What to Do When Sewage Backs Up Into Your Home
This is Category 3 water. It carries bacteria, viruses, and parasites, which makes it a health hazard rather than a cleaning problem. Keep people and pets out of the area, stop using water in the building, and do not attempt to clean it yourself.
Do this now
Stop using every water fixture in the building: sinks, showers, toilets, dishwasher, laundry.
Every gallon you send down a drain comes back up through the lowest opening in the system, which is the room you are standing in.
Get everyone out of the affected area, including pets, and close the door if there is one.
Cut power to the affected rooms at the breaker, but only if the panel is dry and reachable without stepping in water.
Never enter standing water where power may still be live. If the panel is not reachable dry, call the utility.
Turn the HVAC system off at the thermostat.
A return anywhere near the affected area will pull contaminated air into the ductwork and deliver it to every room in the house.
Photograph the area from the doorway. Do not walk in for a better angle.
Anyone who already contacted the water should wash with soap and hot water and launder those clothes separately from everything else.
What makes it worse
These are the ones that turn a manageable loss into an expensive one, or cost people their claim.
Don't run box fans or a wet/dry vac on Category 2 or 3 water.
It aerosolizes contamination into rooms that were never affected, and it can turn a contained claim into a whole-house one.
Don't try to save wet carpet, pad, drywall, or insulation that sewage touched.
Porous materials cannot be disinfected. The contamination is inside the material, not on it. IICRC S500 calls for removal of affected porous materials in a Category 3 loss, and cleaning the surface only makes it look finished.
Don't pour bleach on it and call it disinfected.
Bleach is deactivated by the organic load in sewage, it does not penetrate porous material, and it adds water to the exact substrate that is feeding bacterial growth. You end up with a clean smell over a contaminated floor.
Don't rent a carpet cleaner.
Hot water extraction on contaminated carpet re-wets the contamination, drives it deeper into the pad and subfloor, and loads the machine's hoses and wand with it.
Don't put children, pets, or anyone pregnant, elderly, or immune-compromised back in the space until it has been remediated, dried, and verified.
Category 3 water carries E. coli, hepatitis A, and parasites. Skin contact and airborne exposure both matter, and a floor that looks dry is not the same as a floor that is clean.
Don't let a plumber's line-clearing be the end of it.
Clearing the blockage stops the source. It does nothing about what came out, where it soaked in, or what has to be removed and disinfected.
The clock
Category 3 contamination does not improve on its own. Bacterial load rises the longer material stays wet, and mold begins colonizing wet organic material in roughly 24 to 48 hours on top of that. Every hour before containment, removal, and disinfection adds material to the demolition scope and adds rooms to the affected area.
Call us when
- Sewage, a toilet overflow with solids, or a floor drain backup reached finished flooring.
- Water came up through a basement floor drain, a shower pan, or a tub on the lowest level.
- It is a duplex, rental, or multi-unit building and the backup crossed into another unit.
- It happened while you were away and you do not know how long it sat.
If it’s past what you can handle, call.
A person answers 24 hours a day. Even if it’s just a question.