Water damage can silently infiltrate your home, and drywall is often one of the first victims. Recognizing the signs of water damage is crucial to preventing more serious problems like mold and structural issues. But how can you identify if your drywall is at risk? Symptoms can vary and may not always be apparent at first glance. In this blog, we’ll explore the subtle indicators of water-damaged drywall, from discoloration and sagging to peeling paint and unusual smells.
By becoming familiar with these warning signs, you can take proactive steps to safeguard your home and know when to seek residential water damage restoration services to address the issue effectively.
How Does Drywall Water Damage Happen?
It’s important to know what drywall is made of to understand how water affects it. Drywall’s primary component is gypsum, which you can also find in plaster. It comes in a powder form, which manufacturers mix with other materials and binders.
Although commonplace, drywall is very simple. All it is is baked, rock-hard gypsum sandwiched between two pieces of paper. This makes it comparatively light and easy to cut to size.
If you’ve ever roughhoused with your siblings and someone put a foot through the wall, you’ve seen what it looks like inside. It cracks easily and flakes into powder. Naturally, this makes it quite vulnerable to water damage.
Water soaks the containing paper and turns the gypsum into mush. This not only weakens the wall, but it’s also the perfect hotbed for mold to grow. Needless to say, wet walls can lead to serious problems and require wall repair.
All it takes is a trickle of water dripping down the wall. It soaks into the paper and the gypsum, spreading away from the epicenter. It doesn’t take long before half of the wall is contaminated.
How to Identify Drywall Water Damage
Luckily, this isn’t an issue that will be difficult to spot. The signs are pretty obvious, and here are some of the most common symptoms:
- Bubbly, flaky, and peeled paint
- Spiderweb or hairline cracks
- Water rings (particularly when in the ceiling)
- Mold growth
- Ceilings that bow or sag
- Discoloration from water stains, typically yellow or rusty in-color
- Long, discolored drips
- Unpleasant, musty smells
- Soft drywall that gives to the smallest amount of pressure
If you see any of the above issues, call your local water damage cleanup service. Particularly if you observe these symptoms affecting a large area. If it is covering a quarter or even half of the wall, there could be a very serious issue.
What Are the Primary Causes of Drywall Water Damage?
Unfortunately, there is no one cause for soggy, wet drywall. It could be the result of a number of things. Here are a few things that are likely to cause water damage:
- Leaks from a roof in need of repair or replacement
- Excessive moisture and humidity in a certain area of the home, such as the basement
- A busted or leaking pipe
- Water damage from flooding, whether from pipes or from extreme weather
- Water damage from fire sprinklers
How to Remove Drywall
Let us be clear here: in most cases, replacing drywall is NOT a DIY project. Additionally, if you’re dealing with extensive water damage, the situation may require professional intervention. Hiring experts for water damage restoration in Chicago can ensure that the job is done safely and correctly, protecting your home from further damage. This is for a number of reasons:
- Drywall is attached to studs, so improper removal could be affecting the home’s structural integrity
- Drywall is easy to break, so you could end up spending a lot of money if you accidentally crack several new boards
- It’s difficult to fit the new drywall in with old drywall
- Unless you do it perfectly, a patch job will be an eyesore
- You may not notice that a replacement job looks bad until you repaint it
- It can take more time than you would like, wasting precious time you could have spent elsewhere
Replacing drywall is relatively simple in practice. If you have any skill with repairing your home, then it will likely come easy to you. However, we highly recommend that you hire a professional.
Plus, you may not be able to identify the true source of the problem. You may succeed in replacing the drywall, only for it to get wet from a water leak not long after. It’s important not just to replace it, but to nip the problem in the bud that caused it in the first place.
Check for Drywall Water Damage Periodically
The problem with drywall water damage is that it can happen all of a sudden. All it takes is a single night for a water leak to soak an entire wall. If you don’t identify the damage soon after, it could get much, much worse.
That’s why we recommend that you check your drywall on a regular basis. Particularly after certain events that could lead to wet walls. If any of the following happens, double and triple check your drywall for water damage:
- After a particularly heavy storm
- If you spring a leak in the roof
- If you notice your water bill is uncharacteristically high with the same average usage–a sign of a potential leak
- If the sprinklers go off after smoke triggers the fire alarm
- If you experience minor or major flooding
- If your basement or another area of your house feels unreasonably humid