What is Restoration and Remediation in Homes?
When you have a disaster at your home – a water leak that creates lots of damage, a natural disaster, or a fire, your home needs to be restored and/or remediated. What is the difference between the restoration and remediation of a home?
Restoration is restoring a home after a disaster to make it at least as good as it was before the disaster, even going further and making it safer if you can and have the money to do so. With a home restoration, you want to fix all the existing issues with the home. If there is water damage, you may need to remove carpeting or vinyl flooring to get rid of all the water damage, because you do not always see it all. A great professional to call would be the professionals at LightningWaterDamage.com, they can make sure that there is no mold or mildew growing. You also need to be careful of asbestos and lead paint when you are restoring your home.
Remediation is when the home has an issue with something like mold, mildew, asbestos or lead paint and you want it to be removed. You must do so very carefully, making sure that you follow all safety precautions to ensure that you do not get sick while trying to take of the issues. It is best if you get a professional to do the job, because they know all the precautions that you need to take.
Tips for Restoration
Reinforce Your Roof
If you need to replace your roof after a disaster, make sure that you reinforce it, as well. You can do that by adding things like hurricane straps to the roof to keep it safer in bad weather. This will help the roof to stay on in strong winds like tornadoes and hurricanes. For information about reinforcing your roof after a disaster, see this website: https://www.instructables.com/Emergency-Hurricane-Roof-Reinforcement/. This will help you in future bad weather to keep your home, and your family safe.
Replace Any Poor Flooring
You need to replace any poor flooring, especially if you have received any type of water damage. Carpeted floors will likely need to be replaced, as well as the carpet pad underneath. If you have a basement, make sure you replace the floors down there, as well, because they have probably received damage, too.
If you have vinyl or linoleum floors, be sure to check for asbestos before you replace them, especially if you home was built before the 1970’s. If you do have asbestos, call in a professional that knows how to fix the issues.
Make Basement Repairs
If your basement has flooded, make sure that you make any necessary fixes and change what you might want changed. Be careful when fixing floors or walls, they may have asbestos or lead paint. While you are making repairs, consider adding a sump pump, drainage tiles, or maybe a French drain to help keep your basement dry.
Reinforce Interior Walls
Depending on the disaster that you have been through, you might also want to reinforce your interior walls. You might want to make some improvements with them, as well, using waterproof materials and paint.
Replace Windows and Exterior Walls
As with your interior walls, if you have experienced any storm damage on the outside of your home, you will have to replace your exterior walls and windows. When you do so, consider using materials that will add to your home’s safety, as well as making it more energy efficient.
Remediation
There are many types of remediation that you may need after a disaster. You may have mold or mildew; you might have run into asbestos or lead paint that you may need to remediate. There is more information about remediation if you click here. There are some tips that you may need. It is always best to hire a professional to do remediation, it is just safer that way. They have the materials and the experience they need to do the job the right way.
Mold Remediation
If the mold is in an area less than ten square feet, which is about three feet by three feet, you, as a homeowner, can take care of it yourself. If it is more than that, you need to call in a professional. If you do it yourself, you need to contain the area and ventilate it. Then you need to clean and disinfect the area, using a product such as Mold Stat. Just using bleach will not always take care of the problem.
After that, fix the mold source after finding what it is, it could be a number of sources. It could be a leaky water line, or a humid duct system. You may have to call in a professional to fix the issue. When you have done that step, encapsulate the mold. You do this by painting over the mold or use a similar material. This only works if the area is completely dry with no chance of it getting wet again. Like it was mentioned above, it is better if you have a professional do the work. That way you can ensure that the issue is taken care of correctly.
Fire Remediation
The first thing you need to do after the fire is to call a fire remediation service to take care of the issue. Then you must see if your structure is still safe, if it is, you can continue to work. If it is not safe, then call in the professionals and let them handle it. After that, you must remove the soot, water, and debris. Then see how much damage that has been done, if it is just a little damage, you may be able to take care of it yourself. If it is a lot of damage, then call in a professional.
The next step is to do a deep cleaning and deodorizing to get the smoke smell out of your home. After that, you can start rebuilding your home. Again, it is still best to call in a professional to make sure that the job is done right and done to code.
These are just some steps to restore or remediate issues with your home after a disaster. It is still best to call in a professional to ensure that the job is done correctly.
