help!!!!!

[corivus]

So I came home last night and my css125 overflowed all over the ground. the problem was it overflowed 30g of water while I was at work. and all the water seems to of gone into the walls.... we have wood laminate floors that are sealed so thats the only place I could think that all that water would of gone to. Am I going to have to tear out a wall and replace drywall?

[Stirfry001]

My buddy had the waterline in his bathroom bust and dump around 8,000 gallons of water in his house. They cut holes in the drywall and set up huge fans and dehumidifiers. It took about a week to get the water out. You run the chance of getting mold in the walls. is there any discoloring of the drywall or base boards? If you are really worried you should call one of the companies that deals with the Water/Fire cleanup.

[glassguy]

the answer is maybe....put some fans on it asap and leave for a couple of days to dry out. Usually that will do it...check for damage Ie: buckling or soft drywall and just wait. If your worried about mold that's usually b.s....mold forms when theres repeat instances of water damage and a food source.
dry it out quickly..and no problem, mold people find mold every time its their job!
hope this helps.

[clintrandall]

You think the water is under the floors? That's not good. That happened to me, with about 10 gallons, and I had to replace the whole hallway. If you can, pull off the baseboards on one side and step on the floor right by the wall. If water squishes out, its under the floor and you have to dry that out ASAP or lose the floor.

All in all, the flooring is a much bigger deal than the drywall because if water is trapped under there, it will all buckle and swell in a day or so and need to be completely replaced. You'll have to make sure you get water out from under though or mold will certainly follow.

Sorry man! That's one of the reasons I went from a 120 to a 50.
Clint

P.S. If flooring does have to be replaced, I'll help you and we'll do it a lot cheaper than the restoration company.

Regarding the flood experts, they will check everything but they charge insane prices. It happened to my friend recently to her 700 square foot studio and they charged $10000 to redo the floors, baseboards and repaint. Actually it was $2000 just to put dryers in and let them sit for a few days.

[corivus]

I did the squish test last night and no squish, checked for buckling and warping this morning. and nothing, started running a fan on the dry wall and cracks just to be sure.

I'm going to keep an eye on it over the next few days to be sure but I dunno. I actually used to work for one of the companies that takes the samples of mold in walls and everything so thats why I got freaked out when it overflowed so much water...

I'm not sure if I'm overly lucky or not but this makes me want to go with a different skimmer now... its done this twice before where it goes haywire after 4 weeks of working just fine then it goes back to normal. That or switch it to in tank instead of hob...

[clintrandall]

Yeah, there's something about not having to worry about it going crazy. Skimmer's are pretty sensitive to that and there's no way to guarantee that it will stay stable. Is there a way to drill a hole near the top and put a small overflow pipe that leads back to the sump or something? Do you have a sump?

[hermanx7]

ya the pro's will cost an arm and a leg. I deal with this alot due to my job. I am a Maintenance Supervisor on a 400+ unit property and have been doing it for years. I actually had to get certified on mold removal. Lawsuits and all. The key to this to get it dry in 48 hours. There has to be stagnet water for at least that time for mold to start to grow. I would take a screw driver and punch alot of holes in the walls. Then cut small strips out at the bottom of the wall and put carpet blowers at the bottom of the walls blowing in. The air will vent out the holes from the screw driver. If you have the money get a dehumidifier to help extract the water out of the air. They will make a room get hot though. It usually will dry the drywall in a day or so then keep it going for about 2 more days so that the wood inside the wall will dry. That is the hard part. Wood that is butted up agaist concrete or other wood takes longer to dry. (No air flow) But because there is no real air getting to it, it takes longer for the mold to grow. If you need a moisture tester to check it let me know by pm and I will bring one you can borrow to the auction. This will tell you when its time to do all those drywall repairs. Sorry if I was long winded.

Thomas

[corivus]

Acutally its already drilled for that, it goes into a 5 gallon bucket which overfilled in the 8 hours I was at work :( at the time it's happened before and the bucket has been enough but this time it was to much, and there is no sump yet, the 55 ironically enough will be the sump for my 60 reef once its setup

[corivus]

well good news, looks like i dodged the bullet no warping or anything else like that I got some tips from skip at atr so I'm going to do that with the skimmer tonight