Water Damage Restoration and Fire Damage Restoration Blog

All Aces Services received a call from a real estate agent recently and was asked to do water damage restoration at a property. A house, located in the Brisbane suburb of Greenslopes, had a water leak in the kitchen after rats had chewed through the pipe leading to the dishwasher.

The water had flooded the property through the upstairs of the house in the Kitchen which was a treated particle board floor sealed with a polyurethane sealer, Dining, Kitchen Hall, Lounge and Parquetry floor in the entrance of the house and had then seeped through the floor to downstairs and caved in the ceiling into a downstairs bedroom. At that point it flooded the bedroom and the cork floor in the walk in robe as well.

From all accounts it sounded like considerable damage. There were new tenants waiting to move into the property that morning. I arranged for our technician who was qualified in Structural Drying through the American Drying Institute to attend the house assess the situation and at that point the electrician had already disconnected the power.

When the technician arrived he found that the water had seeped 60cm up the plaster on the wall which means that there was a considerable amount of water and in most situations the floor would not be saved. With the technology that All Aces has and the fact that we were able to attend the site quickly and set up a Dry Matic heat drying machine and 2x Phoenix chamber barrier system (2x false wall 2x Zip wall) and save the particle board floor, we were able to avoid a very costly bill to the insurance company for repairs to the floor, walls and ceiling.

The concrete sub floor also was very wet under the carpet and we needed to set up fans to dry the floor. The process for drying is to heat the area over 50 degrees C to expand the timber and exhaust the wet air out the window. This method of Heat drying is the most effective way to resolve problems that require Speciality Drying/ Structural Drying.

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In early May we received an insurance claim for mould removal/remediation as the bedroom of the house had mould growing in it. It was in the corner of the room, on the bedside table and on the cupboard. We advised the insurance company that we needed to inspect and report on this situation, as we would end up cleaning there every week due to how rapidly mould can grow, that is, if the leak doesn’t get fixed.

Our qualified technician attended the property and talked to the customer who expressed her concerns. She and her roommate were becoming sick with headaches and runny noses due to the mould. Mould can be a serious health concern. She mentioned that a couple of months ago there was a leak in the roof and the roofers had just placed a tarp over the damaged section.

As our qualified technician was taking moisture readings around the property he discovered that all of the inside walls that are on the outer rim of the house were wet (high moisture) and all other walls were reading different moisture levels. We had not come across this situation before i.e. just the outer walls being wet. Our minds boggled as there were no evident leaks, which is a common cause for mould growth.

The roofers turned up at the end of the week, but unfortunately they only did a report and they didn’t fix anything. In the meantime as the customer waited for her roof to be fixed, nothing eventuated and over just 1.5 weeks mould had grown rapidly on the windows, blinds, clothes, shoes, into 2 other bedrooms and in the lounge room.

Due to the seriousness of the situation, we cleaned as much mould as we could see, as we couldn’t wait around anymore for the roofers to fix the roof. We took the customer’s clothes and movable belongings back to the factory for cleaning, sanitising and drying. We advised her to store the majority of her clean items at a friend’s place so that they didn’t become contaminated again.

A few days later the customer received the roofers report saying that the asbestos roof that had been replaced with a galvanised iron roof was causing condensation, which was then running down the outside of the house.

Who would have thought that condensation in the roof could cause so much damage?

Thank goodness for qualified people in the industry, so these problems can be rectified.

If you need help with mould remediation in your home or business, please contact All Aces Services immediately or call us on 1800 00 10 10. Don’t become sick because you did not get the problem fixed.

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