone who says always is selling the test.
If you see it and know the source, a test confirms what you already know. It earns its money when the source is unclear, or someone is unwell. Or when a sale or dispute needs a third-party result. The mold page goes through it.
Do you build it back?
Yes. Same company, same file, one crew that knows the wall.
Mitigation is priced by the hour, and those rates are published. Reconstruction is a written total agreed before work starts, which is California law. What moves it is set out on the rebuild page.
When should you hire nobody?
A spilled glass is a towel; a weeping window is caulking.
A stain that shows after rain and nowhere else is a roofer. None of those are our jobs, and we would rather say so in two minutes than in an invoice. That is why looking is free: the honest no beats the expensive yes.
Everything else runs across the East Bay: the drying, then the building back. Ask in writing if that is easier. The form reaches the same desk. CSLB #1131134 · IICRC #70194273.
What will you not sell us?
Work the building does not need, even when somebody else already quoted it.
When the meter stops moving, the drying is done. The number stays in the file, so whoever comes next has to answer to a reading instead of a hunch.
Rather write it than talk? Leave it here and we call you back.
The number is the part that matters. The rest just tells us which crew to send and how far up the road they are going.
If your water damage question is not on this page, ask it out loud: (341) 220-0032 reaches our dispatcher at any hour, and the answer is free whether or not it turns into a job.
Sewage, storm damage, mold, fire and smoke, water, and the reconstruction that follows them, for Oakland and the twenty-four East Bay cities around it. Any hour, any day. Se habla español.