You Tried to Fix It
Yourself. I Respect That.
Phil Sheridan · IICRC Certified · Edmond, OK
I'm not here to lecture you. I'm here because the physics of water damage are stacked against consumer equipment — and I pick up where DIY left off.
I Know What You Did. (Everyone Does It.)
Before I had forty thousand dollars in professional drying equipment, I owned a shop-vac and a couple of box fans from Walmart. I know the setup.
Here's what I think happened:
You shop-vac'd the standing water. Good. That helped. Seriously — getting visible water out fast is the single most important thing you can do in the first hour.
Then you ran fans. Maybe you opened the windows. Maybe you rented a dehumidifier from the hardware store, plugged it in, and figured that would handle the rest.
If there was mold, you probably hit it with bleach. Because that's what everyone tells you to do.
I'm not going to lecture you about any of that. What I will do is explain where the gap is — because there IS a gap, and it's not about effort. It's about equipment.
Your Equipment Worked. Mine Works Harder.
Your hardware store dehumidifier pulls about 3 gallons of water out of the air each day. My LGR dehumidifier pulls 15. That's not a quality problem — it's a scale problem.
A box fan moves air across the surface. My air movers create directional airflow patterns that pull moisture out of wood, concrete, and drywall from the inside out. Different tool, different physics.
And here's the part the tutorial didn't cover: you can't tell if something is dry by touching it. The surface dries first. The wood behind the drywall, the subfloor under the carpet pad, the framing inside the wall cavity — that stays wet for days or weeks if nobody's measuring it.
I carry a moisture meter that reads moisture content inside materials. When I say "it's dry," I mean the reading is below 15% — which is the IICRC S500 standard for safe moisture levels. When you say "it looks dry," you're going by feel. Both are honest. Only one is accurate.
Bleach Isn't Wrong. It's Incomplete.
If you sprayed bleach on visible mold and it came back darker a week later, here's why.
Bleach is about 94% water. On non-porous surfaces — tile, glass, porcelain — it works fine. The chlorine kills the mold on the surface. Problem solved.
On drywall, wood, grout, and carpet backing, the chlorine evaporates while the water soaks in. You're essentially removing the mold you can see and feeding the roots you can't. The mold comes back — sometimes within days — and it often comes back darker because the colony is now more established.
The solution isn't stronger bleach. It's physical removal of the contaminated material under containment, with negative air pressure to keep spores from spreading to other rooms. That requires equipment most people don't have in their garage.
You didn't do anything wrong. You just didn't have the right tool for that material.
You Fixed What You Could See. I Find What You Can't.
The biggest thing working against a DIY cleanup is the moisture you can't reach.
I carry a FLIR thermal camera that shows temperature differentials behind walls — wet areas read cooler than dry areas. On a normal-looking wall, I'll see a cold spot the size of a dinner plate that tells me the insulation behind it is saturated.
That cold spot doesn't air-dry. The wall cavity has almost no airflow. It sits there, holding moisture, until mold colonizes the paper face of the drywall from the back side. By the time you see discoloration on the front, the back has been growing for weeks.
This is actually the part of the job I enjoy. Finding the hidden stuff — the moisture pocket behind a cabinet, the saturated subfloor under a toilet, the condensation trail along an HVAC plenum — that's what my equipment is for. Your shop-vac got the visible water. My meters and cameras find the rest.
The Timeline Nobody Mentioned in the Tutorial.
I won't use scare tactics. But I do want you to know what the clock does to water damage that isn't fully dried:
First 24 hours: Bacteria counts in standing water double roughly every 20 minutes. Clean water from a supply line starts becoming gray water.
48 hours: Mold spores — which are already in the air in every building — find enough moisture to germinate. Colonization begins on porous surfaces: drywall paper, carpet backing, subfloor OSB.
72 hours: What started as clean Category 1 water is now approaching Category 3 — the same biohazard classification as sewage. The restoration scope changes significantly when water reclassifies.
One week: Structural materials that haven't dried begin to delaminate, warp, and swell. Subfloor OSB swells permanently — once it's swollen, it doesn't shrink back. Mold colonies are now established and producing spores.
I'm telling you this not to rush you, but so you can make an informed decision about timing. The phone works 24/7. I answer it myself.
Oklahoma Throws Curveballs YouTube Doesn't Know About.
The tutorials you watched were written for a generic house in a generic climate. Oklahoma doesn't do generic.
November pipe breaks before you winterize. Oklahoma gives you 75 degrees on Monday and an ice storm on Wednesday. Your pipes didn't see that coming. Water sits behind walls while you're at work, and by the time you notice the wet spot on the baseboard, the framing has been soaking for hours.
1960s and '70s ranch plumbing. Half the houses in Edmond and the OKC metro have original copper-to-galvanized transitions in the water lines. Those joints corrode from the inside over decades. When they fail, they don't burst dramatically — they seep. Slow seeps are worse than bursts because they go undetected longer and saturate more material.
Travel schedules. If you work in oil and gas, or if you travel for any reason, a pipe failure during a two-week absence turns into a mold colonization event. I've walked into homes where the homeowner came back from a rotation to find mold covering entire walls. Nobody was there to see the first drip.
New construction isn't immune. Edmond's growth corridors have houses being built and sold fast. Construction moisture — concrete that's still curing, lumber that hasn't acclimated — can create moisture conditions that have nothing to do with a leak. Sometimes the house itself is the source.
I Don't Start Over. I Finish What You Started.
Here's what I do when I get a call from someone who's already been at it for a few days:
First, I validate what worked. If you got the standing water out fast, that matters. You prevented the worst of the initial damage. I'm not going to pretend that didn't help.
Then I measure what's left. Moisture readings in the walls, subfloor, framing, and cabinets. Thermal imaging to find what's hiding. This takes about 30 minutes and costs you nothing.
Then I lay out the plan. "Here's what's still wet. Here's the equipment I need to dry it. Here's how long it'll take. Here's what insurance should cover." Three to five days of professional drying, and your house goes from "I think it's dry" to "the meter confirms it's dry."
I'm not replacing the work you did. I'm adding the equipment and the measurement you didn't have access to. We're finishing this together.
Picture next week: the fans are gone. The floor is solid. The smell is gone. You're sitting on your couch and you don't hear a dehumidifier hum. You just hear your house being normal again.
Questions I Get Every Week from DIY Homeowners.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=01 "I shop-vac'd the water and ran fans for days — why does it still smell?" ▶ ENTER
Surface water evaporates first, but moisture trapped inside walls, subfloor, and carpet pads doesn't have enough airflow to dry with consumer fans alone. The smell is bacteria and mold beginning to grow in those trapped-moisture areas. I can pinpoint the wet spots with a moisture meter and set up targeted drying.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=02 "Does bleaching mold actually kill it?" ▶ ENTER
On non-porous surfaces like tile and glass, yes. On porous surfaces like drywall, wood, and carpet backing, bleach kills the surface mold but adds water that feeds the roots. The mold returns — often darker. Physical removal under containment is the solution for porous materials.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=03 "I pulled up the carpet but the pad underneath is still soaked — is the subfloor damaged?" ▶ ENTER
Possibly. Carpet pads trap moisture against the subfloor, and if it's been wet for more than 48 hours, the OSB or plywood underneath may have begun to swell or delaminate. I check this with direct moisture readings on the subfloor surface and in the wood grain.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=04 "I rented a dehumidifier from the hardware store — is that the same thing you use?" ▶ ENTER
Different class of equipment. Residential dehumidifiers remove about 3 gallons per day. My LGR (Low-Grain Refrigerant) dehumidifiers pull 15+ gallons per day and are designed to extract moisture from structural materials, not just room air. They also create lower grain-per-pound conditions that accelerate evaporation from wood and concrete.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=05 "My floor looks dry but feels spongy — what's going on?" ▶ ENTER
The surface dried but the subfloor underneath is still saturated. OSB and plywood hold water differently than the surface flooring — they can feel solid on top while registering 30%+ moisture content inside the material. A moisture meter tells the real story.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=06 "Will my insurance still cover it if I tried to fix it myself first?" ▶ ENTER
Yes. Your insurance policy covers the damage, not the method of initial response. In fact, the steps you took — removing standing water, running fans — are exactly what insurance companies call "mitigation of further damage." That works in your favor. I document current conditions for your claim regardless of what happened before I arrived.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=07 "Dark spots are showing up on drywall I thought was dry — is that mold?" ▶ ENTER
Likely. Dark spots on drywall after water damage — especially if they appear days after the initial event — are typically mold colonizing the paper face of the gypsum board. This usually means moisture is present on the backside of the drywall inside the wall cavity. I confirm with moisture readings and visual inspection.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=08 "How fast does mold grow after water damage that wasn't properly dried?" ▶ ENTER
Mold spores begin to germinate in as little as 24-48 hours on wet porous surfaces. Visible mold colonization typically appears within 3-7 days. The speed depends on temperature, humidity, and the type of material — drywall paper and carpet backing are the fastest surfaces to colonize.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=09 "I just want someone to finish what I started — do I have to pay for the whole job?" ▶ ENTER
No. I scope the REMAINING work — not the total job. If you've already dealt with the standing water and surface cleanup, the remaining work is targeted drying and moisture verification. The scope (and cost) reflects what's LEFT, not what would have been needed on day one.
admin@4d : ~/faq $ query --id=10 "What's the worst-case scenario if I just let the remaining moisture dry on its own?" ▶ ENTER
The moisture eventually evaporates — but "eventually" can mean weeks, and during that time you're likely to get mold colonization, subfloor swelling (which is permanent in OSB), warping of hardwood flooring, and potential structural damage to framing members. The cost of fixing secondary damage from slow drying is almost always more than the cost of professional drying would have been.
You started this because you wanted to protect your home. That instinct was right. The equipment just has limits.
I carry the equipment that doesn't.
Call Phil.
405-896-9088Tell me what happened, what you've done so far, and what's still bothering you. Free assessment — no charge, no judgment.
Or text me what's happening. I respond to both.
"No judgment. No lectures. Just the rest of the job, done right."