Dehumidifier hire for water damage: hire it, or call a restorer?

For a wet room, the equipment is the easy part. Dehumidifiers and carpet dryers are a phone call away from any hire shop, and on published prices hiring them yourself is cheaper than a restorer’s daily equipment rate. What the hire shop does not supply is the part that decides whether the floor survives: extraction, and a reading that says the building is actually dry.

Published hire prices, against a restorer’s

Two things make those tables hard to compare directly. GST is included in some hire prices, excluded from the restorer’s and not stated in others. And the minimum terms differ: Agile charges 4 days out of every 7 with a 2-day minimum; QLD Flood Restoration publishes a 3-day minimum on its equipment. Read the basis column before comparing a number.

One room, three days: hire it or call someone

The restorer figure is QLD Flood Restoration’s published rates added up by the calculator; two rooms over four days is $1,913. The hire figure is Agile’s published day rates multiplied out. Neither includes stripping, disposal or rebuilding.

When hiring it yourself is reasonable

• Clean water, caught fast, small area. A supply-line leak into one room, noticed within hours, on a hard floor or a carpet you have already got most of the water out of. Category 1 water covers why speed matters.
• You can measure. A moisture meter tells you when to stop. Without one, “feels dry” is how carpets end up dry on top and wet in the underlay.
• No claim, or the insurer has agreed. If you are claiming, the drying record is evidence; ask the insurer before relying on your own.

When it is not

• Grey or black water. A washing machine, dishwasher, toilet or sewage overflow, or floodwater. Health departments treat greywater as potentially infectious, and what Category 3 water soaked is removed rather than dried — see grey water and Category 3.
• Water in the structure. Wall cavities, subfloors and ceilings. Dehumidifiers dry air; getting moisture out of a wall cavity takes opening it up or directed drying, and readings to know.
• More than a room or two, or more than a day old. Agile’s own guidance is that a large unit is for open-plan spaces, commercial premises and Class 2 or 3 losses. NSW Health’s point that mould is likely to return unless you fix the cause is the risk of getting it wrong.

If you hire, how to use it

1. Extract first. Get standing water out, and as much as you can out of the carpet, before the dehumidifier goes on.
2. Close the room. A dehumidifier drying a room with the windows open is drying the street.
3. Air movers across the wet surface, dehumidifier in the room. Kennards describes blower dryers as used in conjunction with dehumidifiers to speed drying of carpets, furnishings and flooring; air movers alone move moisture into the air without removing it.
4. Empty or drain it. Units collect tens of litres a day at rated capacity; a full tank stops the unit.
5. Stop on a reading, not a feeling. Check the underlay and the wall base, not just the carpet surface. Wet carpet covers what to check.

Common questions