Here is an update of our ordeal.
If you know of anyone who had damage because of the freezing weather during that cold weekend and they are making a claim with their insurance company make sure they have the insurance company classifies it as a catastrophe. That particular weekend was classified as a catastrophe. By classifying it this way the insurance company will never count that as a claim against you when you go to renew or change to another insurance company.
The insurance company suggested that we go with a company that does the whole process from tearing out the damaged property, drying out the whole area, spraying anti-mold chemicals in the wall, to repairing, painting, and cleaning the carpet. The only part they could not do was repair the broken fire sprinkler pipe. We called every fire sprinkler company around and they were either way too busy to get out here or would not accept any new business. We finally got ahold of the company that originally installed it and they were able to come up within a week to make the repair.
The whole process took about three weeks because of the spike in repairs needed in the southland.
We decided not to recharge the system. It seem that this is a common problem even when you service the system once a year. Our life style is closer to the safe side than most people that do have fires that burn down their homes. It appears that the majority of people that have fires in their homes are people that overload their electrical systems, burn candles, have space heaters, store flammable liquids, and smoke, none of which apply to us which in-turn significantly reduces the chance of us ever having a fire in our home.
We are so blessed that our damage was only isolated to the garage and we had an alert neighbor which saw the water running down the street and was able to stop it before it became worse than it was.
