If You Tent It, It Will Dry

11/1/2018 (Permalink)

The tent system was used to dry a gym floor at the local college.

Special challenges are presented to us when we get the opportunity to serve a commercial customer in a unique situation. Such is the case when a local college called us and they had sustained substantial water damage to their gym floor. This required us to think outside the box. Of course, immediate response required us to extract all the water from the top of the floor's surface. But with a gym floor made of thousands of thin boards connected together, much of the water had already seeped through the cracks underneath the floor surface. How do we get the water out from underneath this beautiful floor? Is it a lost cause? Will the floor have to be removed and a new floor put in?

These are the questions that our customer and the insurance companies asked us. Thanks to years of experience and technical know-how using the SERVPRO Production System, our Production Manager, Kyle Hamby proposed a "tenting system" using our equipment along with creating a tent-like environment to pull that water from under the floor. Water that stays trapped under wood floors can cause the floor to "cup" or buckle usually meaning the floor would need to be replaced. Time was critical to getting the "tent" set up and getting the equipment going before this situation could get any worse.

After several days under the tent, and days monitoring the situation, the floor was dry. Equipment was removed and the tent taken down. The floor was back to its original state, no water, no cupping, no buckling. Both the insurance company and the customer were pleased. Gym activities were resumed and we made it "Like it never even happened."

Restoring as opposed to replacing is one of the main reasons that customers and insurance companies depend on us when a water loss occurs. Smart decisions early on in a situation like this saves a bunch of money down the line!!

We appreciate the opportunity to serve commercial properties like this and finding ways to please our customers even when disaster hits.

The tent system was used to dry a gym floor at the local college.