Flooding calls in Calgary homes more than in 2013: repair business

Thousands of Calgarians are dealing with flooding in their homes, leading some home service companies to bring workers from across the country to help handle the influx of calls for help.

Large amounts of rainfall have kept the city fairly wet, with over 200 millimetres falling on the city–including all of June and July.

Groundworks’ Calgary office says its call volume soared over 300 per cent last week. Now it’s even higher than that, and manager Cory Tretiak says they’re still booking into September.

“I’m not sure we’ve seen this type of call volume before–and that would include the 2013 floods,” he told 660 NewsRadio.

The company specializes in foundation repair, waterproofing, and concrete repair in people’s basements.

But with delayed services across the city, Tretiak says they’ve had to bring in extra workers from Edmonton and Toronto to help deal with the increased number of service calls.

The most severe issues being reported are groundwater seepage in Calgarians’ basements, and it only comes from three places.

“The foundation wall itself, from the joint where the foundation wall meets the floor, and we’re seeing a lot more water coming up from the floor slab itself,” Tretiak said.

He says mould is the biggest concern.

“When we’re dealing with the situation where we can’t get to the root cause and we’re also having a tremendous amount of additional rain, the most important thing on the front end is to do anything we can to prevent the growth of mould,” he explained.

It can spread like wildfire, and it often starts with a foul smell, along with some discoloured baseboards, or in the most severe cases, a swimming pool in your basement that nobody asked for.

Tretiak is encouraging homeowners to take some immediate actions themselves.

“Some homeowners will throw towels down if it’s a small leak or go buy the biggest shop vac they can to suck it up and dump it down a drain or outside, mitigating the negative impacts,” he said.

With delayed services across the city, he’s encouraging homeowners to remove their possessions from the wet space quickly.

It’s also recommended to get a heavy-duty wet/dry vacuum to soak up the moisture.