Proper Drying Is Crucial After A Flood In Your Los Gatos Home

10/26/2019 (Permalink)

Drying a property fully helps eliminate many problems, including microbial growth.

Steps That Ensure Proper Drying After Flood Damage Affects Your Los Gatos Property

If your property floods, you can expect a myriad of issues. However, wet materials and contents are likely the most significant challenges you might face. Ensuring your property dries fully is, therefore, an essential step in the restoration of flood damage. You must perform several steps to achieve the intended outcome, which is why it is crucial to involve a professional restorer like SERVPRO.

Thorough Water Extraction
Standing water causes a significant percentage of the flood damage affecting your Los Gatos property. Faster removal paves the way for other drying processes and also limits the extent of secondary damages that occur. Extracting water requires the right equipment. Our SERVPRO crews carry a wide range of water removal pumps, including self-priming trash pumps that remove water mixed debris. We also remove carpets and other porous materials covering surfaces to minimize the amount of moisture left over after the extraction process.

Ventilating the Property
For contents and building materials to dry, the moisture they absorb from floodwaters must evaporate into the air. Ventilating the property helps improve the drying process by ensuring the humidity levels in the air do not reach saturation levels. Our SERVPRO technicians use different approaches to help ensure this. For example, instead of opening windows and doors in the name of ventilating the home, we prefer a closed system whereby we use air movers to boost evaporation and dehumidifiers to regulate the humidity levels. We also create drying chambers for areas such as hardwood floors, which might require special attention.

Managing the Level of Wetness in Materials
It is possible to leave the drying process halfway done unintentionally, which can have grave consequences later on.  Some materials might be dry on the surface while moisture is still trapped deep inside.  Instead of casual observation, our SERVPRO technicians use various moisture detection equipment, including moisture meters with probes, to verify that all materials are dry to average moisture levels. For example, we check whether the moisture level in wood drops to around 10%, which is standard dryness.

Drying a property fully helps eliminate many problems, including microbial growth. Call SERVPRO of Los Gatos / Monte Sereno at (408) 600-2020 to help deal with the moisture issues from flooding, “Like it never even happened.”

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