When Your Home Office Suffers Water Damage

Telework gets more popular every year; more than 5 million people telecommute. The benefits are many: no commute time, less pollution, increased productivity, more flexible hours, improved morale. However, if your Columbus home is hit with a water emergency, your business is a risk. Running a business from home means you learn to expect the unexpected. Water damage can come from inside the structure or external sources: rain, floods, hurricanes. We at Southeast Restoration want you to be prepared and develop a contingency plan in case of an emergency.

Before – Plan For The Worst

Take action before disaster strikes; think of your contingency plan as a fire drill. While you may never have water damage in the office, it’s good to know so you can be prepared.  

Do a mental exercise: assume that your home and all of its contents are permanently destroyed. From that scenario, list each item that would be important to your business if salvaged and what must be recreated from scratch in order to continue. Your list will highlight the urgency of 1) loss of equipment and 2) loss of productivity.  

Home business owners often believe their general homeowner’s insurance policy thoroughly covers them; it is not always the case. Review your policy; consider additional business insurance policies for home business owners. These policies can help cover office and business equipment. Don’t assume anything- clarify coverage for cell phones, tablets, and laptop computers located in your designated home office on your property.

During- Protect From Further Damage

When you have unwanted water in your home or business you need to know what to do now. The difference in waiting just a few hours before you take action can mean hundreds, even thousands of dollars worth on additional damage to your home and belongings.

Safety First. Turn off all power to rooms that are affected. If there are any sagging ceilings, do not walk under them. Do not turn any overhead lights if the ceiling is wet or operate electrical appliances while standing on wet carpets or floors.  

Call a competent water damage restoration contractor to do a controlled ‘dry down’. Don’t wait. Southeast Restoration firm understands the critical nature of a water damage loss and will respond quickly, even after business hours and on weekends.

After Picking Up The Pieces

Water damage in your home office can arise from damage to office equipment and furniture, destruction of computer files and paper records and loss of income when the incident forces your operations to shut down.  

If you are a remote employee, immediately contact your Human Resources department. They may use a pre-authorizing procedure to generate a purchase order for your water damage restoration team.

If you are a self-employed contractor, you are on your own. After you get the water situation handled, there may be additional resources for you:

• In addition to various state and local economic development programs, the federal government offers relief to disaster victims, including small business owners, through various sources. Be sure to consult the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) excellent disaster assistance office.
• When a natural disaster hits your small business, first contact FEMA to apply for financial assistance. They can provide money for housing along with other personal expenses including food, clothing and medicine.
• The SBA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture both provide low-interest loans for damaged and destroyed assets in a declared disaster. These include repair and replacement costs for real estate, personal property, machinery, equipment, inventory, and business assets.

Depending on your situation, disaster unemployment assistance helps individual employees while they’re unemployed due to a disaster, and flood recovery assistance can help workers displaced by flooding.

Get Back To Work In Columbus

Emergency services are the initial steps to recovering your space and your workflow. SRG also provides professional deodorization, complete sanitizing,  air duct cleaning, odor removal, and structural repairs. Southeast Restoration Group is licensed, reliable and experienced. Contact us to restore your home office, or any living space, after water damage.