Before renovation can begin on a house that’s been flooded, the drywall, insulation, and furnishings have to be removed. Then any residual mold is treated with chemicals and the framing is cleaned.
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Rimmer Covington: Be careful, Danny.
Danny Lipford: Yeah, this one is a mess. Now this is exactly the way it was the morning after the storm.
Rimmer Covington: That’s right this is exactly the way it was mother nature cleaned it out.
Danny Lipford: So there is no furniture or anything.
Rimmer Covington: No furniture, some folks have bought the home and a month later hurricane Katrina came and just destroy it.
Danny Lipford: Oh, that’s some bad luck, I’m telling, how do you even approach something like this in order to get it back to a safe environment. And I guess whatever guidelines that you use for this would be similar if you had say, a burst of washing machine hose that cost a lot of flooding.
Rimmer Covington: Right, so you have to stop the water.
Danny Lipford: Okay.
Rimmer Covington: Dry the moisture up so that there is no mold growth and then you can proceed with your repairs.
Danny Lipford: Okay, and I know something like this where you have, you know, carpet of course this is completely gone but I guess in some situations you can pull the carpet out of there if you dry it quick enough you maybe even be able to save it.
Rimmer Covington: It is possibly, but in this case this is a salt water flooding and the salt water brings with it salt crystals which absorb moisture so you have to remove the construction materials that soaked up the salt water crystals and salt water.
Danny Lipford: Okay, I get you, okay now obviously the water got up this high. I mean that’s like a 10 or 11 feet off the floor and of course we’re already 10 feet off the ground with this style of house. So you had that much water, I guess all of the drywall in this house has to come out.
Rimmer Covington: That’s is true all the drywall would have to come out of this house it’ll be taken down to bare studs so that they’re clean like this. Once we think that the facility is completely dry then wherever you have residual mold growth it will be completely removed or traded to some fashion with the pressure washer in this open air circumstance that would work well. And then test it of course so that you can establish that there isn’t any mold growth.
Danny Lipford: And keeping it real dry after the windows replaced in here I guess that the admitter fire would be a great idea to just pull as much moisture out of it as you can.
