Why are there categories of water damage?

7/14/2022 (Permalink)

Most industries share a common lingo and lexicon that allows them to communicate with accuracy and nuance about the specialized things that they deal with every day.

The water restoration and mitigation industry is no different. Restorers have all sorts of different ways to quickly communicate the pertinent details of a water damage situation and figure out what to do next with only a handful of words.

This is why you may hear water damage restoration providers refer to different “categories” of water. Water damage has been broken down into separate categories so that restorers have shorthand for referring to different levels of contamination, and a rubric for dealing with them.

That said, water category is not exactly a scientific term and it is not set in stone. In fact, the category of water can change drastically as environmental conditions change or certain things happen. Clean water that runs through an asbestos-containing wall, for instance, can easily become contaminated and change category.