Washing Machine Overflow in Massachusetts

Laundry locations in Massachusetts make washer leaks spread fast. In many older houses the washer sits in the basement near the water heater, stored belongings and sometimes a finished room. In triple-deckers, condos and apartment buildings it often sits in a kitchen, a hall closet or a back porch area on an upper floor, right over someone else's ceiling. A fill hose that bursts can release a lot of water in minutes, and on an upper floor it runs through the floor boards, along joists and down into the unit below. Drain water from a washer is gray water, not clean water, so it should not sit in carpet or flooring for long.

At one hour, water is usually on the laundry floor and starting to drip through to the room below, and quick extraction can limit the damage to one area. By 24 hours, subfloor, carpet pad and the ceiling below have soaked up water, and stains show. At 48 hours mold can begin on damp drywall and pad, and gray water starts to smell. After a week, subfloor and flooring can swell or delaminate, and the ceiling below may need to come down.

When a fill hose bursts, the water starts out clean, and much of the structure can be dried in place if work starts early. Plywood subfloor and joists can be dried with air movers and dehumidifiers, sometimes with a ceiling below opened a little to move air through the joist bay. Tile and sealed hardwood in the laundry room can often be dried in place, and hardwood that has started to cup can be dried with mat systems. Drywall and plaster that are damp but still firm can be dried by directing air across them. Carpet that was wet for only a short time can usually be extracted and dried.

Drain water from the washer is gray water, which changes what can be kept. Carpet pad soaked by drain water is usually removed, and carpet may go too if it sat for a day or more. Laminate and vinyl plank flooring often trap water underneath and have to be lifted to dry the subfloor. A ceiling below that sags or soaks through is taken down, and wet insulation in the joist bay is removed. Particleboard laundry cabinets and shelves that swell are replaced.

Washing machine overflows come up across Massachusetts, but stacked housing makes them worse. In Greater Boston, only 36 percent of Boston homes are owner-occupied, and many renters and condo owners live above someone else, so a washer leak often reaches a second household. On the North Shore, Lawrence homes are mostly rented, with only 28 percent owner-occupied, and many of its triple-deckers stack one flat over the next. On the SouthCoast, Fall River has a median home built in 1945 and many triple-deckers, where an upper-floor laundry sits over two other units.

The same help reaches Central Massachusetts, MetroWest and the South Shore. Worcester has many triple-deckers, with one flat stacked over another, while Framingham and Brockton have more single-family homes with basement laundry rooms beside finished space. When you call, say which floor the washer is on and whether water reached a unit below, and you are connected with a local crew that can usually come out the same day and check every floor the water reached.