Page 652 - 2018 National Home Improvement

2018 National Home Improvement Estimator, All Rights Reserved Page 524

Most engineered wood floors, such as parquet and laminate, include synthetic materials that absorb
water selectively, causing the material to swell and distort unevenly. Drying is difficult and may not be
successful. It's usually better to tear out and replace a wet engineered wood floor.

For good coverage of the equipment needed for dryout work and how to use that equipment to best
advantage, see Insurance Restoration Contracting: Startup to Success. An order form is at the back of
this book. Or go to http://Craftsman-Book.com on the Web.

Cleanup
The last step is cleaning all affected surfaces. You'll need: brooms, mops, brushes, sponges, buckets,
hose, rubber gloves, rags, cleaner, disinfectants, lubricating oil, trash bags and a hair dryer. The best
cleaner for dryout is a non-sudsing household cleaner. A good second choice is laundry soap or
detergent. Many commercial disinfectants are available. Look on the ingredients list for quaternary,
phenolic, or pine oil. Two ounces of laundry bleach in a gallon of water makes a good disinfectant. To
inhibit mold, apply a mildew remover or mildewcide. Milban 1-2-3 is a disinfectant, cleaner, mildewstat,
sanitizer, virucide and deodorizer. A second choice for removing mold is five tablespoons of tri-sodium
phosphate in a gallon of water.

Tackle one room at a time. A two-bucket approach is most efficient. One bucket has rinse water and
the other has cleaner. Rinse out your sponge, mop, or cleaning cloth in the rinse bucket. Wring it as dry
as possible. Keep it rolled up tight until submerged in the cleaner bucket. Then let it unroll and absorb
the cleaner. Using two buckets keeps most of the dirty rinse water out of your cleaning solution.
Replace the rinse water frequently.

Walls. Start cleaning walls at the bottom or where damage is the worst. If you had to remove the
wallboard or plaster, wash and disinfect the framing. If you didn't remove the wall finish, wash the wall to
remove flood residue and discoloration. Then apply a disinfectant.

Furniture. Solid wood furniture usually requires only a cleaning. Wood alcohol or turpentine applied with
a cotton ball may remove white mildew spots on wood. Use a cream wood restorer with lanolin to
restore the finish. Upholstered furniture that has soaked up contaminants should be either discarded or
cleaned by a professional.

Paper and books. Valuable papers such as photographs or a stamp collection can be salvaged with a
great deal of effort. The owner may want to put valuable papers in a frost-free freezer or commercial
meat locker until time is available to do page-by-page drying with a blow dryer. Don't try to force wet
pages of paper apart. Just keep drying. Consider making copies of valuable papers. Contaminants in
floodwater can turn to dark stains as the paper dries.