What the numbers on public pages actually measure

A published number is exact about something narrower than most people assume. This read takes eleven figures that turn up around a wet Bartow County house and says what each one measures, who published it and what it leaves out. The table below sets them side by side, and the sections walk through the groups.

Two numbers come up first. The window of 24 to 48 hours is the one EPA's brief guide and UGA Extension both give for drying water-damaged areas and items. It is a goal for the work and no forecast for any particular room. The 10 square feet on EPA's mold cleanup page is a size to compare a patch against, about 3 feet by 3 feet. For sewage or contaminated water, EPA's advice is a professional at any size.

Several figures are lengths. A river gauge reports height at one spot. The Weather Service's table for September 2009 gives Cartersville a flood stage of 18 feet and a crest of 20.73 feet at 2:00 a.m. on the 22nd. That is gauge height, not the depth of water in any house, and the Canton row in the same table also reads 20.73, which the page does not explain.

UGA Extension's checklist adds ground-level lengths: plastic sheeting 6 to 8 mil thick over crawl space soil (a mil is a thousandth of an inch), roof water sent 6 to 10 feet clear of the foundation, and a grade that drops about 6 inches along that stretch. CDC's 20 feet is the gap between a gasoline engine and a door, window or vent.

EPA's indoor target for relative humidity is a pair of numbers: no higher than 60 percent, and ideally between 30 and 50. A reading describes one room at one moment, and it describes the air, not the wetness of a wall. Rainfall is an inch total, and a departure from normal is the gap between a season's total and the Weather Service's normal for that station. Rome's 2024 total was 57.20 inches against a normal of 51.92, a departure of 5.28 inches. Rome is a station, not your street.

The Census Bureau counts by sampling, so each estimate carries a margin of error. For Cartersville, the median year built is 1990, give or take 3, and occupied homes number 9,230, give or take 479. A median is the middle: half the homes are older and half newer. Small places carry wide margins. Emerson's 585 occupied homes carry a margin of 125, and its median of 1979 is good to 14 years. Taylorsville's median is 1938, and the Census prints no margin for it.

None of them describes your house. EPA's goals, CDC's distances and the Census medians are published for everyone. A moisture meter reading in your own wall is not. Use the published numbers to know what to ask, then let the readings from the visit answer it.

None of the published ones. Give the facts they stand in for: when the water began, how many rooms it reached and what it touched. To read how a visit measures those, see standing water and soaked carpet or wet basements and crawl spaces. Then call (678) 288-4775 and say it in your own words.