About MH Water Rescue Minneapolis

What we do, in one paragraph

When a supply line, drain line, appliance connection, water heater, radiator, or fire-sprinkler pipe lets go in a Minneapolis home or building, we respond 24/7, extract standing water with truck-mounted and portable extraction, remove unsalvageable wet materials in controlled demolition, dry structural assemblies to measured moisture targets using air movers and LGR or desiccant dehumidifiers, document every stage of the loss for your insurance claim, and — if you want us to — complete the reconstruction on the other side. Our scope follows the ANSI/IICRC S500 standard for water damage restoration, which is the professional reference document our industry works from.

Why we exist

The founding story is a familiar one in this business. A family member's pipe froze and split in a 1920s Northeast Minneapolis duplex during the cold snap of February 2019. The plumber got there and fixed the line inside three hours. The water damage sat for another two days before a restoration company could get on site, and by then the finished basement rec room was a loss that didn't need to be — the carpet, pad, lower drywall, and base trim could have been saved with same-day extraction and a drying setup. The insurance claim ended up at roughly three times the number it should have been, and the family lived around industrial fans in half the house for nine days instead of four.

MH Water Rescue was built to be the company we wished had answered that call. We take speed seriously because in water damage, time is the single biggest cost multiplier. We take documentation seriously because insurance adjusters can only pay what they can justify, and justification is readings, photos, and scope. We take honesty about scope seriously because the restoration industry has a reputation problem — and the reputation is earned when unqualified crews tear out drywall that didn't need to come out, run equipment that isn't doing anything for five extra days, and bill the homeowner's policy for both.

Our service area

We cover all 83 Minneapolis neighborhoods across the city's 11 communities, every municipality in Hennepin County, and the Anoka County cities north of Minneapolis including Columbia Heights, Fridley, Spring Lake Park, Coon Rapids, and Blaine. For urgent same-day response we also cover near-ring Ramsey County, including the parts of St. Anthony Village that cross the Hennepin-Ramsey line. Dispatch and shop are at 14665 Felton Ct #101, Apple Valley, MN 55124; from there we are typically inside the 494 loop in 30 to 40 minutes under normal conditions.

Credentials and what we rely on

• IICRC S500 compliance. We follow the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification's standard for professional water damage restoration. S500 covers water category classification, inspection procedures, structural drying methodology, materials handling, and documentation requirements. Ask to see our copy if you want to.
• Moisture measurement equipment. Pin-type meters (Delmhorst), pinless scanners (Tramex), thermo-hygrometers, and FLIR thermal imaging on every job. Readings are documented and dated.
• Drying equipment. Commercial-grade axial and centrifugal air movers, LGR (low-grain refrigerant) dehumidifiers, desiccant units for cold-structure drying, and HEPA air scrubbers where contamination requires them.
• Direct insurance billing. We work with every major Minnesota homeowners carrier. You pay your deductible; we invoice the adjuster.
• Minnesota contractor registration. MN Department of Labor & Industry contractor compliance for reconstruction work.

The way we talk about what we do

If you are the sort of person who reads the "About" page carefully, here is the kind of thing we try not to do. We do not call ourselves "Minneapolis's #1 restoration company" because we have no way of proving that and neither does anyone else who writes it. We do not run Google Business Profile listings for fake storefronts in neighborhoods we don't actually operate from. We do not tell you on the phone that your entire basement has to come out before we have taken the first moisture reading. We do not run equipment past the point that readings justify it in order to pad the invoice. We do not accept kickbacks from preferred contractors in the reconstruction phase. We do not use scare tactics about mold in the first four hours after a loss when the realistic timeline for mold growth is 48–72 hours under the right conditions.

If you catch us doing any of those things, say so. We will fix it or we will pay you to walk away.

Working alongside your plumber

A majority of our jobs run in parallel with a plumber. You almost always need a plumber first — or at the same time we arrive — to isolate the failed line and perform the repair. We work with all of the major Minneapolis plumbing companies and most of the independents. If you don't have a plumber already, we can refer you to several good ones who we know will show up the same day. We take no referral fee and we never will.

What a typical loss looks like with us

The clearest way to describe how we work is to walk you through the day of a loss. Say it's 9 p.m. on a Tuesday in January. Your bathroom supply line let go an hour ago; your husband shut the main off; you have an inch of water across the first floor of a 1,400-square-foot Nokomis bungalow. You call us. A technician takes the call, asks six or seven questions, gives you a 45-minute ETA, and tells you to pull area rugs if you can lift them, take photos of every room with your phone before you touch anything else, and find your policy number.

At 9:48 p.m. we're at your door. We photograph the as-found condition. We map moisture through the whole affected zone and 10 feet into adjacent zones to find any migration. We extract standing water with the truck mount — about an hour. We flood-cut the lower 24 inches of drywall in the three affected rooms, pull wet batt insulation, lift and dispose of the carpet pad, label and remove the baseboard, and move your contents to a dry room on pallets. By 1:30 a.m. the air movers and the two LGR dehumidifiers are set up and running. We walk you through the drying plan, give you our phone and the technician's direct cell, and let you sleep.

Days 2 through 4 we're back once every 24 hours to take readings in the same documented points, adjust airflow, and swap containment as sections pass the dry standard. Day 4 or 5 the readings match the unaffected part of your house; we pull the equipment, give you the drying log, submit the full documentation packet to your adjuster, and schedule the reconstruction — our crew or a contractor of your choice.

None of this is magic. It's just doing a methodical job with enough equipment, enough documentation, and enough sense not to cut corners.

Call us before you need us

The best time to have our number is before the pipe fails. Save (612) 493-1161 to your phone. In the meantime, our winter pipe prevention guide covers the handful of things every Minneapolis homeowner can do before mid-December to dramatically reduce the chance of needing us at all.