Most people call us in the worst hour of their month. There’s water on the floor, they don’t know how bad it is, and the thing they want most is for someone to tell them what’s about to happen.
So here it is — the whole process, start to finish, for a typical Windsor water damage job. No sales pitch, just the timeline.
If water is running right now, stop reading and shut off your main, then call (720) 340-3499. Come back to this after.
Hour 0: The Call
A real person answers, 24/7. We’ll ask a handful of things that sound basic and matter a lot: where the water is coming from, whether you’ve shut off the main, whether water is near outlets or the electrical panel, how long it’s been running, and whether it’s clean water, drain water or sewage. That last one determines what equipment comes off the truck.
We’ll tell you what to do while we drive — usually shut off the main, cut power to the affected zone if it’s safe, photograph everything, and get belongings up off the floor.
Hour 1: We Arrive
We’re based in Johnstown, roughly nine miles from Windsor, so we’re typically at your door in about 60 minutes. That’s not a marketing number, it’s a geography number — we’re not dispatching from Denver.
First thing on-site is safety: electrical hazards, structural concerns, and whether the water is contaminated. Then we find the source and stop it if it’s still running.
Hours 1–2: Finding All of It
This is the part that separates a real restoration from a cleanup, and it’s the step homeowners underestimate.
Water travels. It runs along framing, wicks up drywall, moves under flooring and soaks insulation that looks fine from the outside. What you can see is usually a fraction of what’s wet.
We map it with thermal imaging cameras, which show temperature differences where evaporation is happening behind surfaces, and penetrating and non-penetrating moisture meters, which give actual numeric readings in materials. We record a moisture reading for every affected area and establish a dry standard — the reading from an unaffected part of your home that we’ll dry back to.
Everything gets photographed and logged as we go. This documentation is what your insurance adjuster needs, and gathering it now is far easier than reconstructing it later.
Hours 2–6: Extraction
Standing water comes out first, with truck-mounted and portable extraction units. On carpet we use weighted extraction tools that pull water out of the pad underneath, not just the surface.
Then we make removal decisions. We are deliberately conservative here, because every square foot of material we can save is a square foot you don’t have to pay to rebuild. Carpet pad usually goes. Carpet itself can often be saved on a clean-water loss. Drywall may only need a small section removed rather than a full wall. Hardwood sometimes dries in place with specialized mat systems instead of being torn out.
Contaminated water changes all of that — sewage or drain water means porous materials come out, no exceptions, because they can’t be sanitized in place.
Days 1–4: Structural Drying
Now the equipment goes in, and your house gets loud.
Air movers push high-velocity air across wet surfaces to accelerate evaporation. Commercial dehumidifiers pull that evaporated moisture out of the air so it doesn’t just resettle elsewhere. Sometimes we’ll add heat, or use specialty equipment to dry a wall cavity or under a floor without opening it up.
The placement isn’t guesswork. Equipment counts are calculated from the affected square footage, the class of the loss and the materials involved.
We come back every day and take fresh moisture readings from the same points. Those daily logs show the drying curve, prove the job was done to standard, and go into your claim file. Equipment stays until materials hit dry standard — usually three to five days, longer for plaster, dense hardwood or a saturated crawl space.
Two requests during this stage: please leave the equipment running, even overnight, and keep the house closed up so the dehumidifiers aren’t fighting outdoor humidity. Turning fans off at night is the most common reason a job takes an extra two days.
Throughout: The Insurance Side
We work directly with all carriers and handle the adjuster conversation for you. We provide the photo documentation, moisture logs, scope of work and line-item estimate in the format adjusters expect.
Which brings up the one thing we tell every Windsor homeowner: call us before you call your insurance company. If you call your insurer first, a claim gets opened based on a description of damage nobody has assessed yet. If we document it first, the claim is filed with real evidence behind it, and the approved scope reflects the actual damage rather than a first-impression guess.
After Drying: Repairs
Once your home is dry, the rebuild starts — drywall, texture, paint, trim, flooring, cabinetry. We handle this ourselves rather than handing you off, so one team is accountable from the first extraction to the last coat of paint.
If mold was found, remediation happens between drying and rebuild: containment, HEPA filtration, removal of affected materials and antimicrobial treatment. We handle that in-house too.
How Long Does the Whole Thing Take?
Honestly, it depends on how far the water travelled. As a rough guide:
- Small clean-water loss, one room, caught early — three to four days of drying, minimal repair
- Typical basement or multi-room loss — four to six days drying, then one to three weeks of repairs
- Large or contaminated loss, or one that sat for weeks before discovery — a week or more of drying and mitigation, then several weeks of rebuild
The single biggest variable is how long the water sat before we got there. A leak caught in hours is a drying job. The same leak caught in three weeks is a demolition, mold remediation and reconstruction job. That’s the entire reason we push people to call early, even when they’re not sure it’s serious.
What It Costs
We won’t quote you a number on a webpage, because anyone who does is guessing. Cost depends on how much material got wet, what that material is, how long it sat and whether contamination is involved. Our inspection is free, and in most cases — a burst pipe, a failed supply line, an appliance letting go — the work is covered by your homeowners policy.
Call Even If You’re Not Sure
The call we wish we got more often is the uncertain one. There was a leak, we cleaned it up, it seems fine, but I wanted someone to look. We have moisture detection tools that answer that question in minutes, and we would genuinely rather tell you your house is dry than meet you in a month with mold behind the baseboard.
Water damage in Windsor? Call Revive Restoration at (720) 340-3499 — 24/7. Family operated since 2016, owned by Levi, born and raised in Northern Colorado.
See our full Windsor water damage restoration services, or read our other Windsor guides: water damage in newer Windsor homes, why Windsor basements flood, and red flags when buying a Windsor home. We also serve Severance, Timnath, Johnstown, Greeley and Fort Collins — full list on our service areas page.