Restoring Your New Hardwood Floors After Flood Damages Your Cotswold Remodel

1/9/2017 (Permalink)

Now that flooding from a burst cold water pipe has saturated the newly laid flooring, depend upon the expertise of SERVPRO to dry out the hardwood.

Restoring New Hardwood Floors After A Flood

You spent many hours deciding upon just the perfect hardwood and spent a pretty penny on its purchase and installation when remodeling your home. Now that flooding from a burst cold water pipe has saturated the newly laid flooring, depend upon the expertise of SERVPRO to dry out the hardwood with minimal warping or buckling. Once the floor and its support are dried properly, under the watchful eyes of our highly qualified technicians we will assess any damage to the integrity of the wood and take steps to restore it to its pre-loss condition, including refinishing if necessary.

The hardwood you picked for your house was a great addition, even after the flood damage when a pipe burst during freezing temperatures in Cotswold. Hardwood survives a bit of moisture well as long as standing water is removed quickly. We pride ourselves on a fast reply time and quickly assess the extent of the damage to your new flooring once on site. Industrial strength water extractors will make quick work of removing the obvious moisture. Then our technicians will set up a proper balance of air movers and dehumidifiers to dry the wood, based upon training received upon employment and renewed at regular intervals.

Careful attention must be paid to any vapor barriers, including those on subfloors and the actual finish of the hardwood. SERVPRO technicians are trained to identify these as barriers to proper drying. Air movers may be placed so that the flow is at least partially under the planks to effect drying. In some cases, we may strategically pierce the finish to dry from the top. Only after the moisture content of the hardwood, properly measured by our staff, is down to 12 percent and the subflooring is 10 percent it is safe to assume the floor is dry enough to refinish. This can take weeks or months to achieve, so the restoration of a hardwood floor is a lengthy process. As the wood continues to dry, we will look for cupping, a result of too much water on the top, or crowning, a more serious problem when the subflooring was too wet for too long. Cupping can be sanded out in many cases, but crowning may require the replacement of affected pieces of wood. Once repairs are completed, we will refinish the wood to match surrounding areas.

Do not despair if a plumbing breach appears to ruin your new hardwood floors. Contact SERVPRO of South Charlotte at (704) 333-7737 to arrange for a flooring water damage specialist to visit and design an effective restoration plan.