February Newsletter

Released this month

• Mois­ture Meter Train­ing Course
• FREE access to Car­pet Clean­ing Basics
• FREE access to Con­tain­ment Course

Peo­ple with­in the restora­tion and reme­di­a­tion indus­try under­stand that the reme­di­a­tion process removes con­t­a­m­i­nants where­as restora­tion returns things to a for­mer con­di­tion. There is often min­i­mal men­tion to the first part of the process which is con­tain­ment. Best prac­tices requires fol­low­ing the pro­to­col to first con­tain, then reme­di­ate, fol­lowed by restore. Con­tain­ment should occur as close to its source as pos­si­ble. But what do these terms real­ly mean?

What these terms really mean

Con­tain: Have or to hold some­thing with­in. Con­trol­ling air­flow, mois­ture, evap­o­ra­tion, noise, vibra­tions, cross-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, etc,

Con­tain­ment: The actions of keep­ing some­thing harm­ful under con­trol. Pre­vent­ing expan­sion, escape, con­di­tion, stip­u­la­tion by means of engi­neer­ing con­trols.

Reme­di­a­tion: The action of rem­e­dy­ing some­thing, in par­tic­u­lar of revers­ing or stop­ping envi­ron­men­tal dam­age or sec­ondary dam­age.

Restora­tion: The action of return­ing some­thing to a for­mer con­di­tion by means of repair­ing, fix­ing, or mend­ing.

Why are they important

Now that we know WHAT these terms mean, why are they impor­tant? The con­tain­ment process pre­vents some­thing harm­ful from escap­ing. In the indus­try, we are often met face to face with harm­ful sub­stances such as mould, virus­es, bac­te­ria, and more. These sub­stances are often very small and can eas­i­ly be trans­ferred to oth­er areas when con­tain­ment is not done cor­rect­ly. This can result in addi­tion­al work being required to pro­tect the occu­pants of the build­ing. Con­tain­ment has the abil­i­ty to pre­vent addi­tion­al dam­age from occur­ring to health and the prop­er­ty.

Effec­tive con­tain­ment can pro­vide val­ue for the vary­ing par­ties involved includ­ing:

The Home­own­er

• Reduce the risk of health dete­ri­o­ra­tion.
• Lessen the time of restora­tion
• Reduce the amount of prop­er­ty dam­age
• Reduce the risk of income loss

The Real Estate Agency

• Lia­bil­i­ty is reduced
• Reduce the risk of income loss
• Reduce the cost of repairs
• The prop­er­ty val­ue does not decrease

The Insur­ance Company/Third Par­ty

• Lia­bil­i­ty is reduced
• Reduce the cost of restora­tion
• Reduce the time for repairs to be com­plet­ed

The Restora­tion Com­pa­ny

• Increase sales and be con­sid­ered an indus­try leader
• Reduce turn around times
• Reduces the risk to employ­ees
• Lia­bil­i­ty is reduced
• Reduces the risk of repeat­ing clean­ing and test­ing

When con­sid­er­ing options for suc­cess­ful con­tain­ing or con­tain­ment, restora­tion pro­fes­sion­als need to con­sid­er fac­tors includ­ing:

• Human fac­tors – Traf­fic, sick­ness or ill­ness, hours of oper­a­tion, etc.
• Envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors – Heat­ing, cool­ing, wind, alti­tude, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, tech­no­log­i­cal dis­as­ters, etc.
• Prop­er­ty mate­ri­als – Evap­o­ra­tion poten­tial of each mate­r­i­al, acces­si­bil­i­ty to the mate­r­i­al, heat sen­si­tiv­i­ties, mois­ture sen­si­tiv­i­ties, pres­sure sen­si­tiv­i­ties, etc.
• Equip­ment – Avail­abil­i­ty, tech­no­log­i­cal con­trols, effi­cien­cy, lim­i­ta­tions, etc.
• Engi­neer­ing con­trols – Size of the area/s, con­trol of the area/s, sep­a­ra­tion of the area/s, pres­sur­iza­tion, etc.
• Elim­i­na­tion – Elim­i­nate the risk of spread/cross con­t­a­m­i­na­tion by means of removal or encap­su­la­tion.
• Sub­sti­tu­tion – The action of replac­ing some­thing or some­one with an alter­nate. Trad­ing or swap­ping alter­na­tive fac­tors, equip­ment, or mate­ri­als.
• Admin­is­tra­tive con­trols – Actions of train­ing, pro­ce­dures, designs, lessen the haz­ards and risk to an indi­vid­ual includ­ing lia­bil­i­ties.
• Skill set – The indi­vid­u­als range of skills and abil­i­ties.

Restora­tion will also need to con­sid­er what lim­i­ta­tions, expec­ta­tions and eval­u­a­tions that will help increase the like­li­hood of suc­cess.

Lim­i­ta­tions describes the act or state of being lim­it­ed, con­strained, or restrict­ed. It is a restric­tion placed by oth­ers upon the restora­tion pro­fes­sion­al that can result in a lim­it on the scope of work, the work plan, or the out­comes that are expect­ed.

Lim­i­ta­tions may include:

• Project costs – Avail­able funds, unfore­seen costs.
• Equip­ment – Quan­ti­ty, capac­i­ty, pow­er, environmental(leakage).
• Mate­ri­als – Avail­abil­i­ty, inapt.
• Expe­ri­ence – Range of knowl­edge, out­side range of expe­ri­ence.
• Edu­ca­tion – Resources, lit­er­a­cy, sci­ence, ped­a­gogy (learn­ing process).
• Labour – Guid­ance, assist­ing, sub­sidiaries (trades).
• Time – A lim­it of time with­in which some­thing must be done, avail­able hours of oper­a­tion.

Expec­ta­tions are the strongest belief that a par­tic­u­lar out­come will be achieved. It is impor­tant that clear expec­ta­tions are dis­cussed and explained to all par­ties. This can often pre­vent con­flict and oth­er issues aris­ing through­out the work being com­plet­ed and after the work has been com­plet­ed.

Expec­ta­tions may include:

• Lia­bil­i­ties – The state of being legal­ly respon­si­ble for some­thing.
• Real­is­tic – Hav­ing or show­ing a sen­si­ble and prac­ti­cal idea of what can be achieved or expect­ed.
• Assump­tions – A thing that is accept­ed as true or as cer­tain to hap­pen, with­out proof.
• Pre­sump­tions – An idea that is tak­en to be true on the basis of prob­a­bil­i­ty.
• Prob­a­bil­i­ty – A qual­i­ty of state of being prob­a­ble; the extent to which some­thing is like­ly to hap­pen or to be the case.
• Inten­tion – A thing intend­ed; an aim or plan.

Eval­u­a­tion described the process per­formed by the restora­tion pro­fes­sion­al to deter­mine the cor­rec­tive actions that need to be tak­en based in infor­ma­tion and evi­dence. This can be col­lect­ed through­out the inspec­tion process and con­clu­sions from the pre­lim­i­nary deter­mi­na­tion. The eval­u­a­tion results are used to plan the work required to clean and dry the struc­ture, build­ing sys­tems, and con­tents to a spec­i­fied dry­ing goal.

Eval­u­a­tions may include:

• Judge­ment – Hav­ing the abil­i­ty to make con­sid­ered deci­sions or come to sen­si­ble con­clu­sions.
• Appraisal – The act of assess­ing some­thing or some­one.
• Assess­ment – The act of mak­ing a judge­ment about some­thing.
• Cal­cu­la­tions – Is a math­e­mat­i­cal deter­mi­na­tion of the amount or num­ber of some­thing.
• Deci­sion mak­ing – The process or action of mak­ing impor­tant deci­sions.
• Inter­pre­ta­tion – An action of explain­ing the mean­ing of some­thing.
• Appraise­ment – The act or result of judg­ing the worth or val­ue of some­thing.
• Opin­ions – An opin­ion is a belief or judge­ment which falls short of absolute con­vic­tion.

There are three (3) types of con­tain­ment:

1. Region­al (Con­tain)
2. Direct (Con­tain­ment)
3. Com­bi­na­tion (Region & Direct)

Region­al con­tain­ment is the most com­mon­ly used con­tain­ment in dry­ing. It sim­ply involves sep­a­rat­ing one area from anoth­er. This can be done as sim­ply as clos­ing a door or may require putting up plas­tic.

Installing Region­al Con­tain­ment

When­ev­er it is pos­si­ble the eas­i­est way to install region­al con­tain­ment is by clos­ing off areas using the doors that are already in place. When there are no doors to use then plas­tic may be put in place using either skilled con­tain­ment sys­tems or dou­ble-sided-tape.

Regi­nal Con­tain­ment Over Hard Sur­face Floor­ing

Appro­pri­ate­ly sit­u­ate the weight­ed system(sandbags, weights, tacks, etc)  even­ly dis­trib­uted ensur­ing you expose the wall sur­face behind the sys­tem.  The weight­ed sys­tem allows the escape of dry­ing air from under­neath the plas­tic up against the wall there­by reduc­ing wall dry­ing times.

Direct con­tain­ment is the most effec­tive means for con­tain­ing hot dry air­flow to the water affect­ed mate­ri­als. There are dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions where we might use direct con­tain­ment. Use direct con­tain­ment when pos­si­ble for dry­ing dif­fer­ent types of floor­ing or by inject­ing hot dry air­flow into wet walls.

Direct Con­tain­ment Over Hard Sur­face Floor­ing

To con­tain a hard sur­face floor­ing area like hard­wood, tile, com­pos­ite board, or con­crete, start with a vapour bar­ri­er (min. 4 Mil) plas­tic laid over the floor and held in place by a weight­ed sys­tem (sand­bags, weights, tacks, etc) fol­lowed by an adhe­sive tape to lock down elim­i­nat­ing oth­er fac­tors.

Direct Con­tain­ment In Car­pet­ed Areas and Wall Dry­ing

Using car­pet as direct con­tain­ment assists in dis­trib­ut­ing hot dry air flow both to the sub­floor and to the base of the wall. The best equip­ment for direct con­tain­ment in this appli­ca­tion includes dehumidifier/s or heat sup­ple­ment equip­ment.

Using spe­cialised mats or plas­tic duct­ing can great­ly direct and assist in dry­ing base­plates.

Com­bi­na­tion con­tain­ment involves a com­bi­na­tion of region­al and direct con­tain­ment.

Com­bi­na­tion of Region­al and Direct con­tain­ment over hard sur­face floor­ing

Dur­ing Direct Con­tain­ment, addi­tion­al Region­al Con­tain­ment may be advised with neg­a­tive, neu­tral, or pres­surised sys­tems con­trol­ling human fac­tors, envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors, and prop­er­ty mate­ri­als.

Once the con­tain­ment plas­tic is in place, inflate the con­tain­ment using dehumidifier/s or heat sup­ple­ment equip­ment. This will sup­ply hot dry air­flow under­neath the con­tain­ment. You would not inflate this plas­tic with just an air mover because that will only pro­vide the same air con­di­tions avail­able in the ambi­ent air. It defeats the need for con­tain­ment.

Con­tain­ment Prin­ci­ples for Dry­ing

IICRC has found that there are four prin­ci­ples to prop­er­ty dry­ing  struc­ture:

1. Removal of stand­ing water,
2. Evap­o­ra­tion through air move­ment,
3. Dehu­mid­i­fi­ca­tion, and
4. Tem­per­a­ture con­trol.

The goals are to speed up the removal of unde­sir­able excess mois­ture (water) and return to an equi­lib­ri­um pre-event state by means of effi­cien­cy and con­trol mea­sures.

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