How We Build Our Cost Ranges

How the calculator builds an estimate

The calculator asks four things: how dirty the water is, how long ago it started, how big the wet area is, and what got wet. It turns those answers into the line items a restoration quote would list, prices each line, and adds them up.

The line items

• An emergency call, and water extraction priced per square foot by water category.
• Drying equipment for the drying time: one air mover per 60 sq ft (at least two) and one large dehumidifier per 500 sq ft. Drying takes 3 to 4 days, or 4 to 5 for sewage. Sewage jobs add one air scrubber per 1,000 sq ft.
• Technician hours: 4, plus 1 per 200 sq ft, plus 1 per drying day.
• Tear-out: wet carpet and pad for gray water or sewage, hard flooring for sewage, wet ceiling drywall for gray water or sewage, and a flood cut along the walls, 2 ft up for gray water and 4 ft for sewage. Each room counts as up to 300 sq ft, and its walls are four times the square root of its area.
• Antimicrobial over the wet area for gray water and sewage.
• Repairs after drying, following from what got wet or torn out: new drywall, primer, two coats of paint on 8 ft walls less 15% for doors and windows, a new or repainted ceiling, new carpet and pad or vinyl plank, new baseboard, base cabinets after sewage, and each trade's trips and setup.

The rules

• Clean water found within two days is dried in place, so nothing is torn out. The only repair is sealing and repainting the ceiling, if it got wet.
• Water found three or more days later adds a drying day, and clean water is treated as gray water.
• The low end uses low rates (the 25th percentile of the price sheets for drying and tear-out, the low build-up for repairs) and the usual drying days. The high end uses high rates (the 75th percentile, or the high build-up), one more drying day, and 20% for overhead and profit.
• Both ends are multiplied by your ZIP code's labor index. Then the low end is rounded down and the high end up, to the next $50.

The calculator runs in your browser. Its line items show each quantity and what it costs, so you can trace each dollar.

Drying and tear-out prices

Drying and tear-out rates come from 10 published price sheets: rate schedules in public restoration contracts and bids, and price lists contractors publish themselves. Before pooling them, we divide each price by the labor index of the area it came from, where we know it, so a sheet from a high-wage metro doesn't pull the national rate up. The calculator uses the middle half of the pooled rates.

We're adding more sheets, aiming for 20 to 30. The Northeast and the West have one each so far.

Repair prices

Few public sources price the repairs after water damage, so we build each repair rate up from its parts:

• Labor hours from the U.S. Navy's Seabee Planner's and Estimator's Handbook (NAVFAC P-405), a public-domain estimating manual: hanging and finishing drywall, painting, carpet, baseboard and so on. The low end assumes crews need 20% fewer hours than the handbook.
• Wages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for each trade: drywall installers, painters, carpenters and floor layers.
• A billing multiplier of 2.33 to 3.20 that turns a wage into what a company charges per hour. We measured it from the technician rates on the drying price sheets against the same wage data.
• Materials at store prices from Home Depot, Ace Hardware and local hardware and lumber stores: the lowest price we found for the low end, the highest for the high end.

Then we check the results against public repair price sheets and bid tabulations, and adjust where the build-up runs out of line with them.

Local labor costs

Prices change with local wages, so every range is adjusted to your ZIP code. The labor index uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 median wages for the trades that do the work, in each metro area, divided by the national median:

• Drying trades: construction laborers (35%), building cleaning workers (30%), janitors and cleaners (20%) and hazardous materials removal workers (15%).
• Repair trades: drywall installers (30%), carpenters (25%), painters (20%), construction laborers (15%) and floor layers (10%).

A ZIP code's index is the average of the two. It covers 392 metro areas; ZIP codes outside a metro use their state's figure. We match ZIP codes to metro areas with the Census Bureau's ZIP code tabulation areas and its 2023 metro area definitions.

Plumbing repairs

The plumber's fix for one burst pipe, $90⁠–⁠$650 nationally, is a separate bill from drying and isn't part of the calculator's total. It comes from 12 public plumbing bids and contracts, 2022 to 2026. Each hourly rate is divided by its region's labor index; the middle half of regular rates runs $88⁠–⁠$155 an hour, and after-hours rates $120⁠–⁠$232.

• Low end: one billed hour at a lower-quartile regular rate, plus budget parts.
• High end: the highest service call fee, two hours at an upper-quartile after-hours rate, and premium parts with the highest parts markup.
• One to two billed hours is our assumption; none of the sources says how long a repair takes.

Patching the wall a plumber opens, $350⁠–⁠$660, is 8 sq ft of new drywall, one 96 sq ft wall repainted and 4 hours of trips and setup at the calculator's repair rates, plus 20% at the high end.

How the Quote Checker compares a quote

The Quote Checker reads an uploaded quote with an AI model (Anthropic's Claude) and lists its lines. Nothing is compared until you've checked what it read and fixed any mistakes. Then it compares each line with the same rates the calculator uses, adjusted for the job's ZIP code, and flags:

• A unit price more than 15% above the top of our rate near the job.
• Drying equipment kept more than one day longer than our high end allows, or more than 1.5 times the usual number of machines for the area.
• Overhead and profit over 20% in total, or either one charged twice.
• A lump sum of $300 or more with no quantity.
• New cabinets after clean or gray water, which are usually dried in place.

The overall verdict compares the quote's total, less tax and repairs we don't price yet, with our range for the same work: more than 15% above the high end is high, more than 15% below the low end is low, and anything between is fair. Lines we don't have prices for yet, such as monitoring, are marked not checked. A line can be high for a good reason, like water hidden in a wall, so treat a flag as a question to ask, not proof.

Quotes visitors share

When you confirm a quote in the Quote Checker, we keep its line items and the first three digits of the job's ZIP code. We never keep the file, and we don't ask for your name or address. Those prices don't change our ranges yet. We plan to blend them in once an area and type of job have at least 10, and we'll say so on the page. We'll never show a company's name next to its prices.

Flood claims data

Our flood pages and the flooded basement guide use FEMA's public data on National Flood Insurance Program claims (NFIP Redacted Claims, version 3). We analyzed claims on single-family homes. The figures we show are building payments, or adjusters' building damage estimates, on claims paid for losses from 2021 to 2025: 147,201 claims, with a median payment of $45,226.

What the numbers can't tell you

• A range is for a typical job like the one you describe. Your home, the damage hidden in walls and floors, and the materials you choose can put a real price outside it.
• Our prices are published rates adjusted for local wages, not quotes we gathered in your city.
• Some items aren't priced yet, including wet insulation, mold remediation and contents cleaning, and hard floors are priced as vinyl plank.
• Some tear-out, extraction and antimicrobial rates rest on two to four prices so far.
• We don't pay for contractor surveys or use prices from other cost websites.

Updates

We plan to refresh the price sheets, wage data and store prices at least twice a year. Each guide shows the month it was last updated. Spotted something off? Email [email protected].