Flooded Home: Make Sure Everything is Dry Before Rebuilding Your House

It's important when you come into a flooded damage house to not rebuild too soon. It's very important because what can happen is if this wood has not had a proper amount of time to dry out and you're going to be sealing up that water inside of that cavity, and you're going to be putting plastic on there to keep that moisture from the inside to go on out, and they're going to just create a perfect place for mold removal to grow. You can actually see around this corner here and if we test this wood here, you want to below fifteen percent moisture content and it's already down to eleven percent. This homeowner did a nice job of opening up this house and airing it out and getting that moisture and that wood to dry out. But if we look in this corner over here, we can see if we test the moisture it's upwards of that 17% and there's upwards of twenty to twenty-three percent moisture content. Actually, you can see a little bit of mold growth that has come back since this moisture in the corner was holding mold. If I cover that up with insulation and drywall that mold is just going to continue to grow.

We're down in the basement and what we want to talk about while we're in here is some of the issues that you look at as far as the rebuilding in, some of the moisture problems. You might have when we take our moisture meter and look at the moisture level of this concrete wall and you canactually see it's up at 40 to 50 percent moisture content. So, if I come through here and I take my framing and put it right up against the wall like this house has and I come and put insulation in between that and put drywall on the outside of that. I'm trapping that moisture in behind that wall and I'm creating just a perfect living environment for mold and mildew cleanup. The one thing to absolutely remember is no matter what if you rebuild and you want to let it dry out as much as possible and also not put untreated wood up against that cold foundation wall that moisture comes through it and could come from through the foundation that could come from inside and that wood up.

Against the wall, if it's not treated wood it's going to mold restoration clean up and it's going to be a balloon and you're gonna have problems with that so, what I can do is I can take rigid insulation put against that solid wall and that doesn't have the same moisture issues with it. The ideal situation is to insulate on the outside.

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