If you are experiencing an emergency, call 911. For our emergency water damage restoration services, contact us at (877) 468-3566.
Floods and other causes of water damage can be some of the most detrimental to the health and integrity of your home and your family. If your building was exposed to flood waters, storm damage, broken plumbing, and even water used to extinguish a fire, it will face long-term problems if the right restoration actions are not quickly taken. Water damage affects drywall, wood, metal, ceramic, glass, paint, and other building materials, in addition to your belongings, including appliances, electronics, books, jewelry, furniture, clothing, bedding, and personal items. All of this and more will face immediate and extended effects of any kind of water exposure in varying degrees of severity. ServiceMaster Recovery by C2C Restoration provides comprehensive water damage restoration in Orange County, CA, and the greater Southern California area. Our restoration technicians have the training, equipment, and solutions necessary to help a building exposed to any kind of water damage fully recover from an incident with no risk of long-term effects.
One of the greatest dangers of water damage to your building is the exposure of your home and loved ones to mold, bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens. Flood and sewage waters are especially toxic because they carry human and animal waste in addition to many other contaminants, but even water from a fire hose or rain can pose risks of mold growth without proper restorative tactics. Our water damage restoration services completely dehydrate and repair your building and remove the risks of any contaminants.
The knowledge and skill of our IICRC industry-trained technicians and other hardworking staff are a big part of why we can offer such extensive restoration services. We also utilize a broad toolbox of state-of-the-art technology and equipment that helps us get the job done quickly and effectively.
For water damage remediation in particular, the technology we use to restore your home to a pre-loss state is extensive.
Water Extractors:
After a thorough evaluation of the damage and water presence in the building, we determine the best process for extracting any remaining water from your home with specialized water extractors that quickly remove flooding and prevent any further spread. Removing excess water with high-powered submersible and industrial extractors will prevent the growth of mold within the following 24 to 48 hours. The CDC outlines the risks of mold exposure in your home after disasters and emphasizes the importance of professional cleanup services. If expert cleanup service providers aren’t contacted as soon as possible, mold can create serious problems.
Not only does mold pose health risks including the potential for allergic reactions, the development of asthma in children and infants, chronic respiratory and cardiac conditions, and even cancer, mold is also a damaging force to building materials. Mold growths survive in environments with moisture, little sunlight, and cellulose. Cellulose is a broad term covering any organic materials, many of which are used in building construction. Mold will consume cellulose present in drywall, wood, paint, paper, adhesives, plaster, and other common building materials. Our water extraction process halts the flow of water and drains all visible flooding, eliminating the risk of immediate mold colony development.
Negative Airflow Machines:
After visible water is drained from your building, we install negative airflow systems that begin the dehydration process. Not only is this technology important for the removal of moisture in the air and building materials, it also creates a negative air pressure in the building interior, allowing our air scrubbers and filtration systems to get to work pulling airborne contaminants from the localized environment through the HVAC and ducting systems.
Our air scrubbers work with negative air pressure to remove mold spores, bacteria, dust, odors, and many additional particles that are harmful when inhaled. The scrubbing and contaminant removal process goes through four filtration systems using a blower. The first filter is a pre-filtration step that draws out the largest particles. This step is important to maintain strong airflow as it passes through the remaining systems. Airflow is then passed through a second-stage medium filter that removes particles that could damage the integrity of the next stage’s carbon filter. The activated carbon filter of the third stage of our airflow dehydration and filtration process removes odors and gaseous pollution. The final and most important stage is a HEPA-grade filter that removes the most dangerous contaminants, including dust, mold, bacteria, and other pathogens. This filter handles particulates with diameters as small as 0.3 microns, 5,000 times smaller than the width of the average human hair.
Infrared Cameras:
As our negative airflow systems progressively dehydrate and filter your home environment, we can start to use infrared cameras to pinpoint cold spots throughout the building. With infrared/thermal imaging cameras, we can create visual diagnostics of temperature by measuring wavelengths from 1,000 nanometers to 14,000 nanometers. Cold spots indicate lingering sources of water and residual moisture in hard-to-reach spaces such as crawl spaces, areas inside walls and underneath flooring, and other out-of-the-way regions in your building.
Hammer Probes:
For all water-damaged buildings, hammer probes play an important role in pre-restoration diagnostics and testing throughout the recovery process. Hammer probes are tools with digital moisture readouts attached to prongs that can be inserted into walls, flooring, ceilings, and other building materials. These probes are useful for measuring water content and evaluating the extent of damage in saturated, semi-damp, and even dried out building materials. Hammer probe prongs are insulated pins that can penetrate structural materials by several inches. These pins determine the exact water content of wood or Wood Moisture Equivalent (WME) percentages of other materials. We utilize hammer probes during damage inspection and for monitoring the progress of our water extraction and dehydration.
Moisture Meters:
Non-penetrating moisture meters are paired with hammer probes in the inspection process and continued diagnostics. Some of our moisture meters use radio frequencies to fire a reading signal into building materials without requiring penetration, while others use conductive pads that transmit electrical current through materials to provide a reading. Both of these meters calculate water and moisture content through radio capacitance or electrical resistance. Moisture meters are valuable tools for water damage inspections because they are completely non-destructive, unlike hammer probes, and they are easy and quick to use.
Our restoration technicians use non-penetrating moisture meters to rapidly measure large areas of affected interiors and exteriors of buildings. By quickly pinpointing areas where water saturation is high after we perform water extraction, we can get started on the most affected areas of your building. As we work to dehydrate these spots, we can continue using moisture meters to provide general information quickly. Because they can be slightly less accurate than hammer probes when measuring materials that are conductive, such as metal studs, pipes, ducts, specialized coatings, foiled insulation, and more, they work best to help us target areas that need our attention. We use moisture meters paired with the more accurate readings of hammer probes to completely remove moisture in areas of your home where damage cannot be visibly traced.
Desiccants:
Desiccants are highly absorbent/hydroscopic materials that eliminate moisture from their surrounding environments. Silica gel packs in dried food product containers are one example of common desiccants that prevent spoilage. We utilize desiccants extensively during the restoration process to contain humidity throughout the inspection, extraction, dehydration, and sanitation stages. Implementing desiccants throughout the interior of your building during the restoration process not only helps us eliminate humidity to a greater degree; it also removes odors from the air and serves as signifiers to our technicians. The desiccants we use have properties that alert technicians to the level of moisture in the air and how much humidity is passing through our airflow systems.
By cycling out desiccants as they absorb moisture to their fullest extent, we can gradually track the reduction of water vapor, lowering the risk of mold growth in the long term. Not only do we utilize desiccants to dry out your building interior, we also use it to restore your belongings and even salvage affected electronics.
Thermo Hygrometers:
Digital thermo hygrometers are another essential tool for the restoration process. These devices gather data on temperature, air pressure, and relative humidity in indoor spaces. Once a reading is taken, the thermo hygrometer calculates dew point temperature, vapor pressure, and specific humidity. Using thermo hygrometer data, we can establish the baseline of your building’s environmental conditions at the start of restoration and monitor changes as we remediate the water damage.
The valuable information a thermo hygrometer provides helps our technicians determine best steps forward and measure the effectiveness of dehydration and climate control airflow systems. We use resistive electrical hygrometer sensors that measure the electrical resistance of a material caused by the presence of varying levels of humidity. With a complex circuit board and digital readout, these devices measure relative humidity with a ±3% accuracy range and translate that measurement into relevant data points.
Low-Grain Refrigerant Dehumidifiers:
In addition to desiccants and our airflow dehumidification and sanitation systems, we use Low Grain Refrigerant (LGR) dehumidifiers. LGR dehumidifiers are primarily used by restoration professionals because they are the most energy efficient and precise dehumidifier systems available. Conventional dehumidifiers will remove water vapor as low as about 40% relative humidity at temperatures between 70º- 90º F. LGR dehumidifiers, on the other hand, continue to reduce humidity to far below 55 grains per pound (40% relative humidity). Some even reduce water to below 40 grains per pound (GPP). For flooded conditions, LGR dehumidifiers are ideal systems for extreme water vapor removal.
One of the reasons LGR dehumidifiers can reduce water significantly is because of their heating and cooling systems. LGR dehumidifiers have heated pipe systems that intake air with the highest containment of water vapor possible in its current environment. The air is then rapidly cooled in a second chamber and transferred into a third chamber where it is reheated and passed into a thermal siphon system. Within the siphon chambers, the contained air goes through a heating and cooling cycle repeatedly to remove as much moisture from the air as possible before it’s returned to the atmosphere. By repeating the heat and cool cycle in the thermal siphon chamber, LGR dehumidifiers are more energy efficient than any other kind of dehumidifier.
These are just some of the main tools we use for comprehensive water damage restoration in Orange County, CA. learn more, contact ServiceMaster Recovery by C2C Restoration at info@svmbyc2crestoration.com today or at our fast response LA line: (323) 851-5543. For emergencies, contact us at (877) 468-3566.
