Water Damage restoration and drying concrete

After any water leak or other water damage in your home getting the contents and structure dry is critical, the faster we can get your home and belongings dried out the less damage and less chance for microbial contamination.

A leak can put a lot of water into the furniture, floors and the rest of the house. Our Puroclean technicians will use a variety of equipment in combination with environmental conditions to restore the home to a dry state. Our equipment includes water exctrators, dehumidifiers and air movers to dry as rapidly as possible. Drying is scientific and measurable; get the water that leaked into the structure and contents to evaporate into the air, use dehumidifiers to eliminate the water from the air and repeat the process continuously by pushing humid air into the dehumidifier using air movers. Repeat until the dry standard is achieved.

I’ll share more on the science and techniques of drying structure and contents in a different post. Today I want to talk about drying concrete.

Concrete poses unique problems, it is very dense and very porous and naturally hydrophilic. Concrete likes water and doesn’t like to give it up. This means when concrete gets wet it wants to hold that water and stay wet.  Drying concrete takes more time and some times a different approach. Just because the walls and contents are dry don’t assume the concrete is dry.  This photo shows wet concrete that was discovered after the rest of the area was dry.

If the concrete is not dry installing new floors or floor coverings can be a costly and futile effort. Make sure any flooring contractor knows the concrete had been wet before proceeding with a new installation. O good flooring contractor will know how to make sure the concrete is dry enough. If it’s not dry enough we at PuroClean can help.

We can use a variety of dehumidifiers to force the concrete to give up it’s water. Low Grain refrigerant and Dessicant dehumidifiers are effective. The Dessicant dehumidifier is especially effective at pulling moisture out of a concrete floor.

We will also use plastic sheeting and temporary supports to erect a containment space to enclose the dehumidifiers in the same space as the saturated concrete, this has the effect of concentrating the work of the dehumidifier. This effectively reduces the volume of space allowing us to reach moisture equilibrium faster.
Our IICRC certified technicians will also use thermo-hygrometers and other measurement equipment to monitor the drying process and to ensure we have reached the desired moisture level before we pack up and leave.

Ever since the Colorado floods of 2013 we see a lot of wet concrete floors in basements. The local ground water table has risen in some areas which makes a wet basement a more common event.  If you have a wet concrete floor whether from a flood, rising ground water or a more mundane event make sure you get it thoroughly dried out before putting down a new floor.