Call your insurance company!!!!!!!! Not many people know that homeowner's insurance covers this! They'll send professionals out who know how to get the water out QUICKLY and dry it out well so you won't have mold growing!!! Definitely submit a claim.
Ok, now that I've said all that, here's how I know firsthand about this.... lol
When I lived in NJ I was away on a trip to California. While I was away, DH (ex-DH now) called to tell me that our basement was flooded. My stepson had clogged the toilet on the first floor of the house and it overflowed and all the water went right down to the basement. This happened on a Sunday night and DH didn't discover it until Monday morning. Poor guy tried to clean it all up himself. When I got home a few days later, I could smell the mold as soon as I walked in the door. I am extremely allergic to mold and I was afraid we'd have to sell our house! I don't know why, but I decided to call our insurance company on the off chance this was covered. Surprisingly, it was! I thought that since we basically caused this ourselves, it wouldn't be covered. They told us to stop all cleaning efforts and within an hour a crew was there. There are companies who specialize in this exact thing. Within 2 days you never would've known there had been a drop of water in that basement.
Ok, fastforward to this past Sept. I was in NJ (I now live in MA) because my mother was very ill (She later died in Oct
). Anyway....my DH woke up on a Sunday morning only to discover that our hotwater heater had burst and there was 4" of water in the basement!! We had just remodeled the basement into a finished family room. The basement had wall to wall carpeting (normally our basement is bone dry). Fortunately he remembered my story of what happened when my basement in NJ got flooded so he immediately called our insurance company. Same thing, different insurance company. They immediately sent out a company and they had that water out of there in a couple of hours, and they left huge blowers and dehumidifiers to completely dry everything out. We were reimbursed for new carpeting (they had to totally rip the carpet out) and for new paint for the walls, as well as items that got destroyed by the water.
Good luck! Call your insurance company and let us know how it goes!!
