Water Extraction- Plymouth, NH
Leaving a bathtub running and falling asleep in another room is never a good combination. This was the source of a major water damage restoration project Soil-Away was recently involved with. Soil-Away was contacted at 8:00pm by a property management firm in Plymouth, NH. It was for an emergency water extraction situation. The water extraction crew from Soil-Away’s Lakes Region office arrived within an hour.
A tenant at a Plymouth multifamily complex started to fill a bathtub. She took a phone call in the middle of the process. Following the call she fell asleep on the sofa where she was chatting on the phone. She woke up to banging on her door. It was the downstairs tenant. Water was pouring through their bathroom ceiling and leaking all over their apartment. The startled culprit hustled into the bathroom to shut off the water to the overflowing bathtub. The damage was done. Water was everywhere and needed to be extracted.
The emergency service phone for the property management company rang at 7:45pm. It was the startled and now panicked tenants. Within fifteen minutes, the maintenance director was on the phone with Soil-Away. They needed help extracting the water and performing the water damage mitigation. At least two apartments were flooded from the tub overflow. Upon arrival to the Plymouth apartment complex they could find more water damage. It was going to be a long night.
Starting on the top floor, the first emergency crew worked on extracting the water. The tenants had done a good job picking up their belongings. They even moved furniture out of the way of the affected areas. The water extraction crews focused on sucking up water from the bathroom floor. They used a special deep extraction tool to remove water from the carpets and pad of the adjacent rooms.
After about 45 minutes of water extraction in the upstairs unit, a second emergency water restoration crew arrived. They started working in the downstairs apartment. Part of the ceiling had already caved in. Wet insulation was hanging out. Two technicians worked to cut down the water damaged ceiling. They removed, bagged, and disposed of the saturated sheetrock and insulation. This exposed the saturated sub-floor from the unit above. As they were doing this, the first crew began to setup for water extraction in the same unit.
Following up the water extraction phase was to setup drying equipment. Professional air movers and dehumidifiers were lugged up to each apartment. The technicians had to float the carpets in some areas. This involves disengaging the carpet from the tack strip. Then they place a fan to blow air under the carpet and on top of the pad. The airflow from the fan gently elevates the carpets. This technique great accelerates the drying process. It will also save the carpet, assuming the carpet is worth salvaging. The dehumidifiers served to lower the relative humidity.
It was after midnight when the two emergency water extraction crews wrapped up the project. The water had been removed. The place was cleaned and setup for drying. The maintenance crew for the Plymouth apartment complex thanked the technicians. Everyone went home for what was left of the night. It was another water damage mitigation project in the books.
