Don’t Struggle With Making a Remediation Decision After Water Damage in Your Overland Park Commercial Space - Call SERVPRO

12/8/2019 (Permalink)

Water Cleanup Challenges in Overland Park Retail Spaces

Retailers, large and small in Overland, choose to share space in shopping centers, malls, and strips. A convenience for shoppers and business owners alike, the benefits, unfortunately, are also balanced by the potential for communal disasters. If your neighbor experiences a water loss, you might suffer the same or even more severe consequences as the water migrates. Water frequently pools between common walls or seeps through flooring to drip onto lower levels.

Potential Plumbing Problems Intersect

Whether your business focuses on clothing, gifts, furnishings, or food, emergency water cleanup in your Overland Park space can be needed because of a burst supply pipe or clogged waste drain. As the temperature dips, any pipes running near exterior walls are particularly vulnerable to cold weather, the water remaining within prone to freezing, swelling, and breaking. Restaurants produce significant amounts of wastewater and the potential for backups during food preparation and cleanup. Hair salons risk clogs when shampooing, dyeing, clipping, and styling. Any business with a restroom or water fountain can expose itself and adjacent retailers to water damage.

Water Mitigation and Remediation Can Backfire

Some of the strategies used by restorers to release hidden water and dry spaces can produce unintended consequences. For example, the vinyl baseboards in many commercial settings easily peel back to permit the drilling of holes to allow water to flow out. The SERVPRO team exercises considerable caution when using this method as the openings must not pierce both sides. Water unexpectedly dripping into the next store or a vacant space can cause severe damage as that outcome is not prepared for nor expected by the neighboring tenant.

Drying Techniques Require Care

SERVPRO technicians position air movers within damaged spaces after water cleanup to reduce the moisture readings of saturated building materials to normal levels. Holes drilled into one side of a shared wall permit us to force warm air from a mover via hoses into the building cavity as a drying method. Outside of the wall, air movers encourage evaporation as long as they are directed at a 45-degree angle to a vertical surface. Facing the wall directly could increase the saturation of the common barrier by blowing humid air into porous materials. Dehumidifiers must run continuously to remove the water vapor loaded into the air by the movement.

SERVPRO of Olathe / Lenexa is up to the challenge of water cleanup and drying in shared and separate retail spaces. Call us at (913) 782-4693, whether your space is the source or the recipient of commercial water damage.

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