The Challenge
A flood in a property is always bad news. Every fixture and fitting is vulnerable to water damage – you might experience structural damage, mould, stains, bad smells or electrical damage. This could cause health issues for the people that occupy the property – respiratory issues or skin problems. As we said – flooding is bad news.
Imagine, then, that you have just finished work on a brand-new gymnasium for a Secondary School. It’s perfect, and you’re going to meet your deadline ahead of the grand opening in a few weeks. As part of the final checks, you test the pressure on the fire sprinkler system and suddenly thousands of litres of water flood the brand new solid wooden sprung floor with underfloor heating.
That’s exactly the scenario faced by a construction company in Aylesbury recently. Their immediate fear was that the entire floor would need to be removed. Which would mean they would miss their deadline and cost them a fortune. The lead time alone on that amount of flooring would be lengthy, not to mention the additional time installing the new floor.
They needed another option. A team of professionals was needed to come in and somehow remove the flood water, successfully dry the entire room, and restore the floor to as close to its pre-incident condition as possible.
They made the wise decision of contacting Ideal Response.
The Ideal Solution – Water Damage Restoration & Drying
The initial goal was just to get the hall operational for the opening – they realised that some aspects might need replacing, but the opening was very important. We told them we would do our best…
As time was a huge factor in this job, we arrived on site as soon as possible. As they were still working on other areas of the construction, the school was still an active building site. This made things challenging for us initially, as we needed to get our equipment as close to the flood water damaged area as possible – particularly with such a tight schedule. We worked with the team there to make sure everything went smoothly.
The water had gotten underneath the flooring. With the complex nature of the underfloor heating, we knew that we had to use specialised, targeted techniques to remove the excess moisture.
We mainly used the industry leading Corroventa drying equipment for this job. Pressure drying is one of the quickest and most efficient ways of drying layered structures, so it was perfect for this task. Dried air is led into a turbine, which heats it up and increases the pressure before driving it down into the construction via a hose system. The damp air is then forced out into the room. Where it is forced into the turbine to be dried and the process starts over again.
We also used a DBK blanket system which uses Targeted Heat Drying. This is one of the most cost-effective ways of restoring water damaged fixtures. These blankets use heat to energise the damp materials to speed up the evaporation process. Other equipment is then used to remove the wet air from the room.
Equipment used during the water damage & flood drying service:
- Corroventa Drying Equipment
- DBK Blanket System
- Wet-Vacs
- Water Pumps
The Result
The main goal of the job was to get the gymnasium in working order in preparation for the opening day at the start of September, and we are delighted to say that we achieved this for our client.
But that’s not all.
Even though this was our main goal, we wanted to give them more. Our drying was so effective that our client did not need to replace anything in the gymnasium, saving them a lot of money, and an awful lot of hassle.