I have felt for a long time that we are taking “shots in the dark” when we make decisions about how many airmovers to deploy on a drying job.

Common sense: Blowing large volumes of air in a structure will stir up large volumes of particles and cause a mess, if not a health hazard for occupants. In restorative drying, airflow is a vital part of the drying system, but what about the unintended side effect?

Training your employees can be costly – it takes lots of money and inevitably takes time away from production.

What kinds of wood flooring can be dried? How long do they take to dry? Does it matter if there is tar paper installed under the floor?

Have you ever been hanging out at the local restoration distributor, catching up with the guys, when you hear something amazing…and not in a good way? You know, the conversation that somehow always includes the shocked, “They did what?!”

The absolute constant in a wet structure is change. Change, when controlled closely, will be positive: that is, a change toward pre-loss condition. If wet materials are not drying, it is necessary to force progress by other means. These are necessary adjustments to the drying system.

The most effective way to speed the drying process is to remove as much water while in its liquid state as possible during the extraction phase. Poor extraction will significantly slow your drying process.

Air-filtration devices (AFDs, also known as HEPA-filtration devices, negative-air machines and air scrubbers) are commonly used in water restoration jobs all over the world. These jobs range from clean to grossly unsanitary.

Desiccant dehumidifiers depend upon a chemical attraction called “adsorption” to remove water from the air. Because they do not use condensation to remove water like refrigerant dehumidifiers, they are not limited by low dew point temperatures; therefore, they can produce the driest air of any dehumidifier when used properly in very-low-humidity conditions.