Getting back to business to find water damage

6/29/2020 (Permalink)

When water damage sits on a carpet for months you are bound to see some things growing from it. This was very slippery

Water.

Water is the life force of the planet. Nothing would survive without it. Yet it can be one of the most destructive forces we know. The funny thing about water its destruction can be instantaneous or slow and steady over the course of days weeks months or even years.

Today SERVPRO of East Boston would like to show you a case study on the various ways a water loss can affect your building.

Let us start out by setting the stage:

                Unprecedented times have forced your business to close. You send your employees home for their own safety. You have the management team set the building into idol mode. For the HVAC system and lights to ensure you are saving on costs and you have them lock it up and go home for their safety as well.

                Time moves on and still you remain closed. You determine you do not need to act on the building because you shut it down and no clients have been in or out. Right? Weeks turn into months and still no signs of opening. All of a sudden there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel word is out that you may be able to open your doors soon. New protocols will need to be implemented the whole building needs to be cleaned all your equipment needs to be wiped down and situated. Staff needs to be trained.

                You call up your regional manager to set the wheels in motion to get things going. The area managers are all called up for action. They head into the buildings and start to assess in the equipment and building for cleaning, get the air turned on and so forth. Laying

out equipment, created one way paths, assess what else is needed.

                Then it happens one of your area managers calls after arrival to the building. Something is really wrong there is water everywhere. The whole place is flooded. You ponder and thing to yourself that is not really possible we have a big place send me some photos. One photo is a bubbler leaking water all over the locker room area. Ok well the locker room area is mostly tile so that can’t be too bad.

                The images continue into the main hallway. Which by the way is carpeted, as you follow the carpeted hallways it becomes clear there is a slippery film coating the entire top of the carpet. How long does it take for a film like that to develop?

You keep walking it flows through walls, into other areas where you have thick rubber flooring cemented to the floor below. Did it get under this this layer of rubber? Is that possible. How far into the main area of room did this water go. As you walk through increasingly wondering how bad can it be?

You see the water line it is halfway through the building. As you stand there saying well its only half way its manageable. You see more walls that it looks like it went through. Oh no please not in that room you think to yourself as you anxiously walk towards the swinging glass doors. Slowly opening them to find your wood floors look intact. With a big sigh of relief you say wow we dodged a bullet.

Time to call the professionals to assess what the next steps will be. Enter the professionals. You meet them at the building the next day to show them everything you found proud of the fact that the water was only half way through the building and that you do found that your precious floors were not affected.

Then they do something you did not do.. They look up noticing a lot of black spots on the ceilings and walls by the windows and the AC vents. The then look down but not the way you looked down they peel away a rubber vinyl baseboard just a little bit. They do this in a few rooms finding a lot of evidence of trapped water as they go.

They walk into that room you were so proud to tell them that they water did not look like it went into that room. They pull at the baseboard on the wall next to that rubber floor you know water affected. What happens next brings you to your knees. That wood floors is a raised floor built on another subfloor built on another subfloor. sitting on top of a liner sitting on top of cement. There is trapped water under it under almost all of it. While topically this whole room looks fine. Hidden behind a wall, under a floor water trapped in a dark space where the air does not move and the heat builds as temperatures outside continue to climb.

Finding out it is not what you can see that is the problem or where you look. It is what you look behind and what you pull away from walls and floors that show the true extent of the damage. As you absorb that the damage is far more extensive than you imagined reality sets in. Your light at that end of the tunnel just moved a lot further way. How do you get through all of this? Will you be able to hold out long enough for the repairs to be made? Will your customers come back when you are re-opened? Where do you start with fixing all this?

SERVPRO of East Boston is here to help. We have a vast network of vendors that will allow us to get your project going as soon as possible. We also always work closely with every insurance company. They know that SERVPRO has a reputation for being efficient and through. We are a trusted resource for getting the project done and getting you back to “Like it never even happened.”