With any rainstorm or plumbing catastrophe, the risk of flooding rises. The water damage restoration process often requires Restore Pro professionals to extract water and restore the walls, cabinets, and floors in a home or business. Here are a few things you need to know about it.
How Do You Detect Moisture?
Water damage restoration experts use methods like pinless and insulated pin-type meters to detect the current reading in wood or drywall. Moisture level gradients vary based on the density of the building materials. Pinless moisture meters utilize electromagnetic signals while pin moisture meters detect electrically powered resistance. Pin moisture meters are more reliable.
- Walls
More so than the cabinets and floors, walls can be a bit more difficult to dry because of the risk of moisture traveling from the inside of the walls to the structural components. Water damage restoration consider intra-wall drying an essential part of the mitigation process since water damage restoration cannot start while any moisture is still present.
If your walls have a single layering of wood or drywall with single-layer paint, you likely will only require air drying equipment like an air mover or an axial fan to dry the moisture properly. Air movers are smaller and can be set on any section in a room, which can be directed at a wall. Axial fans are larger and cover a broader area, which is ideal for a room.
Some walls also have multiple layers, making accessibility more challenging. The easiest drying technique is to remove the baseboards, drill small access points strategically through the drywall, and use intra-wall drying equipment to force air into the space inside the walls. This process will drastically reduce its drying time so that restoration can begin.
- Cabinets
Unlike the cost of patching or replacing wet drywall, cabinet replacement after a flood can be a bit pricier as most property owners spend a greater sum on kitchen functioning and aesthetics. The drying process is critical to retain your cabinet’s value, so it requires strategic drilling patterns to reduce damage to the structural components of the cabinets.
Drying base cabinets follow a similar process as the walls. Our restoration experts prefer to drill through the toe-kick, which is located underneath a cabinet´s base. This area is also easy to restore or replace should the drilling process affect their aesthetics. For wall cabinets, you can simply remove the doors and use an air mover or axial fan to dry quickly.
- Floors
Did you know that it can take up to six weeks to dry a wood floor fully? As with any wood, moisture can also cause the floors to buckle if they are not dried appropriately. Replacing wood flooring will also cost a pretty penny, so removing moisture as quickly as possible will help you retain their beauty and value. You´ll want to first remove any standing water.
Water quickly can penetrate through the wood and cause underlying structural damage and mold growth. Water restoration specialists prefer to use rescue mat systems, which is a high-powered extraction system that removes excessive water. After using this method, the air movers and axial fans can then be used to continue the wood-drying process.
Eastern Massachusetts and Southern New Hampshire property owners can call our office at 1-800-847-0114 or visit https://www.facebook.com/RestorePro911/ to learn more about these methods.
