Sewer backup
Sewer Backup Cleanup, Collingwood
Category 3 water. Nothing porous that it touched is saved, the room is contained before anything is moved, and that is not us being careful.
This is the one job on this site where the advice is to stay out of the room, close the door and call somebody, rather than to start moving things.
Category 3, and what it removes from the table
The ANSI/IICRC S500 framework puts water into three categories by its source and its contamination. Sewage is the third, and the practical consequence is simple and expensive: porous materials that were in contact with it are removed rather than cleaned and dried. Carpet, underlay, batt insulation, particleboard, upholstered furniture and stored cardboard leave the building. Hard non-porous surfaces are cleaned. There is no version of this where the carpet is dried and kept, and any quote that includes one should be read very carefully.
The work is done inside containment with the affected area under negative pressure, so that what is being disturbed does not travel into the rest of the house through the return air.
Why it happened, and whether it happens again
A backup is either a blockage on your side of the property line or the municipal sewer surcharging in a storm and finding the lowest opening in the system, which is your basement floor drain. The two have different fixes and only one of them is yours.
The backwater valve, and what the Building Code actually requires
Backflow protection sits in Section 7.4.6 of the Ontario Building Code. Where a building is on a public sanitary sewer and has fixtures below the level of the adjoining street, those fixtures have to be protected against backflow, and a backwater valve on the building drain is the usual way it is done. On a single-dwelling drainage system the valve is required to be a normally open type, so the sewer can still vent through the building rather than pressurising.
A basement bathroom, a laundry or a floor drain sitting below the street outside puts most older houses in the old Collingwood grid squarely inside that description, and a great many of them were built long before it was enforced. Installing one is a licensed plumber's job and needs a permit; it is not restoration work and we do not sell it.
Sewage cleanup in a rental or a short-term let
On a tenanted property or a short-term rental the documentation matters as much as the cleanup, because somebody will later ask what was removed, what was cleaned and when the unit was fit to occupy again. Dated photographs, a written scope and a final set of readings are the record that answers that. Ask for them at the start rather than at the end.
FAQ
Sewer backup — common questions
Can anything that got wet be saved?
Hard, non-porous things, mostly. Sealed concrete, tile, glass, metal and solid plastics are cleaned and kept. Anything porous that absorbed the water is removed, and that includes items with sentimental value, which is the hardest conversation on this job. Specialist contents cleaning exists for a narrow set of items and is worth asking about before anything is thrown out.
Is sewer backup covered by home insurance in Ontario?
Only if you carry the sewer backup endorsement, which is optional and is not on a standard policy by default. It is one of the cheaper endorsements available and the one most worth having in a house with a basement below street level. Check your declarations page now rather than after a storm.
How long before the basement is usable again?
The removal and cleaning is usually one to three days on a residential job. Drying the structure behind it takes longer and finishes on a reading. Reoccupation of the affected room is a judgement made after the cleaning and the drying, not on the day the water goes.
Talk to a Collingwood water damage restoration company
Tell us where the water is, where you think it came from, and when you first saw it. Those three answers decide almost everything — whether this is an afternoon of drying or a scope with removal in it, whether it is likely to be an insurable event, and whether the honest advice is to stop reading and shut the water off first.