Anatomy of a Category 2 water supplement, line by line
This is a worked example, not a customer. The property is invented and the numbers are ScopeGap's default national-average prices, which you would replace with your own. What is real is the structure: which items get missed on this kind of loss, how each is quantified, and what justification an adjuster needs before approving it.
Use it as a template. Change the room sizes and the prices and it is your supplement.
The loss
A supply line behind a dishwasher fails overnight. Water runs across the kitchen, under the wall into the adjoining dining room, and down the hall. Discovered the next morning. Category 2, it has been sitting, it has crossed into other rooms, and it has been through cabinetry.
Affected: kitchen 180 SF, dining 160 SF, hall 60 SF. Flood cut at 2 feet in all three rooms, 148 LF of wall. Three days of drying.
What the carrier's estimate paid
The adjuster wrote water extraction, three air movers for three days, one dehumidifier for three days, and drywall removal at the flood cut. A reasonable first pass. It is also missing most of a mitigation.
The supplement, item by item
Antimicrobial application, 400 SF at $0.35 = $140.00
Category 2 water has been through a dishwasher, across a floor, and into porous materials. ANSI/IICRC S500 addresses cleaning and the application of an antimicrobial where appropriate before drying on Category 2 and 3 losses.
Document: the water category determination, a moisture map, and photographs of the affected materials. The category is the whole argument, write down how you determined it.
Equipment setup, monitoring and moisture mapping, 6 HR at $55.00 = $330.00
Carriers pay for the equipment and routinely forget that someone has to place it, read it daily and document the readings. Three days of monitoring on a three-room loss is not generous.
Document: your daily moisture logs. If you are not keeping them, this item is not defensible and more importantly neither is your dry standard.
Negative air / HEPA scrubber, 3 DA at $80.00 = $240.00
On a Category 2 loss with affected porous material being disturbed, air filtration is not an upgrade.
Document: photographs of the containment and the scrubber in place, with dates.
Baseboard detach and reset, 148 LF at $2.75 = $407.00
Here is one with no code behind it, and you should not pretend otherwise. The argument is mechanical: you cannot flood-cut drywall at 2 feet without first removing the baseboard, and it has to go back afterwards. The carrier already paid for the flood cut, which concedes the premise.
Document: photographs showing baseboard in each affected room, and the linear footage of the cut.
Drywall replacement, 296 SF at $2.45 = $725.20
The estimate paid to remove 148 LF of drywall at a 2 ft cut. It did not pay to put any back.
This is the single most common omission on a flood cut, and the arithmetic is the argument: 148 LF × 2 ft = 296 SF. The wall has to be rebuilt to pre-loss condition.
Document: photographs of the cuts in each room, a room-by-room sketch with wall lengths, and field measurements confirming the cut height.
Seal, prime and paint new drywall, 296 SF at $1.10 = $325.60
New drywall is not finished drywall. Two coats over the replaced area.
Document: nothing beyond the drywall line itself, if the replacement is approved, this follows from it.
Carpet pad, 160 SF at $0.75 = $120.00
Wet pad is not restorable and is replaced as a matter of course. If the dining room is carpeted and the water reached it, the pad is gone.
Document: moisture readings at the carpet, and a photograph of the pad lifted.
Contents manipulation, 3 EA at $55.00 = $165.00
Three furnished rooms do not dry themselves around the furniture. Moving contents out and resetting them is labour that the estimate assumed away.
Document: before photographs of each room showing what was in it.
The total
| Item | Qty | Rate | Extended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antimicrobial | 400 SF | $0.35 | $140.00 |
| Setup, monitoring, mapping | 6 HR | $55.00 | $330.00 |
| Negative air / HEPA | 3 DA | $80.00 | $240.00 |
| Baseboard detach & reset | 148 LF | $2.75 | $407.00 |
| Drywall replacement | 296 SF | $2.45 | $725.20 |
| Seal, prime, paint | 296 SF | $1.10 | $325.60 |
| Carpet pad | 160 SF | $0.75 | $120.00 |
| Contents manipulation | 3 EA | $55.00 | $165.00 |
| Subtotal | $2,452.80 |
Before overhead and profit, and before any of it is negotiated. On a loss where the carrier's estimate looked basically reasonable.
What makes this get paid
Nothing above is aggressive. Every item is either required by a standard, mechanically necessary, or arithmetic the carrier's own estimate implies. That is the point: a supplement built entirely from contested items reads as a fight, and a supplement that opens with drywall the carrier forgot to replace reads as a correction.
Three things decide the outcome:
- The quantity and how you got it. "296 SF" is an assertion. "148 LF of flood cut at 2 ft = 296 SF" is a calculation the adjuster can check in four seconds.
- The reason, in one line. Not a paragraph. The adjuster is working through a stack.
- The photograph. Taken before the work, not after. You cannot photograph a wet carpet pad once it is in a skip.
On the prices
Every rate above is a national-average default. Yours will differ, and the carrier will compare them against their own price list for your ZIP. Put your real unit prices in before you send anything, a supplement priced off somebody else's averages is the easiest thing in the world for an adjuster to dismiss.