Water damage restoration, mold remediation and cleaning in Lincoln Park, NJ

Work is performed at the property, appointments are taken at any hour, and a written estimate comes before anything begins.

The borough was incorporated in 1922 from portions of a neighboring township and reincorporated in 1925, and the John Dods House, a historic farmhouse, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Housing runs to 4,181 units as of the 2020 census, with low vacancy at 2.8 percent, which means a mix of housing rather than one kind. That mix is why the first question on a call is what is on your floor and what is under it, because a finished basement, a slab and a crawl space each hold water in their own way and each is dried differently.

River water is a category 3 loss

A borough situated along two rivers lives with the possibility of water that came from outside the building. Water that has run over ground before it enters a house is category 3 under the ANSI IICRC S500 standard, and that grade changes the work rather than just the paperwork. Carpet pad that held category 3 water is removed, not dried. Drywall is cut above the water line so the cavity can be opened, flushed and dried. Porous material that cannot be cleaned to a sanitary condition comes out. Category and class are assessed before anything is moved, and the assessment is written down and explained before extraction starts.

A historic farmhouse dries on its own schedule

The John Dods House in the borough is a listed historic farmhouse, and old farmhouse construction anywhere behaves the same way when it gets wet. Plaster on lath, wide board floors over a board subfloor and a stone or brick foundation all hold water inside the assembly and release it slowly, which makes them specialty drying under the ANSI IICRC S500 standard. Equipment stays longer on that kind of material and the daily readings, not the calendar, decide when it leaves. A hardwood floor that has cupped is left alone until it is dry, because boards flatten as they dry and a floor sanded early ends up crowned.

Where the water comes in and what it touches

Water reaches a basement at the outside of a foundation wall as often as it comes from a pipe inside. It enters at the cold joint where the wall meets the slab, through a window well that has filled, or at a below grade doorway. The signature is a wet band along one wall with a dry floor in the middle of the room, which looks minor and is not, because the cavity behind that wall is wet to the height the water reached.

Readings are taken up the wall at marked points to that height, and the outside grade and the downspout discharge are looked at before anyone discusses waterproofing. A crawl space is checked the same way, because a wet crawl space feeds moisture into the first floor above it for weeks after the visible water is gone and the joists hold it longest.

Extraction, drying and the meter

Extraction comes first and does most of the work, because water pulled out with a machine never has to be evaporated with a fan. Carpet is lifted where the pad is saturated, since pad holds far more water than the face fiber and dries far more slowly. Structural drying is then sized to the wet material rather than to the room, and air movers and dehumidifiers are placed to move air across the wet surfaces.

Drying stops when the readings at the fixed monitoring points come back to normal, which is a meter reading rather than a fixed number of days. Moisture in a pad and a subfloor is read with a meter instead of trusting how the surface feels. Clean carpet dries within hours in warm, dry weather, while thick or dense carpet in winter or humid weather can take up to 48 hours.

Mold, containment and what you keep

Wet material that stays wet past roughly 24 to 48 hours is a mold question as well as a water question, and a slow leak behind a wall has usually been running long before a stain shows. Mold work runs under containment with HEPA filtration, the colonized material comes out, the space is dried, and the result is written down. Containment keeps the rest of the house out of the work.

What the customer keeps is the written record: the category and class found, the named monitoring points, the dated readings and the condition at the end. The estimate is written before any work begins with no hidden fees. A person answers at any hour and a crew dispatches to your street, with the technician calling back with an arrival time.