Water and flood damage can have lasting effects on your home. Moisture affects every surface differently. Simply mopping up after water damage may not always get the job done. In the case of hardwood flooring, special care needs to be taken to ensure that the wooden planks are dry all the way through, not just on the surface.
When hardwood floor planks get wet, water will soak into the tongue and groove where the boards meet. This material is not sealed, so it absorbs moisture and swells. This can create a cupping effect, where the edges of the boards raise up higher than the center of the boards. Cupping like this will often be more pronounced on wider planks.
Many restoration contractors simply remove the cupped boards and then dry the floor below. Once the area is dry, they will bring new boards into the home to acclimate them to the environment before they can be installed. At that point,everything will need to be sanded, stained and finished to match. This process usually takes an additional week and no-one but the finishers can be in the area during that time.
Another major hassle with that strategy is that all furniture and belongings need to be removed from the area. The sanding process also creates a lot of fine dust that can get into every nook and cranny in your home as well as your HVAC system.
STOP Restoration does things a little differently. In some cases the water may be contaminated, which will require us to remove the flooring, but in many instances we can dry the hardwoods in place rather than removing them. This saves your family from a lot of headache and speeds up the restoration process.
We have specialized equipment and techniques to dry your hardwoods as well as the subfloor below without the need for any demolition. We completely eliminate the necessity for acclimating replacement boards to your home’s environmentbecause installation of new boards is no longer needed! There’s no sanding, staining or sealing required in our process. Not to mention, we save you from the typical 1-2 days of packing up furniture and putting up plastic dust barriers while the restoration is taking place. We’ve seen some customers have to completely move out during repairs when their first floor hardwoods were damaged. This isn’t an issue when we dry your floors!
When you have water damage to your hardwoods, call STOP Restoration first. We pride ourselves on performing mitigation without nearly as much demolition as most other companies. Give us a call 24/7 at (336) 203-0739, you’ll be glad you did!
