Water damage in the bathroom sounds like an oxymoron. How can you experience water damage in a room that’s designed to deal with constant water usage? In a dream world, your bathroom can withstand whatever water issues are thrown at it. However, out here in the real world, that’s not going to happen.
You shouldn’t experience many problems when using your shower or faucet, but you can easily deal with severe water damage from big plumbing issues like burst pipes or broken fixtures. Because of how a bathroom is designed, water damage will usually appear on any non-tiled walls, the ceiling, or the floor. It’s easy to assume you know how to deal with bathroom water damage – but most people always make these common mistakes:
Not Identifying The Source Of The Damage
There’s every chance you’ve done this in the past. You notice some signs of water damage in your bathroom, which are identifiable by dark patches of dampness appearing. You deal with the issue and clean it up, but you never truly find the source of the damage.
The easiest assumption is to expect water damage to come from excess humidity in the bathroom. Realistically, the issue could’ve come from a hidden pipe or another plumbing concern you can’t see. By not identifying this, you’ve not removed the source, so the water damage will keep returning.
Always find what causes water damage and look for things like hidden moisture in the walls or ceiling that could linger and cause more long-term problems in your bathroom.
Failing To Dry Out The Bathroom Correctly
When there’s a lot of standing water in a damaged area, you know how to remove it. You use tools or pumps to get the water out, leaving the area as dry as possible. Unfortunately, this is where the second mistake always appears.
People will start putting things back together without letting the bathroom dry out as fully as possible. If there’s even a tiny bit of moisture in floor beams or parts of the ceiling, this can cause swelling/warping that leads to structural damage.
You need to use dehumidifiers and other tools to dry everything out properly. It’s worth working with a water damage remediation company to handle stuff like this, as they have access to industrial tools that can dry faster and better than anything you have at home. The result is a bathroom that’s utterly devoid of moisture and ready to be repaired.
Not Cleaning Any Water Damaged Areas
By far the worst mistake you can make when dealing with bathroom water damage is to avoid cleaning the areas after drying them out. Water damage means one thing: mold!
You’ll see lots of black mold spores around the water-damaged areas that need to be removed for your health & safety. In fairness, most of you will remove mold that’s blatantly obvious to see. It’s the stuff you don’t notice or can’t see that’s the problem! Water damage may leave lingering effects for mold to start spawning, so you can’t take any risks.
Always spray down the area with the right cleaning tools to remove 100% of the bacteria and pathogens on the surfaces. Even if there’s no mold, water damage can mean lots of harmful things are lingering around your bathroom, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. Give the entire area a full-blown clean to ensure you’re not living in a room with hidden health concerns.
Choosing Not To Replace Water Damaged Areas
Finally, you might clean a water-damaged area and think that this solves the problem. The correct thing to do is replace or restore the area instead. Why? Because a water-damaged structure is not going to be stable anymore. It’ll be weaker – and it also usually looks worse for wear as well.
Replacing part of your wall or flooring makes far more sense than just carrying on as usually after you’ve cleaned the water damage. It gives this area a new lease of life and means it starts afresh. You might want to consider changing or replacing entire sections of your bathroom as well. For example, if you keep getting water damage under your wall tiles, it could signify that they’re either not installed correctly or just very poor-quality tiles. Switching to a completely different type of bathroom tile will prevent further water damage from happening.
Remember, water damage can happen in your bathroom, even when you don’t expect it. Know how to deal with this by avoiding the four mistakes listed above and you’ll fix the problem in no time.
