Mitigating Water Damage for Residents of New Providence

3/30/2023 (Permalink)

SERVPRO has the training and equipment to restore your water damaged home in New Providence.

SERVPRO Technicians Have Extensive Experience in Water Mitigation and Restoration

When properties become wet, they begin to suffer damage. Water intrusion can occur from multiple sources but are most commonly the result of a malfunction in the home's infrastructure. Water can permanently harm your property's structure and contents without professional intervention.

When consulting about water damage in New Providence, it is essential to recognize that restoration is a highly-skilled job. Technicians train, grow experience under supervision, and gain qualifications before being put in charge of restoring a homeowner's property. One of the core roles we perform for this community is mitigating loss following unexpected property damages. The fastest way to reduce loss, and protect your belongings or home from moisture, is through drying. Once moisture is out of the property, we can confidently say that no more damage is likely to occur, so the mitigation phase of our work is complete. Our job then becomes returning damaged belongings or structures to a preloss condition which is part of the restoration phase. 

Many methods when mitigating damage relies on psychrometry: the drying science. Psychrometry allows a restorer to understand and calculate the interaction between temperature, moisture, material, and air. You may find that certain items, such as clothing, dry quickly. That occurs because textiles are generally porous, allowing air and temperature to circulate rapidly through the fibers. Other parts of your home, such as the subfloor, may absorb moisture slowly, which can take longer to dry depending on the density or porosity of those materials. Some materials may lose their shape, color, or strength following exposure to moisture. Our team can calculate and apply the correct solution to any size disaster using drying science.

Basic Principles of Psychrometry and Drying Method

• Drying a wet property relies on speeding up natural evaporation by using air circulation, heat, and knowledge of material porosity.
• The moisture on wet materials evaporates into surrounding air until it reaches cooler surfaces, where it recondenses into liquid. 
• When the surrounding air becomes saturated (high humidity), it is no longer capable of absorbing additional moisture. Humid environments slow the evaporation of wet materials.

Moisture can harm your property in two ways. The first is the impact of liquid which can absorb into materials causing them to warp, discolor, bleed, shrink or buckle. The second impact comes from evaporated liquids which can deposit moisture onto upper surfaces, windows, or inside walls. Drying a property correctly needs to focus on controlling humidity to increase evaporation of liquid while preventing vapor damage or high humidity. In a nutshell, drying the air is essential to dry the floor. To achieve both of these goals, our technicians must combine two pieces of equipment. Air movers circulate heated air to evaporate moisture, and dehumidifiers extract the evaporated water from the air. SERVPRO technicians calculate their approach first and then monitor the conditions using equipment readings to ensure they are balanced efficiently.

Methods for Drying Wet Materials

• The solid wood used in floorboards or frameworks of a home can take longer to dry and often requires advanced equipment such as desiccant dehumidifiers to dry appropriately.
• Drywall generally dries quickly, but if it imbibes too much liquid, it may weaken or break apart, requiring replacement.
• Wall, floor, or ceiling cavities often require special attention to prevent water from pooling inside and stagnating. We can either remove wall portions to allow circulation or adapt equipment to direct air into the cavities. 

Drying a wet property can be complex without professional knowledge. Contact SERVPRO of Western Union County for water damage restoration at (908) 791-9177.