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Case Study – The Condo Fire
Property damage comes in all shapes and forms, but certainly one of the worst scenarios is a bad fire. Anyone that has gone through this will tell you it is a stressful, long, difficult, process. In this case, a condominium caught fire and almost burned to the ground. Unfortunately, it was connected to three other condominiums. Two of which sustained minor damage, but the condominium which shared a common wall suffered significant damage.
The customer in this case was concerned about mold growth, toxic odor, and the appearance of the framing members in the second story roof system. Mold growth was put in check by extensive drying, cleaning, and chemical treatment. Order problems, were removed by ozone treatment, chemical treatment, and cleaning. Framing members had to be cleaned by ice blasting with subzero carbon dioxide, a relatively new but extremely effective restoration procedure.
The overall project lasted seven months but did result in an excellent conclusion, no order, no mold, and no visible detection of fire damage in any of the framing members.
Case Study – The Parking Lot Fire
Property damage recovery comes in all shapes and sizes. Over the years we have been called on to perform what we call “bigger work”. In the first set of photos we are involved in restoring a parking facility.
The problem occurred when a visiting nurse’s car caught fire and virtually completely burned to the ground. The resulting contamination began to erode the concrete as well as the spancrete, as well as the steel I-beams. There was a great deal of sulfuric acid as well as other toxic chemicals that had embedded themselves in the structure. I remember bidding against another company and reducing the overall job cost by tens of thousands of dollars. This was accomplished by utilizing mother nature. In other words, we used evaporation to eliminate the need for sophisticated containment.
EPA had been involved and was requiring a containment pool as well as 24 hour security. This was completely eliminated by working slowly in bite-size areas letting the moisture evaporate, then vacuuming up the debris. Additionally, almost no chemicals were used, we preferred raw abrasion, wet sand blasting. This created a green environment without the use of toxic chemicals.
We also repainted all the I-beams according to manufacturer’s specs. The customer and the insurance company were extremely pleased; we had cut the cost by almost 40% with a better end result.
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