Water Damage Drying Estimate Calculator — Equipment Count, Invoice and Margin

1. Affected areas

Wet floor area (sq ft)

Ceiling height (ft)

Wet wall length above 2 ft (linear ft)

Wet ceiling area (sq ft)

Water class (1 to 4)

2. Drying plan and carrier

Floor sq ft per air mover

Wall linear ft per air mover

Ceiling sq ft per air mover

Dehumidifier rating (pints/day per unit)

Planned drying days

Days the carrier approved (0 = no cap)

3. Rates and costs

Air mover billed ($/day)

Dehumidifier billed ($/day)

Air mover cost to you ($/day)

Dehumidifier cost to you ($/day)

Minutes to set each unit

Monitoring minutes per visit

Technician cost ($/hour)

Drive per visit (hours)

Extraction hours (per person)

Demo hours (per person)

Labour billed ($/hour per person)

People on extraction and demo

Consumables at cost ($)

Margin target (% of billed)

Enter the wet area and your rates, or load the example, then click Estimate this loss.

Result

Margin by number of drying days

Drying days	Billed days	Invoice	Your cost	Profit	Margin

The arithmetic, and what it leaves out

Air movers are floor area over square feet per mover, plus wall length over feet per mover, plus ceiling area over square feet per mover, rounded up.
Dehumidifiers are floor area times ceiling height, divided by the class factor (100, 50, 40, 40), divided by the pints one unit removes, rounded up.
Equipment bills the day rate for each approved day (all days if no cap). Your cost counts every day the equipment sits there.
Technician time is setting and picking up each unit, a monitoring visit each day and the drive for each visit plus pickup.
Not modelled: category 2 and 3 contamination protocols, containment, air scrubbers, contents, mould, asbestos or lead testing, subcontractors, permits, overhead and profit markups, regional price lists and your carrier's rules.

Common questions

How many air movers and dehumidifiers does a water loss need?

A common starting point is one air mover per 50 to 70 square feet of wet floor, one per 10 to 16 linear feet of wet wall and one per 100 to 150 square feet of wet ceiling, and enough dehumidifier pints to cover the room's cubic feet divided by a class factor (roughly 100, 50, 40 and 40 for classes 1 to 4 with an LGR unit). The ratios here are inputs because your drying plan, your equipment and your adjuster may use different ones.

What do the water classes mean?

Class 1 is little absorption, class 2 is wet carpet and cushion or some wall wicking, class 3 is water from above that saturates ceilings, walls and insulation, and class 4 is deeply held water in low-permeance materials like hardwood, plaster or concrete. The class sets the dehumidifier factor here.

Why does the extra drying day cost more than it bills?

Insurers often approve equipment days against a drying log. A day past the approval still costs you the equipment, the monitoring visit and the drive, but bills nothing, so margin falls each day. The table shows the margin at two to seven days.

How is the margin computed?

Billed amount is equipment day rates times billed days, plus extraction and demo labour at your billing rate, plus consumables at twice cost. Cost is your own equipment cost per day for every day it sits there, technician time for set, pickup, monitoring and drives, labour at wage cost and consumables. Margin is profit over billed amount.

What does this leave out?

Category 2 and 3 contamination protocols, containment, air scrubbers, content handling, mould, asbestos or lead testing, subcontractors, permits, overhead and profit markups, price-list differences by region and the carrier's specific rules. It is a planning estimate, not an invoice, a drying plan or a statement of an industry standard.

Is my data uploaded?

No. Everything runs in your browser tab and nothing is sent anywhere. There are no accounts. The share link keeps your numbers in the link itself, which you choose whether to send.