When people call us for this
A sewer line backed up, a drain failed, or contaminated water got into the structure.
What the job includes
- Contamination category assessment before anything moves
- Removal and disposal of affected porous materials
- Cleaning and disinfection of the exposed structure
- Verification before drying equipment and rebuild
- Full documentation for the claim, including the disposal record
Category 3 water changes every rule
Restoration divides water into three categories, and the difference between them isn't severity — it's what you're allowed to do about it. Category 1 is clean water from a sanitary source. Category 2 is used water with some contamination. Category 3 is grossly contaminated: sewage, a toilet backup past the trap, floodwater from outside, water carrying pathogens.
With Category 1, you can usually dry materials in place and save them. With Category 3, you can't, and the reason isn't squeamishness. Contaminated water drives bacteria and pathogens into porous materials — carpet pad, drywall, insulation, particleboard — where they're physically inaccessible to cleaning. You cannot disinfect the interior of a paper-faced material. So it comes out. That's the standard, and any company offering to sanitize and dry your sewage-soaked carpet is selling you something you'll regret.
Category also escalates with time. Clean water from a burst pipe that sits on a floor for three days at Atlanta room temperature is not clean water anymore. Waiting doesn't just make a loss bigger — it can move it into a category where the response gets more aggressive and more expensive.
Why Atlanta produces more of this than it should
Parts of intown Atlanta run on infrastructure that's been overwhelmed before, and it's documented rather than rumored. After severe flooding in 2012, the city faced litigation over sewer maintenance and eventually launched the Southeast Atlanta Green Infrastructure Initiative — roughly $65 million of sewer capacity relief across Peoplestown, Summerhill, and Mechanicsville, including a multi-million-gallon stormwater vault beneath the former Turner Field parking area and permeable pavers along Atlanta Avenue.
Residents in that area have reported sewage coming up through tubs and toilets after as little as fifteen minutes of rain. That's a combined system surcharging: when stormwater overwhelms capacity, the water has to go somewhere, and it goes back through the lowest fixture in the nearest house. If that's your basement floor drain, it's your problem regardless of how well maintained your own plumbing is.
Elsewhere in the city, the causes are more ordinary and just as common: century-old cast iron laterals in the bungalow belt with root intrusion, bellied lines from settling, and the intown standard of mature tree roots finding a hairline crack in a clay pipe and turning it into a dam.
What a sewage response looks like
Stop using water. First thing we tell people on the phone. Every flush, every load of laundry, every shower adds to what's already coming back. If the line is blocked, the house is filling something.
Assess and contain. Category confirmed, affected area mapped, containment set. Nobody walks from the contaminated zone into the rest of the house — cross-contamination on foot is a real and routine way a small problem gets big.
Extract and remove. Contaminated water out, then affected porous materials removed and disposed of properly. Drywall gets cut above the wick line, not at it. Flooring and pad come out. What's semi-porous — framing, subfloor in some cases — gets evaluated rather than assumed.
Clean and disinfect. Every exposed surface, with appropriate antimicrobials applied to structure that stays.
Dry, then verify. Only after the contamination is gone. Running air movers in a contaminated space before cleanup is how you turn a floor problem into an air problem.
Rebuild. Everything that came out goes back.
Safety, plainly
Sewage carries bacteria, viruses, and parasites. This is not a DIY situation, and the people most at risk of trying are the ones who shouldn't: anyone immunocompromised, pregnant, elderly, or with young kids in the house. Keep children and pets out of the affected area entirely. Don't run the HVAC if the contaminated area is served by it — you'll move the problem into every room in the house.
If you've already been in it: wash thoroughly, and take any wound that contacted the water seriously.
The insurance conversation nobody has in advance
Standard homeowner policies generally do not cover sewer or drain backup. It requires a separate water backup endorsement, which is usually inexpensive — often a small annual add-on for meaningful coverage. Most people find out they don't have it while standing in the aftermath.
Flood coverage is a different thing again: water that comes in from outside — rising creek, street flooding — is excluded from standard policies and requires flood insurance. In Peoplestown, Summerhill, Berkeley Park, and the low ground near Atlanta's creek corridors, this is worth ten minutes with your agent on a dry day rather than a wet one.
If you're in a repeat-loss area and the source is municipal infrastructure rather than your own plumbing, document everything, every time. Photos, dates, scopes, invoices. Peoplestown residents who eventually got relief did it with a decade of documentation, and it's the only leverage that has ever worked in that conversation.
Questions we get
Why can the carpet not be cleaned?
Category 3 water drives bacteria and pathogens into porous material where cleaning cannot reliably reach. The standard is removal and disposal, then cleaning and verifying the structure underneath.
Is this covered by insurance?
Often only if you carry a water backup endorsement, which is separate from standard water coverage. Check your policy. Document everything regardless — the endorsement question gets answered later, the evidence does not.
Can we stay in the house?
Away from the affected area, usually. It depends on where the contamination is and how far it traveled. That gets answered at assessment, not over the phone.