The problems will be far from over for residents in flood-afflicted Victorian towns when waters recede from their inundated homes.

From contaminated couches and sodden skirting boards to ruined wiring and damp so deep that special dehumidifying machines are required, cleaning up a flooded house is a time-consuming and expensive business.

Rochester resident Brian Mulcahy outside his inundated home on Friday.Credit:Justin McManus

Walter Romanic, owner of flood restoration company Flood Response, said most affected houses would need to be stripped-out to remove contaminants such as pesticides carried in the floodwater.

This black water was “almost considered fecal water because it’s deadly”, he said.

Romanic said people should call their insurer, which would then contact a restorer. Residents with severe damage would need to find temporary accommodation until the works were done.

An electrician would ensure power systems are safe, then staff might remove soft, porous materials such as carpets, floor coverings, floor linings, skirting boards and insulation.

Restoration works would include removing water, applying antibacterial treatments, drying the building using dehumidifiers, fans and heaters, and sanding of timber base panels.

Romanic said plaster up to 600 millimetres in height might have to be removed. Moisture readers and mapping and thermal imaging are used to identify how high the water reached up the walls and what needs to be cut.

“A human eye can’t see it,” he said, adding that once restoration work was done, independent hygiene swab tests from a microbiologist were carried out to sign-off that the house was safe.

Bill Strong, director of national restoration company Flood Assist, said the first step for a home owner after flooding was to check if they were insured. He said some people are not covered for rising water from a creek or river.

This Rochester home had about 300 millimetres of water sweep through.Credit:Justin McManus

“Those people are the ones who are going to be in most need,” he said.

Strong said, generally, houses that had been in water above the skirting board line or higher tended to need “a full gut-out”, involving decontamination and drying. That would mean replacing carpet and other flooring, cabinetry and furniture.

“You can’t save much of that stuff – most of it’s porous, which means it’s absorbed the contamination,” he said. “Unless it’s plastic and you can wash it, but most people don’t have plastic furniture.”

Strong said wet, contaminated furniture and building materials would need to be discarded and the rooms sanitised with high-pressure machines.

He advised getting an electrician to make sure the house is safe to occupy and calling a builder, who might have to rebuild walls.

Strong said that, so far, the Victorian situation was not as bad as other recent floods.

He said the Queensland summer floods were “probably five to 10 times worse in scale”.

“There was a lot of rain, [but] it happened over days, so it didn’t cause as much damage compared to a traditional flood where we get rain that falls down really quickly in half an hour or an hour,” he said.

“We normally see hundreds – between 200 and 1000 jobs – in our company after a decent storm event, but in this one there was probably 30 to 50 over the last week.”

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