Where Does Category 1 Water Come From?

9/13/2021 (Permalink)

Category 1 water, or clean water, can still cause great damage to your building.

No water leak in your commercial building in Concord, CA, is exactly good news, but the contamination level of the water can affect how in-depth the cleanup process needs to be. Category 1 is clean water, and it represents the lowest level of contamination. This is water that will not hurt you or your employees if it is accidentally ingested. What makes it Category 1 water? How do you remedy the water damage it causes?

Where It Comes From

Category 1 water comes from a source that is clean and usually enclosed. It is unlikely to hurt someone who ingests it. Some examples of such sources are:

• Broken pipe
• Severed supply line
• Leaky sink faucet

Because this water is often used as drinking water or specifically utilized to wash things, the water coming directly through the pipes in your building to the fixtures where it is released has to meet a certain cleanliness standard. This is Category 1 water.

How It Is Remediated

If you have water damage from clean water, you still need to hire water remediation specialists to take care of it. Just because water is clean does not mean that it cannot cause widespread destruction that is best handled by professionals. They are probably still going to need to tear out materials and replace them as part of the restoration process. In addition, the longer it has been since the water was in the pipe or supply line, the more likely it is to have become Category 2 water. As it comes into contact with various building materials, such as a floor where people have trudged through with their dirty-soled shoes, the more contaminated it probably becomes.

Category 1 water, or clean water, can still cause great damage to your building. Don't let the fact that it's not contaminated keep you from fixing a water leak from a clean source as soon as you discover it.