Rainbow International based in Tilbury has completed a significant water damage insurance claim today which happened in August 2019 let’s explain why it took so long.
The customer suffered in August 2019 a flood from their loft, the water tank burst. The mains were running for what was expected for two weeks. If you can imagine 6 ltrs water per minute times two weeks, Ahh this home had in the area of 121,000L of water contaminating all areas. To make matters worse as this was in August 19 the heat created significant mould contamination which was hazardous to health.
This was an urgent job that needed professional attention ASAP.
The customers rang their insurance company in a total panic, what were they meant to do!
The insurance company immediately appointed ourselves to deal with the flood damage. We attended within 2 hours of receiving the call and started the restoration process. On our first visit, a scene of the devastation faced our operatives and to make matters worse it was clear that the structures possibly contained asbestos materials.
We had to stop working and using our qualified technicians we removed samples of possible ACM’s and had them tested for asbestos. The claim now worsens, the samples removed did contain asbestos. This was very unfortunate as it delays the restoration operation.
After gaining permission we had all asbestos-containing materials removed from the home to be disposed of in an authorised waste disposal unit. We could only then and start the restoration of the home.
To dry the home we needed to remove the damaged structures and content so that no further damage could be caused we installed a stabilisation system which maintains the relative humidity and stops further damage from occurring.
All rooms had been affected, the structure was saturated, we removed all of the contents which could be restored and produced inventories of those items which were beyond restoration and needed to be replaced.
We were then able to install our drying equipment to start the drying process so that the building repairs and building restoration could be passed to the clients building contractor.
All drying was completed in 19 days.
Now the home could be passed to the building contractor to return the home back to its former condition.
We are now at the end of September 2019 all going as expected the client should be able to return soon.
In October 2019 the builders contact us, they advise that the central heating system has failed and leaked and much of the works we had completed needed our attention again.
Second leaks are unfortunately common and as in this case create delays and further damage.
We returned and dried the home again, we are now near the end of November 2019 and the builders were reappointed to undertake the works as scheduled.
Works commenced mid-December 2019, Christmas came and went, January, February 2020 came and went the works are nearly completed then COVID 19 hits. Even though the works are all but completed the shut down of all operation stopped the builders completing the last few jobs.
All suppliers have shut nothing moved!
In June the building company was able to finalise the last few outstanding items, to the customer’s great relief they finally had their home back and just required the contents which had now been in storage since September 2019.
All restored contents were returned to the customer’s full satisfaction.
Due to a second leak and COVID 19 this claim remained open for almost 12 months.
