Do You See What I See

8/28/2019 (Permalink)

There are a couple things we hear almost every time when arriving on a water damage job.

"It's OK, everything will dry on its own."

Or, worse . . .

"Everything is dried up. Nothing is wet."

With the first statement at least the property owner is acknowledging that the building materials are - or may be - wet. However they are misinformed. Building materials will not dry by themselves, at least not quickly enough. It's the reason that fully half of our business consists of mold remediation. We do mold remediation when the building materials don't in fact dry up quickly enough, and mold grows. We would love to take these customers to the current mold remediation jobs that we have ongoing at any given moment and they'll realize that, in fact, building materials don't dry by themselves quickly enough, and that is why we have to do mold remediation.

The second comment is more concerning because the customer isn't even acknowledging and sometimes isn't willing to learn that the building materials are indeed wet.

This is when the capabilities of a professional, experienced water damage mitigation expert can be of benefit. We at SERVPRO ofVan Nuys Southpossess the equipment that will help identify what building materials are wet and what building materials are not wet.

We are happy to come out to our community at any time and help a property owner know whether or not they have water damage. It isn't always obvious – many times you can't even tell a wall is wet until you start smelling nasty odors or seeing mold colonies form on the building materials.

The moisture detection equipment we possess allows us to identify whether or not materials are wet, and where exactly they are wet. They are allowing us to mitigate and dry the structure quickly and precisely in a rifle-shot manner. One example is in the picture below – infrared cameras help us quickly scan an area that has come under attack by a water damage. Water is tricky and will find its own way to make it down to lower floors. In this photo we see that the water has clearly come from above down a certain vein. Only a small section of this wall was affected. This precision diagnosis allowed us to attack this small area quickly efficiently and cost-effectively, eliminating the risk of a costly and potentially harmful mold situation.

Ignorance is bliss. Except when it isn't. When it comes to water damage, ignorance can cause unnecessary and preventable property deterioration, which can powers financial hardships or worse yet harm to the health of building occupants.