The goal of restorative drying
Restoration consists of returning all building materials and components to pre-loss condition quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively. The first step of the restoration process should be the consideration of materials to be dried.

Some building and floor materials are permanently damaged after direct contact with water. Materials like particleboard underlayment and laminate wood flooring commonly warp and buckle during a water loss and never return to a pre-loss condition even after drying.

A photo finish wood floor on particleboard provides a good example of this. Once wet, the particleboard begins to expand at the edges and seams. It will never return to its original shape. For most materials, however, you can avoid permanent water damage by drying properly and promptly

You should also factor in the material's immediate pre-loss condition when considering the salvability of flooring and other building materials. Wood flooring with cracks, buckles and warping from previous water damage will not return to its original flat and smooth finish even after thorough and proper drying. In such situations, you will probably need to replace the entire floor.

Carpet with pre-existing delamination will not hold up to the water damage restoration process. The low value of delaminated carpet does not support restoration.

Vinyl composition that has bubbled off the laminate or peeled back from the perimeter and seams prior to the water loss should not be left in place for the restoration process. Vinyl will only slow the drying process of the underlayment. It should only be left in place if no damage is visible and adhesion has not been compromised.

Is the cost of replacement less than the cost of restoration? In most cases, restoration is not only less expensive, but also faster than replacement. However, there are exceptions.

With some flooring materials, the cost of replacement is less than the cost of restoration. In the case of a large vinyl composition floor, removal and replacement will speed the drying process. Due to the fact that most vinyl composition is inexpensive, this will result in an overall lower cost to the insurance company and a shorter overall restoration process. Smaller vinyl composition floors can be dried in place inexpensively with proper drying procedures.

Other non-permeable floors follow along this same rule. Some laminates, by their very nature, act as vapor barriers. They are designed to keep water from penetrating the photo finish. In a water loss situation, however, water will wick into the floor from the edges and seams. Due to the vapor resistant finish, it is difficult to remove this moisture once it has migrated into the flooring material and subfloor.

Two forms of water removal
Without a thorough extraction, carpet, pad, and other highly porous building materials cannot be dried in place. Extraction is the first step in drying down any structure. It has a huge impact on how quickly we arrive at the finish line. In fact, it has an even larger influence than you may think.

Extraction removes water 1,200 times faster than dehumidification. A typical truck-mounted extractor will pull about 25 gallons of water a minute, while your best dehumidifier will pull about 30 gallons a day. That's a huge difference. For every drop of water that you leave behind during extraction, you will spend 1,200 times longer trying to evaporate it from the carpet and pad than you would extracting it.

Here's the really important part: the structure doesn't really begin to dry until the carpet and pad have dried. The subfloor will not even begin to dry until the moisture above it has evaporated. For every gallon you leave behind after extraction you can expect a minimum of one hour of dehumidification (if you are using a 30 gallon dehumidifier). Your best extraction will leave approximately a 1/2-gallon of water for every yard of carpet and pad in the structure.

In a 1400 square foot home, that translates to 77 gallons of water left in carpet and pad after extraction. A single 30-gallon dehumidifier, in optimum conditions, would require at least 62 hours to dry just the carpet and pad. This is based on the best possible mechanical extraction.

If you extracted with just a light wand, you would leave 1.5 gallons of water behind for every yard of carpet. In the same 1400 square foot house, that leaves over 233 gallons to remove by dehumidifier. It would take 186 total hours of drying time—that's another 124 hours!—to dry just the carpet and pad compared to a thorough, mechanical extraction.

In other words, spend a little extra time extracting, even when you think that it is thorough enough. A few extra minutes with the extractor could save you days of drying time. It is like the old fable where the young man asks his father, "How much wood should I cut for the winter, father?" The father replied, "As soon as you think that you have enough, cut another pile just like it."

You will notice dramatic improvement in your overall drying time if you strengthen your emphasis on extraction. It can reduce the overall job time by days, not hours. Invest the time to affect a thorough extraction and the money in a mechanical extraction tool. This is the first step to success when drying building components, especially when drying those components "In Place."

Extraction tools today
With this renewed importance of a thorough extraction, it is necessary to carefully evaluate the tools we use to pull free water from the structure. Several different types of extraction equipment are available in the market today. Evaluate each extractor for several characteristics including consistency, ease of transport, ease of operation, wear on the operator, quality of extraction and effect on flooring materials.

First, let's talk about consistency. One of the great benefits of today's mechanical extraction tools is the consistency of results. At 4:00 am on a 1400 square foot water loss, consistent results can be very difficult to achieve. However, with many of the new extractors, mechanical drives provide great consistency. Once you have determined how many passes a floor will require, you can duplicate the process countless times throughout the structure and know that the speed of each pass is consistent with the rest.

Next, consider ease of transport and accessing multiple floor levels. Depending upon your marketplace, getting to the water damage may require carrying your equipment up flights of stairs, through hallways and doors and into other hard-to-reach areas. Ensure that the equipment you choose will be easy to transport into the types of areas you commonly work.

Ease of operation is another important factor. With the many elements of a restorative drying job we need to simplify as much as possible. You should be able to plug it in and go. Getting set up fast and getting the water out immediately is important, as well as getting on to the next phase of the restoration process as quickly as possible.

Wear on the operator has been an overlooked area in extraction over the last several years. Another benefit to the mechanical extraction tool is the fact that the equipment does the work for you. L&I claims can be costly. Although the chiropractor may count on the stress that a weighted drag wand puts on your lower back for "repeat business," your accountant and employees certainly do not.

Of course, performance is always vital, especially when drying carpet and cushion in place. You can verify that an extraction is thorough by testing the cushion in the corner of the room after making a pass or two with the extraction tool. Simply disengage the corner of the carpet and physically wring the cushion in your hands. If any water drips out of the cushion, additional extraction is necessary. Most tools should only require two or three passes on standard nylon cut pile carpet with rebond pad.

Last and definitely not least, the tool's effect on flooring materials should be evaluated thoroughly. Many cleaning tools that double as extraction tools are aggressive by nature. They are designed to agitate which improves cleaning. When they are not applying detergents, however, the lubrication they typically operate with is missing. Delamination can happen quickly if the operator is not careful, especially while trying to achieve a deep, thorough extraction.

Verifying progress
Once the extraction is complete and drying equipment installed, verification of drying progress will lead you through the remainder of the job. As our industry matures and the awareness of IAQ increases, ensuring fast and complete drying becomes more and more important.

With each mold litigation that hits the headlines the demand for documentation and verification climbs the ladder of importance. This is not only to satisfy client requests, but also to limit our own liability. If a job that your firm handles today goes to court in two years, what defense will you have without a complete and detailed documentation of your drying results?

Think of an auto mechanic that uses nothing more than a crescent wrench to replace your engine without any instrumentation to verify his work. Upon completion, no paperwork is given to you other than a copy of the contract you signed to say that you'd pay him when the work was done.

We work in a service industry, and part of that service is documenting that we accomplished what we were hired to do. Additionally, we can't make decisions about what needs to be replaced, what can be restored and how to save it if we do not know what moisture is doing within the structure.

The inspection kit
The instrumentation necessary to perform proper monitoring consists of four basic types:

• penetrating moisture meters
• non-penetrating moisture meters
• thermo-hygrometers
• moisture sensors

Additional tools are necessary to access certain areas of the structure, but these are the instruments that should be in your kit.

Penetrating moisture meters are the most accurate at pinpointing moisture in a structure. When used in conjunction with insulated pins, moisture can be located with great accuracy in terms of the moisture percentage and exact location. When comparing these readings from day to day, moisture can actually be tracked as it moves through materials.

Non-penetrating moisture meters are accurate in terms of moisture content percentage, but they cannot locate the depth of the moisture. Additionally, they are limited in performance by thicker materials that they are unable to take readings through. However, they are very effective at monitoring surfaces that a penetrating meter would visibly damage.

When using non-penetrating moisture meters, you need to consider the limitation of depth. Most are set to read 1/2" to 5/8" and will not detect moisture any deeper. If the material you are inspecting is thicker than that, a penetrating reading should be done to verify drying.

Moisture sensors are great tools for determining the initial boundaries of water migration at a job. Sensors do not tell you how much water is present—just that materials are wet or dry. Due to this limitation, they cannot be used to monitor progress. Progress can only be measured through quantification. If you cannot verify progress with numbers, the job can become disastrous very quickly.

Brandon Burton is Lead Instructor at the Center for Advanced Restorative Drying in Burlington, WA.

ARTICLE MENU