The most expensive mistake on a water loss is treating the wet spot as the problem. Water is subject to gravity and capillary action, not to room boundaries — it runs along framing members, wicks into subfloor and drywall, and travels under flooring well past the point where it entered. Two things follow from that, and both are general to water damage rather than specific to any one city:
Where water appears is often not where it came from. A failure on an upper level commonly presents first as a stain on a ceiling one floor below, because that's where gravity delivered it and where it finally became visible. Chasing the stain rather than the source means the actual failure keeps running.
The visibly wet area is smaller than the actually wet area. Materials look and feel dry at the surface long before the framing and subfloor behind them are dry. This is what moisture meters and thermal imaging are for — establishing the real boundary of the affected area, in writing, before deciding what gets opened up and what gets dried in place.
That sequence is also what makes a claim defensible. An adjuster reviewing the file after the fact wasn't standing in the building. Documented readings that show where moisture was found, and where it wasn't, are what justify the scope of the work that followed.
