Water Mains Can Allow for Major Flood Damages to Your Chicago Residence

8/26/2018 (Permalink)

Water mains and other associated plumbing equipment can malfunction causing flooding in your home. Call SERPVRO right away to remediate.

Team SERVPRO is Always Ready to Help You Deal with Flooding in Your Home Regardless of the Cause

All throughout Chicago, substantial water mains weave through commercial and residential areas. These lines get tapped at every residence to provide drinking water. The size of the line itself gets determined by the draw of usage, and if the lines need to feed storage tanks and other offshoots at future junctions continually. The greater the diameter of the main line, the higher the pressure inside.

Many of the main lines still in service throughout the area are ductile iron. This type was the standard at one point for water lines, and until they see a string of problems happen over a brief period, they do not get changed over to the sturdier and more reliable PVC material that holds up better over time. The trouble with these materials is that they are essentially ticking time bombs waiting for the right circumstances to split or break apart, which can cause nearly immediate flooding damages to your Chicago home in a couple of ways.

Not all water meters contain backflow prevention devices to stop back-siphonage into your home when a water break occurs. Depending on your proximity to the break, an open service line demanding water can create a vacuum when a water break occurs, pulling the contents of the water line into a residence until they break this vacuum by shutting off their service line inside their house. Our SERVPRO professionals can quickly extract this water from the affected area, but not before damages ultimately occur.

Another way that this break could potentially flood your home is simply being downhill from the incident. Water continually flows at a high pressure from this break until valves on the main line get shut down, and by this point, you might already require flood damage restoration services from our experienced SERVPRO professionals.

There are no ways to adequately prepare for the possibility of a main water line break, but there are ways that you can help to limit the damage you might experience. One way is familiarizing yourself with the primary shutoff valve for your service line. If you have already experienced flood damages in your home, give our SERVPRO of Evergreen Park / South Chicago City restoration specialists a call right away at (773) 337-3900.

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