How Water Damage Affects Structural Materials in Your Wilmington Home

9/5/2019 (Permalink)

Our team has the experience, expertise, and equipment to handle all of your water loss emergencies.

Precautions When Handling Materials after Water Damage Affects Your Wilmington Home

Spills and other water intrusion incidents can happen at any time. The general rule after such occurrence is to initiate mitigation steps as soon as possible to prevent further deterioration of materials and microbial growth. Safety is also an essential consideration to ensure injuries, or unnecessary damages do not occur in the process of restoring your Wilmington home to its preloss state.

Noting where the intrusion that causes water damage in your Wilmington home starts is crucial. If the water enters from above, such as when a torn roof allows rain into the structure or when an elevated supply pipe bursts, you can expect water in the ceiling and other cavities.  Such water causes the ceiling to sag and if not dealt with properly, can leave a hole in the ceiling panels. A straightforward solution our SERVPRO technicians use is drilling weep holes. We usually start with a first hole as close as possible to the joist then drill others towards the unsupported center of the panel. We drill one hole at a time, letting the water flow out through gravity and only drill another after the first one stops leaking.

As materials absorb water, it affects their structure. Materials such as particleboard might lose their natural strength, making it impossible to support the weight of people or machines. A machine or the person handling water removal might go right through the material if they rest their weight on it. SERVPRO technicians check the level of moisture absorbed into particleboard subflooring using moisture sensors and estimate its level of stability before placing heavy equipment on it.

Given enough dwell time, water can damage almost any material. Rust can eat away sturdy materials like metal while warping, buckling, and other physical distortions affect wood. Therefore, leaving any traces of water within the structure can have dire implications. Our SERVPRO technicians check for wetness in concealed sections using FLIR thermal cameras. We can also use moisture sensors with probes to confirm that materials dry correctly protecting your home from the effects of long-term water exposure.

SERVPRO of Hockessin / Elsmere can help run the restoration process fast and safely. You can reach us at (302) 992-0104 any time. We're Faster To Any Size Disaster.

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