How many times have you had a big water mess to clean up and ended up sweeping it out the door, using every towel in the house, or calling someone to come in and clean it up for you? Probably not very often right? Well, you never know when the first time will pay you a visit and it can be a really big deal if you can not start getting the water up right away.

When you have a pipe to break that can leave an inch or two of water on the floor or someone overflows the bathtub with the same result, it might not be bad enough for a water damage crew, but it will have to be gotten up as quickly as you can. Getting down on the floor with a lot of towels will do the trick, but there is a faster and easier way.

You can invest in a fairly large wet/dry vacuum cleaner for about a hundred dollars or less that can make some water messes not such a big deal. Now obviously a wet/dry vacuum will not be of much use if your home is flooded because of a natural disaster when there could be many inches of water, but for a smaller water crisis it might be just right. If you have a basement you have not had repaired yet and it gets occasional water puddles in spots or even covered with an inch or so of water, a wet/dry vacuum can be used to get it up. This can also work for small floods caused by a washing machine, dishwasher, broken pipe, or an overflowed tub.

It is essential that when you clean up a fairly large amount of water yourself that you make sure to get it all and that the entire area is dried out thoroughly. If you leave it damp and it takes several days to dry out, as it could when a floor has been thoroughly saturated, it can cause mold to start growing. If this happens then you might have a bigger problem than the little flooding incident. Mold remediation can be expensive and very involved if it takes hold enough. Places that can easily grow mold are wet carpets, under tile, under linoleum, in woodwork, and sheetrock.

If you are worried that you can not get the water out fast enough or dry the affected area well enough to prevent wood warping or mold, you might be better off to leave the wet/dry vacuum in the garage or basement and go ahead and call a water damage expert. Some jobs just might be too large to handle on your own and it is better to have the clean up done right the first time instead of causing more problems because it was not.