Before

After

Cleaning Up Water Damage from this Largo Meeting Room

Understanding the signs of water damage can often help property owners secure skilled professionals like our SERVPRO of Largo team when necessary. For this commercial structure, the management noticed blistering of the paint on the ceiling and lintels, indicating a much more serious water damage incident occurring in the ceiling system beneath the attic space. Flooding in this confined area had made its way to the lower levels, and fast action would be needed to get the meeting room and other portions of this facility back to their original form.

Superficial damage like the bubbling of paint in the room can be easily corrected, but certain structure areas were not so fortunate with a sanding and repainting solution. Where water damage was experienced the most, portions of the ceiling drywall and the trusses required removal or focused drying attention. In many ways, this provided better access for our technicians to track moisture migration and position centrifugal air movers for blasting warm air into the structural cavities.

Expediting the drying process was possible by installing the lay-flat duct and polypropylene sheeting to create a tent over the saturated structural supports. Continual warm air circulation in the attic space increased the production of dehumidifiers and the overall drying process. This tenting allowed for continuous monitoring of the drying production and relative humidity. A chief concern of inappropriate drying of the wood framework is to prevent over-drying these elements, which can also damage them. Tools used in the water cleanup process included:

• Wet vacuums
• Centrifugal air movers
• Axial air movers
• Low-grain refrigerant dehumidifiers
• Positive/negative pressure systems

With the bulk materials removed and the main affected areas dried, our SERVPRO of Largo team began the cleaning process. As you can see in the Before Photo, with the damaged paint, surfaces like these would need to be sanded down, wiped clean, and repainted to their original appearance. Any water discoloration to the brick pilaster in the After Photo also required cleaning with harsh detergents ideal for unpainted bricks and chimney constructions. Other surfaces would require wipe cleaning after the reconstruction of removed materials and wall/ceiling systems.

As a team with a general contractor license, we showed our ability to provide the property a full-service approach. Our careful, controlled demolition process makes reconstruction more efficient and cost-effective by removing only irreparable building materials. Starting with the attic space, including the roof, new underlayment and shingles were applied to the building envelope. As an unfinished attic space, the exposed trusses were cleaned and treated with a biocide before insulation and ceiling drywall material was reattached and repainted. Despite how widespread the damaged area became, our SERVPRO professionals make this water damage event “Like it never even happened.”