She’s finally dry

[Desk Jockey]

She’s finally dry!

We had a medical building that had a 3-inch main break of the 3rd floor of the building running for 4-5 hours. Crazy water, the stairwell looked like water falls as the water ran down them to other floors.

We got the call at 5:00 AM and had 5-crews extracting water for the better part of the day. They left more than 200 pieces of drying equipment and dried most of the CGD carpet in a day. The real problem was the trapped moisture in the walls.

Commercial construction is generally done with metal framing; this framing has a channel in the base plate which will carry water a long way spreading the damage. In this case nearly everything was affected but it was unseen to the eye. When inspecting with a thermal camera you could see that 4-6 up in most areas the drywall and insulation has soaked up some water.

They had few options, that moisture was trapped behind vinyl wall paper. They could remove the wet drywall and insulation, costing plenty but even more importantly the down time, the interruption of business and the mess of sanding and taping would be a nightmare.

The second day we drilled vent holes throughout the 3-floors allowing whatever moisture to escape the passively would. The following days we used 100 turbo vents along with every gadget we had for wall drying, Adapta dry with axial fan’s, Octidry with Axial fan’s, Viking wall drying system, Air Wolf for stair wells.

Everyday we dried and moved equipment eventually drying the whole building. Now the fun of billing it. oh my...

 

[John Olson]

So your paying for the Wynn buffet Dinner at next years mikeyfest right!?

 

[Desk Jockey]

No but I might be able to pay some bills finally! LIKE!

 

[Mike Draper]

really? You are paying for the Wynn buffet for everyone at mikeyfest. That is nice of you.

 

[Mike Draper]

did I mention I'm bringing my cousin "Eddie an his family from the chevy chase movie"? someone please post that Vegas buffet clip.

 

[Desk Jockey]

 

[Goomer]

v]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtkpTrvwQ6cv]

 

[Nate The Great]

Nice job Richie!! Damn that's a lot of holes... Way back when, my pops was the one to bring venting walls to Hawaii... Lol, if you're not venting it then it's getting replaced...

 

[Desk Jockey]

I walked in the third day and it looked rough with holes all over. I've seen Jimmy naked

Amazing what people will let you do when they have a problem.

We saved them a ton over remove and replace.

 

[Nate The Great]

I walked in the third day and it looked rough with holes all over. I've seen Jimmy naked

Amazing what people will let you do when they have a problem.

We saved them a ton over remove and replace.

That's an understatement.... There's more then a few restorer's here that will not give the customer an option and make the job grow only to line there pockets... Glad you made it happen!

 

[tmdry]

That's awesome Richard, I'm happy for you man!

First time I see the air wolf being used like that, pretty awesome.

Did you guys have to do any plastic sheeting in the building to direct focus the progress?

 

[floorguy]

now clean that carpet....

that one pic...its a bad TA

 

[Steve Toburen]

Odd, Richard. I don't see YOU in any of those photos of hard working people!

Steve

PS Congrats on the job. And yes, you really should spring for the buffet.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Odd, Richard. I don't see YOU in any of those photos of hard working people!

Hey now! I waz there on the 4th of July, I picked up wet insulation and HEPA vacuumed, them vacuumed with the powerhead for 4hrs.

That carpet in the lobby was awful, we did clean it just to spruce it up. We will hit it again before we leave, maybe we can work our way into some regular cleaning there.

 

[KevinL]

I hope they had proper insurance and enough of it.

 

[Desk Jockey]

They are well insured......$250,000.00 deductible. I've seen Jimmy naked

 

[kmdineen]

Nice job Richard!
When dealing with insulation sitting in water trapped in a base plate channel, I cut out a thin strip of sheetrock above the base plate channel and below the top of the baseboard. This should not require more repair or disruption than fixing or taping over your holes.
The advantages of removing a thin strip of sheetrock instead of drilling holes are:
A crevice tool can be used to extract the standing water in the channel, meaning there would be less water vapor to deal with.
The wet insulation could be cut or wrung out and pushed up to allow for better air flow in the wall cavity.
There would be no need to pressurize the wall cavity, positive or negative, saving time and equipment. Laminar or axial air movers placed 10 to 16 feet apart should work just fine.
I know your guys are pro's, so what am I missing here?
P.S.
What temperature were you drying at, ambient and surface?
Do you EVER use your big T.E.S. system?

 

[Desk Jockey]

Vinyl cove base and vinyl wall paper. To do as you mentioned there is risk to the wall paper. By drilling and pressurizing we saved nearly all three floors of wall paper. Time is the other factor, to cut the linear footage we faced would have taken a lot more labor that we had at our disposal, as it was we had 12-tech's spent 2-long days drilling.

Our experience is when fooling around with the base you can damage the paper. Even drying as you mentioned is risky, we've had to put push pins in the paper when doing it the way you mentioned. After many jobs like this we finally decided it was best just to drill the base and let the wall paper guy deal with removal and put back. This way if he damages it he can repair it himself.

It dried very well drilling and pressurizing it, but that is not to say there are not other ways to skin the cat. This is generally the way we hand viny cove and wallpaper and it works for us.

Ambient with the exception of the Viking wall drying system. This was a very busy building and the TES would not have worked well until the weekend, even then dialysis still had a constant stream of patients in wheel chairs all day Saturday.

 

[kmdineen]

Thanks Richard, as always, I appreciate you sharing you experience.

 

[Desk Jockey]

It is a big place (21,000 sq/ft per floor, 3-floors. First two floors completely wet, 3rd floor 90% ) I think we had over 30-hours just in extraction alone including a couple of trips to extract the elevator shaft.

 

[floorguy]

huh huh huh...

you said shaft and shag in posts ...


huh huh huh

 

[Desk Jockey]

Oh hell I got him excited. Here comes #6! eat yor heart out Werner

Funny how I look and see you have 5-children and that seems like a lot.....until I realize I have 4. I've seen Jimmy naked

Amazing how that one more turns into "a lot".
LIKE!

 

[Ed]

Yeah on a job that size I'd lay awake at night wondering if all the standing water actually evaporated from the c channel. What an awesome job.

 

[Ron Werner]

excellent work!

 

[floorguy]

Oh hell I got him excited. Here comes #6! eat yor heart out Werner

Funny how I look and see you have 5-children and that seems like a lot.....until I realize I have 4. I've seen Jimmy naked

Amazing how that one more turns into "a lot".
LIKE!

unless its the postman..

I am done... you can get me as excited as you want..

 

[Giorgio]

The national restoration chain in our area would have cut 2' of dry wall out around the entire perimeter base leaving a massive repair job in their wake.

I like they way you did it.

 

[Desk Jockey]

Hard to say why they would do that, I'm sure they had reason. If it were only drywall it could be faster but i would think the put back would be greater hassle with taping, mudding and sanding and painting. ??? Its possible they ran into vapor barriers and compacted insulation. Compacted blown in insulation would have forced us to cut out also. When blown insulation compacts it loses its R value.

 

[Lars]

Great flood job. Thanks for sharing

 

[CleaningLA]

That's great.

 

[scottpeterson83]

The job looks good. I have been doing water restoration for a few years now and was always one that would dry in place. Recently I push for tear out and replace because of all the law suits and things we run into. I have had found pre existing mold from other water damages, dead mice/rats, droppings, etc inside the walls and on the back side of the drywall, etc. I didnt want to be held liable for drilling holes in the walls and pushing all the containaments you dont see back there throughout the house/office and pollute it. Also, the carpet automatically loses its warranty regardless of age and I dont want to set the customer up for failure, especially if the carpet is fairly new and starts to delaminate 6 months down the road and now they have no recourse. I always give the customer the option but this is what I recommend. Do you have any advise for guys like me with my concerns? It seems like the IICRC always pushes dry in place especially with the carpet, but I dont understand if we are there for our clients, why do we dry carpet in place knowing that the client just lost their warranty on one of the highest expenses in their home? I really liked the set up you did here and agree 100% that tear out and replace would have really interupted their day, but how do you protect yourself in this job from that wet insulation that could have been leading to mold growth, pushing air into holes in the wall with insulation behind it, and a carpet that may start buckling up in a few months? Again, I'm not questioning the doings of this job on a right or wrong basis because it looks like you did a good job. I'm just trying to learn how some other companies protect themselves from liability in instances like this one.