Lenoir City Commercial Water Damage and Moisture

5/24/2022 (Permalink)

From beauty salons to offices and restaurants--SERVPRO mitigates water damage in Lenoir City

SERVPRO Treats Water and Moisture Removal in Lenoir City

If your commercial building in Lenoir City ever becomes the victim of a water pipe or appliance malfunction, water can flood the building. Excessive moisture inside a structure can cause many issues, including the decreased structural integrity of drywall and the breakdown of carpet glues. Offices and bakeries can have varying aspects of water mitigation issues.

Some materials inside your place of business can resist water better than others. When working on a commercial water damage job in Lenoir City, our SERVPRO technicians use their knowledge of how moisture interacts with different materials when figuring out the project's overall scope. Whether materials get affected by water depends on how readily they absorb water from the air. Sensitive electronic components react differently than booth materials in a restaurant.

Permeance is the measure of water vapor flow through a material. Very porous materials like carpet and upholstery have a high permeance level. They absorb and release moisture quickly. Non-porous materials such as plastic, glass, or vinyl have low permeance factors meaning that they absorb little or no moisture.

Vapor barriers are either waterproof substances or have a permeance of one perm or less. When a material has one perm of permeance, it means that only 1 grain of water vapor could pass through 1 square foot of the material's surface during one hour. A vapor barrier is a material that water cannot pass through or is highly negligible, such as vinyl wallpaper.

Hygroscopic materials easily absorb and hold onto water vapor from the air. Having a high permeance factor also means that these materials can be dried more quickly when they get wet. However, once these materials like fabric, insulation, and carpet get wet, they damage quickly. Once the hygroscopic substances get saturated, they tend to swell. Just as a sponge absorbs water quickly, it can be squeezed to relinquish that moisture quickly.

Our SERVPRO restoration team concentrates on drying out hygroscopic materials first when drying a structure. Next, we work on specialty drying of materials with vapor barriers or other substances with low permeance.

For help with rapid structural drying after a water leak occurs in your office, bakery, or retail shop, call SERVPRO of Loudon & Roane Counties at (865) 986-3015.