When water gets into a commercial space, the cleanup starts fast, and the evidence of what happened goes with it. Once the standing water is out, the wet carpet is lifted and the damaged stock is moved, the only record of how bad it was is whatever someone photographed first. This post is about that record: what to photograph, what to write down and what to keep.
This is not insurance or legal advice. Every policy and every lease is different. Ask your insurer what they need from you and in what form, and ask your property manager or landlord what the building needs, before you throw anything out. Where their instructions differ from anything here, follow theirs.
Safety comes before photos. If there's any risk from electricity, gas, a sagging ceiling or contaminated water, stay out and let the professionals in. The first 24 hours after a commercial leak covers that order of operations; this post picks up the documentation side.
Before anything is moved: the shot list
- Wide shots of every affected room, from the doorway, so the photos show where everything was.
- The source: the failed fitting, the burst line, the ceiling stain, the door the water came under.
- How high the water reached on walls, cabinets, stock and furniture. A tape measure in the frame helps.
- Close-ups of the damage: swollen baseboards, lifted flooring, stained ceiling tiles, wet stock and equipment, including model and serial plates where you can see them.
- Anything that can't wait. If stock or equipment has to be moved to save it, photograph it where it is, then where it went.
- The spaces around it: corridors, common areas and the space below, where you have permission to be there.
A slow video walkthrough, with you saying the date, the time and what you're looking at, catches things the individual photos miss. Take your photos before any crew starts work, including the extraction crew.
Make the photos hold up later
- Keep the originals.Don't crop, filter or edit them. Your phone records the date and time inside each file.
- Share them as files, not through a chat app. Many messaging apps compress photos and strip that date information. Email the originals or put them in a shared folder.
- Back them up the same day, somewhere other than the phone that took them.
- Photograph again as things change: after extraction, when flooring is lifted, when drying equipment goes in, and before anything is thrown away.
What to write down
- When the water was found, who found it and what they saw.
- When the source was stopped, and how.
- Every call: who, when, what was said, and any claim or reference number.
- Everyone who came on site, when they arrived and left, and what they did: the plumber, the electrician, the extraction crew, the restoration contractor, the adjuster.
- Which areas were closed and for how long, and what the closure affected, such as cancelled appointments or lost trading days. Ask your insurer whether that matters for your coverage.
What to keep
- Damaged items, until your insurer tells you they can go. If something can't be kept, such as soaked carpet that has to come out, photograph it first, keep a sample if your insurer asks for one, and note when and why it went.
- Any failed part the plumber removes, if your insurer wants to see it.
- Receipts for everything the leak cost you: the plumber, extraction, equipment rental, temporary storage.
- Every work order, report and invoice from the contractors on site, including any moisture readings or drying records a restoration contractor gives you.
In a multi-tenant building
Water rarely stays in one unit. Share your photos and your timeline with the property manager, because the building's insurer and the neighbouring tenants may be dealing with the same event. Don't go into another unit without permission; ask the manager to document the spaces you can't get into. For managers and boards, how a multi-unit water response works sets out who usually directs it, and what to put in a condo cleaning contract includes agreeing how unplanned work like this is approved.
Questions to ask, not guess
- Ask your insurer what documentation they want, in what format and by when.
- Ask whether they need to see the damage before it's removed, and whether they want to approve contractors first.
- Ask your property manager or landlord which parts of the space and the building are your responsibility under the lease.
- Ask everyone who works on site for a written record of what they did.
When we're called for commercial water extraction and cleanup, we say before we start which parts of the job are ours and which belong to a restoration contractor, so the records you keep line up with who did what. Our commercial cleaning page covers the rest of what we do for buildings.