What to do in the first 48 hours after water gets into your house
The gap between a water loss and a mold job is about two days in this climate. What you do inside that window largely decides which of the two you end up paying for.
Extraction, opened assemblies, dehumidification. What the first two days should end up looking like.
- 24–48 hrsFrom wetting to the start of growth on organic material at South Florida temperatures. This is the whole clock.
- 3 categoriesClean, gray, and black water. The category decides what can be dried and kept, and what has to go regardless.
- Before you move itPhotograph everything first. It is the cheapest thing on this page and the one people skip.
This is written for the person standing in it right now, so it is ordered by the clock rather than by topic. Skim the headings, do the thing under the one you are in.
The two-day figure is not ours. It is the window the EPA puts on drying out a flooded house, and their plainer version of it is that things left wet for more than two days usually get moldy. Everything below is about spending that window well.
It applies to a supply line, a water heater, an air conditioning overflow, and to wind-driven rain and roof intrusion after a tropical system — which in August and September is most of why people call.
The first hour
In this order. The photographs genuinely come before the cleanup.
- Make it safe before you make it dry If water is anywhere near outlets, a panel, or a submerged appliance, kill the power to that area at the breaker before you walk in it. If the ceiling is holding water and bulging, stay out from under it — a saturated drywall ceiling comes down as a sheet, and it comes down without warning. How to checkStanding water plus energised circuits is the one hazard on this page that can actually hurt you.
- Stop the source Supply line or water heater: shut the main. Air conditioning overflow: switch the system off at the thermostat and the breaker, and put a container under the drain pan. Roof or window intrusion during a storm: you generally cannot stop it, so move to containing where it lands.
- Photograph everything before you move anything Wide shots of each affected room, then close-ups of the source, the standing water, the wet materials, and every damaged item. Get the water line on the wall while it is still visible. Video walking through, narrating what you are seeing, is even better. How to checkThis is what your claim is built on, and it cannot be recreated once you start cleaning up. Five minutes now.
- Call your carrier and start a claim file Even if you are not sure you will file. Note the time, the claim number, and who you spoke to. Most Florida policies impose a duty to mitigate — meaning you are expected to act promptly to limit damage — so starting the clock formally protects you.
Hours one to six: get the water out
Every gallon you remove mechanically is a gallon nobody has to pay to evaporate later, and evaporation is the expensive half of drying.
- Extract standing waterA wet/dry shop vacuum, a pump, or a mop and bucket. Do not use a household vacuum cleaner on standing water — it is not rated for it and it is a shock hazard.
- Get furniture up off wet flooringAluminium foil, plastic blocks, or wood scraps under the legs. Wooden and metal furniture legs will bleed stain and rust into wet carpet within hours, and that transfer is usually permanent.
- Lift area rugs off wet floorsThey will both stay wetter and mark the floor underneath. Get them out of the room entirely if you can.
- Take out what is already lost, but photograph it firstSaturated carpet pad, soaked cardboard, wet paper. Bag it and set it aside rather than binning it immediately — an adjuster may want to see it.
- Open cabinet doors and drawers, pull toe kicksThe cavity under a kitchen cabinet run holds water and dries last. It is one of the most common places we find growth six weeks after a “dried” loss.
- Do not start cutting drywall yetUnless water is actively pooling behind it. Where and how high to cut is a decision made from moisture readings, and cutting in the wrong place turns a contained loss into a bigger repair.
Which water you are dealing with
This is the single biggest factor in what can be saved.
- Category 1 — cleanA supply line, a water heater, rainwater through a roof. If it is addressed quickly, most materials can be dried in place and kept.
- Category 2 — grayDishwasher or washing machine discharge, toilet overflow with no solids, aquarium water. Some porous material can be saved if it is dried fast; much of it cannot.
- Category 3 — blackSewage, a toilet backflow past the trap, ground surface water, and storm surge or flood water. Nothing porous that it touched gets dried and kept. Not carpet, not pad, not drywall, not insulation. This is not an upsell and it is not negotiable.
- Category degrades with timeCategory 1 water sitting in a warm house for two days with organic material in it is no longer Category 1. The clock changes the answer, which is why the clock is the point of this page.
Should you run the air conditioning?
This is the question we get most often on these calls, and the answer genuinely goes both ways.
Run it if the water did not reach the air handler, the ducts, or the closet the equipment sits in. In South Florida the air conditioner is a dehumidifier, ambient humidity is what makes drying slow here, and a running system meaningfully helps.
Do not run it if water reached the air handler, the return, the plenum, or any part of the duct system — or if the ceiling above the equipment is what got wet. A running blower in a wet system distributes whatever is starting to grow to every room in the house, and it converts a contained equipment problem into a whole-house one before anybody has looked at it.
If you lost power in a storm and the house has been closed and hot for two days, that matters as much as the water did. An unconditioned South Florida house sits near outdoor humidity within hours, and everything in this guide runs faster in those conditions.
Hours six to forty-eight: why fans alone are not drying
The instinct is to point every fan in the house at the wet spot. Air movement is genuinely half the job — it strips the saturated boundary layer off a wet surface so evaporation can continue — but it is only half.
The other half is taking that moisture out of the air, and in a climate where outdoor air is already at 70 or 80 percent relative humidity, opening windows and running box fans mostly moves wet air around. What actually dries a South Florida house is dehumidification capacity: a refrigerant dehumidifier with a drain, sized to the space, running continuously. Rent one the same day if you are doing this yourself.
Watch the materials, not the surface. A tile floor feels dry long before the slab under it and the drywall behind the baseboard are. If you can borrow or buy a cheap moisture meter, take readings on affected material and on the same material in an unaffected room, and keep going until they match.
When to stop and call somebody
Any one of these is reason enough to stop and call. You do not need several of them.
Also call if you are simply not sure. Ask what a visit costs when you call — the honest outcome is sometimes that you have already handled it and do not need us, which is a genuinely useful thing to be told on day two rather than discovered on day forty.
- The water was Category 2 or 3Anything that is not clean supply-line water — appliance discharge, ground water, or sewage.
- It has been more than about 48 hoursPast that window in this climate you are not drying a building any more, you are removing material from it.
- More than roughly one room is affectedScale changes the equipment and the containment, and both of those change what the job is.
- Water reached wall cavities or ran under cabinetryYou cannot verify those are dry from the room side, and that is where do-it-yourself drying usually fails.
- The air handler or the ducts were involvedA wet air system distributes whatever grows in it to every room the moment it runs again.
- Someone in the house is vulnerableImmunocompromised, pregnant, undergoing treatment, or significant respiratory disease. It changes the advice, not only the work.
What people ask about this
How long before mold starts growing after water damage?
Twenty-four to forty-eight hours on organic material at South Florida temperatures, and faster if the power is out and the house is warm and closed. That window is why response time genuinely matters on these calls rather than being a sales line.
Can I just dry it myself?
For a small Category 1 loss caught within hours — a supply line under a sink, caught the same day — often yes, if you extract properly and run real dehumidification rather than just fans. What you cannot do yourself is verify that a wall cavity or the space under a cabinet run is dry, and that is where these come back.
My ceiling is stained from the storm but everything feels dry now. Do I need anything?
Possibly not, but do not assume. A stain means water passed through and sat somewhere. What matters is whether the insulation above it is still wet and whether the drywall reads dry against an unaffected reference. Both are quick to check and neither is visible from the room.
Should I throw out wet carpet?
Photograph it first, then it depends on the category and the timing. Carpet from Category 1 water caught quickly can often be saved; the pad underneath usually cannot and is cheap to replace. Anything touched by Category 3 water goes, without exception.
Will insurance cover this?
For a sudden, accidental discharge — a supply line, a water heater, an air conditioning overflow — usually yes, subject to your deductible, and mold that results from it is typically covered up to a sublimit ($10,000 is a common Florida figure). Flood and storm surge are a separate policy entirely and are not covered by standard homeowners insurance. Gradual seepage is generally excluded. Document everything from hour one either way.
Where people go from here
See every stage of a real remediation → — the page this guide is asking you to hold a contractor to.
Is anything still wet right now?
That is the question that decides whether this is a drying job or a removal job, and the answer changes by the hour. Call rather than write if the water is still there.