These are the questions homeowners in Smyrna and the south Cobb suburbs ask most when they call about water in the house. Each one leads with the answer.
Stay out until the power to anything under the house is off and you know where the water came from. A crawl space with standing water, a live outlet for the air handler, and a leaking supply line is not a place to crawl with a flashlight. Close the valve at the meter, take photos from the access door, and call. Crawl space water extraction starts with pumping the water off the clay.
The water has stopped, but the wood has not stopped soaking it up. Joists, subfloor, and the bottom of the drywall keep pulling moisture for days after the pipe is fixed. Structural drying runs air movers and dehumidifiers against daily readings until those materials come back to the same numbers as a dry room.
More than the wet spot suggests, because the split opened while the line was frozen and ran the whole time it thawed. In a Smyrna ranch that means the crawl space; in a townhome it means the attic and every floor below it. Burst pipe water damage cleanup follows the water down from the split to the lowest point it reached.
Assume it is until a meter says otherwise. A ring that grows, paint that bubbles, or drywall that sags means water is still in the ceiling cavity or still coming. Do not poke it. Ceiling water damage repair opens the ceiling at the low spot, dries the joists and insulation above it, and only then talks about patching.
Everything under it. An attic tank in a Smyrna townhome drains through the ceiling insulation, down the wall cavities, and onto the floor below, and the pan under it rarely catches all of it. Water heater leak cleanup meters the ceiling, the walls the water ran inside, and the floor of every room below the platform.
It is not. Creek water carries silt, yard chemicals, and whatever the storm drains picked up, so drywall, carpet, and insulation it touched come out rather than dry in place. Keep kids and pets off that level and tell the person who answers that the water came from outside. Creek flood cleanup is the page for that.
The source of the water and the wording of your policy decide it, and nobody here has read your policy. A split supply line or a failed water heater is often treated as sudden damage. Groundwater seepage, creek flooding, and a slow drip that ran for months are often excluded, and outside flooding needs a separate flood policy. The Georgia Office of the Commissioner of Insurance handles complaints about how a claim was handled. Get photos, meter readings, and a written scope from the provider and hand those to your adjuster.
Call. Cupped boards mean the bottom of the plank is wetter than the top, and the moisture is coming from the subfloor or the crawl space under it. A floor that is dried from below in the first week often lies back down. One that sits wet for a month usually does not.
Usually humid outside air coming through the crawl space vents and condensing on the cold ductwork and joists under the house. Atlanta's pre-1980 houses were built with open vents on the theory that outside air would dry the crawl space, and in a Georgia July it does the opposite. A meter reading on the joists tells you whether the wood is drying between rains or staying wet all season.
Not for the pumping and drying. Replacing drywall, moving plumbing, rewiring, or replacing the water heater usually needs a permit from the City of Smyrna inside the limits, or from Cobb County in Vinings, Cumberland, Fair Oaks, and Oakdale. Mableton, Austell, Powder Springs, and Marietta run their own desks. Whoever does the rebuild pulls that permit, not you.
Nobody quotes a price on this call, and a provider cannot put a number on the job until the meter has been in the house. How much water came in, how long it sat, whether it was clean supply water or creek water, and whether the crawl space or an attic is involved all set the scope. Have the scope written down before the first board comes up.
Insulate the exposed lines in the crawl space, the attic, and the garage, let a faucet drip when the temperature stays below freezing, and know where the shutoff is before you need it. The Cobb County winter weather water guide walks through it. If a line does split, close the valve first and call second.
Providers represent their own licensing and insurance. Residential and general contractors, plumbers, and electricians in Georgia are licensed by state boards, and the About page has the lookup link. Get a certificate of insurance from them while you are at it.
Call (770) 830-3578. Say where the water is, whether it came from a pipe, a water heater, the roof, or a creek, whether the meter valve is closed, and whether the power is on in the wet part of the house.