Our Success Story on Saving Wood Floors

Restoration focused vs. Non-restoration focused contractors

Servicefirst Restoration is a restoration focused restoration contractor.  You may be asking yourself, what does that mean?  It simply means that we utilize equipment, techniques and have a mindset to minimize cost and the overall time on a job.  Our goal is to get your life back to normal as quickly as possible.  Unfortunately, many restoration contractors do not share the same mindset.

Wet wood floors are a major problem.  If not tackled quickly and properly, then it can cost a huge amount of money and cause the occupants to be displaced for weeks while all of their furniture is being moved out so the floors can be repaired or replaced.  This is not a fun experience for anyone!

Here is an outline of one job with two different scenarios to show you what the differences are.  This is a real story, about a real customer whom we helped recently.

The Story
Ms. Peck, a teacher whom just purchased her first home, left on a Thursday night with her roommate to grab some dinner.  She was only gone for 4 hours, but when she returned, she found that a water line had burst and flooded her entire home, and worse of all, the brand new wood floors that she put in less than a year ago.  She was terrified she was going to have to tear out and replace all of her wood floors.  Below are the two different ways a restoration contractor could tackle the job

Scenario 1 – Non-restoration focused approach
The mindset of a non-restoration focused restoration contractor is wood floors can’t be dried in place, there for they must rip them out and replace them.  Why do they have this mindset?  It is either because they don’t have the equipment and knowledge to do it or they know they will make more money by ripping them out.  The mindset to rip out the floors only pads the pockets of the contractor because the cost of removing and replacing wood floors can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Scenario 2 – Restoration focused approach
The mindset of the restoration focused restoration contractor is you will save everyone time and money if you can dry wood floors in place.  You will have happier customers because their life has less interruption and whomever is paying the bill will love you because you are saving them money.  So the question is how do you do this?  We use the most advanced drying technologies along with state of the art equipment to do it.  Here is our step by step process and the photos below will provide you with a visual guide.

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Steps to drying wood floors:

  1. We start off by using a high powered extractor to remove all water from the surface of the wood floors.
  2. We then set up our floor mat systems by taping them down to the wood floor.  These floor mat systems work like huge vacuums that pull water and air from the seams in the wood floor.
  3. We then use polyurethane plastic to create a tent over the wood floors from edge to edge creating a controlled drying environment.
  4. We then set up an electric thermal energy heat drying system, known as an e-tes system under the polyurethane plastic tenting.
  5. Lastly, we set up air movers and dehumidifiers to allow for proper amount of air movement and dehumidification.