After A Disaster In Your New Orleans Home, You Need To Call The Professionals At SERVPRO!

8/7/2022 (Permalink)

Finding mold in patches throughout your home can be nerve wracking. Call our team to assess the extent of the infestation and start the remediation.

How SERVPRO Helps New Orleans Homeowners Bounce Back From Disaster Through Restoration Services

New Orleans homeowners know damage from fire, water, mold, and storms is a year-round threat. While there are appropriate measures property owners take to diminish the danger from fire and internal water loss issues such as pipe breaks and appliance failures, there is little that can be done to stop potential damage from hurricanes and flash flooding once the groundwater enters the home. None of those issues should be self-cleanup events; it is imperative to involve professional measures to ensure additional damages do not arise from foul odors or mold, requiring a further cost to mitigate.

The two most common rooms in New Orleans homes with water damage are the kitchen and bathroom. Anywhere there are supply lines, water pipes, or appliances that use water such as your washing machine or dishwasher, the potential to need water cleanup exists.

SERVPRO team members undergo extensive training to become certified as Water Restoration Technicians. This knowledge gives them the expertise to apply the correct equipment and techniques to lessen water loss for property owners. We spend extra time using our portable pumps, weighted extraction wands to remove as much excess moisture as possible from all affected areas, including within the walls and under floors. This action assists in lowering the drying time and the less time building materials and possessions spend exposed to water, the higher the chance for recovery through restoration.

Wet carpeting and rugs, in many cases, have restoration potential with the assistance of our Carpet Cleaning Technicians. We have equipment such as weighted extraction wands to push water out of carpet and padding and specialized drying techniques that save the cost of replacement through our restoration services.

Using our air movers, we dry wet areas quickly. Then follow up with a thorough hand cleaning using our professional-grade disinfectant and antimicrobial solutions to eliminate the stale odors water damage sometimes leaves behind.

When fire damage happens in a New Orleans property, there are different levels of challenges for our technicians to address depending on the kind of fire. Scorching fires tend to leave a dry powdery residue that is not difficult to clean up, but the tradeoff is there is often more damage due to the high temperatures of the fire. When substances with plastic and rubber compositions burn, the temperatures are lower, and they leave behind thick residues that smear easily and require careful washing to prevent other damage such as driving in the soot into surfaces from improper cleaning.

SERVPRO Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Technicians know there are cases where the best outcome that can occur from a fire is to get the property ready for reconstruction after the completion of fire cleanup efforts. Our training includes controlled demolition techniques for safely cutting away charred building materials and leaving undamaged sheetrock and wood behind for mitigation and prep for rebuilding the structure.

Once fire debris removal occurs, and we have completed any drying and air quality improvements such as running air scrubbers to capture airborne soot particles, we move on to odor control. Smoke damage is equal parts unpleasant and unhealthy to reside with and should have professional fire damage cleanup. As hot air expands during a fire, it can drive soot into porous objects that no amount of surface cleaning helps, only specialized equipment eradicates these deeply rooted odors.

Our technicians have multiple options when it comes to fire odor removal in a home. We have gel pellets that overtake bad odors and robust applications such as hydroxyl generators that utilize the power of UV rays to destroy odor-causing particles at the molecular level.

Using the term mold removal in New Orleans homes is inaccurate. Mold occurs naturally, and full removal of all airborne spores is not possible. However, the conditions that cause the spores to germinate and turn into colonies require addressing, so the infestations do not reoccur in the future. Our technicians determine the cause and give the homeowner recommendations for repairs needed to halt situations such as inadequate ventilation trapping humid air or a slow leak feeding mold colonies.

In many cases, mold odor is the first clue there is a problem in a home. Our Applied Microbial Remediation Technicians can reduce the effects of mold in a home to near-zero through our proprietary methods. We use containment techniques to stop the spread of spores during remediation and then follow up with thorough cleaning using HEPA filtration. After the removal and cleaning of the colonies, we clean surfaces with our antimicrobial solutions and apply a sealer over areas when needed to ensure the spores do not set up home again.

Storm damage is something New Orleans homeowners know comes with living in this area of Louisiana. Statistics show hurricanes make landfall in this area every 2.8 years on average. With these massive storms come flooding, high winds, and property damage.

When homeowners call SERVPRO to mitigate flood damage in a home, we arrive as quickly as possible to remove water from the house. If the home has flooded from groundwater, we ask that the residents do not come into contact with the water as you do not know what is in it until the completion of water testing for contaminants and toxins. In flooding situations, there is nowhere for the water to drain off to when the storm drains are over capacity, and when permissible, we port away water to the sewer system during flood water removal.

We have a lot of different water extraction equipment to give homeowners the best chance for saving as much of their home and contents as possible through speedy flood cleanup. Some standard equipment we use:

•   Submersible pumps that work in deep water situations to perform water extraction quickly.
•   Portable pumps allow multiple technicians to remove water at once.
•   Truck-mounted units remove thousands of gallons of water from residential or commercial properties.
•   Rovers are ride-on machines that use the weight of the technician to push water out of carpeting and other areas for fast extraction.

We tarp over damaged roofing or windows as needed during mitigation from storm or wind damage. Carpeting and furnishings may have restoration potential depending on the type of water loss they have incurred. Groundwater carries a rating as a category three biohazard, and the restoration of saturated carpeting to sanitary conditions suitable for use in a home is not possible. Other types of storm damage to the carpet and upholstered furniture may have restoration potential on a case-by-case basis. After thoroughly drying, we clean and disinfect the property, so it has hygienic levels for habitation.

Why SERVPRO? Our technicians undergo intensive training and continue their education as the restoration services industry evolves with new technology and procedures. We work with both homeowners and adjusters to make the insurance claims process less stressful and provide our Contents Claims Inventory System to document the restoration process step by step with detailed reports and photographs.

The SERVPRO of The New Orleans Westbank emergency response team is available to assist you 24/7 with any needed restoration services caused by damage from fire, water, mold, or storm. Contact us at (504) 348-7526, and we will make your home disaster “Like it never even happened.”