Month: August 2022

Why DIY Mold Remediation is Not Advisable

Written by adleverage on August 30, 2022. Posted in Mold Inspection. No Comments on Why DIY Mold Remediation is Not Advisable

Why DIY Mold Remediation is Not Advisable

Why wait to get the home service you need? Call Restorerz at (323) 970-4761 today.

You take pride in completing home renovations on your own. We understand that independent work can save time and money with some projects.

However, DIY mold remediation should not be a project you take on without qualified help.

The risks of DIY mold remediation far exceed the rewards. It’s best to invest in professionals for thorough spore removal. Experts from our mold remediation company in Los Angeles, CA, explain the dangers of tackling this project alone.

When is Mold Remediation Necessary?

Mold exists in nearly every outdoor and indoor space. That said, mold growth is only a problem when it becomes noticeable by sight or smell. Over time, a mold infestation that starts small can rapidly grow.

The types of mold you find in your home may vary. While some, like, mildew, are more annoying than anything else, some forms can be dangerous and threaten the health of everyone in your household.

Black mold is a hazardous substance that will endanger you and your family if left unchecked. If your home experiences an infestation of black mold, you risk:

Damage to the structural integrity of the house
Increased risk of lung disease or breathing complications
Reduced air quality in the house
Blocked air ducts
Discoloration on walls and furniture
Unpleasant odors

If you notice any of these occurrences, it’s time to start mold remediation. Like most homeowners, you probably won’t tolerate any of these problems once they manifest, and will want to tackle them yourself. Before grabbing your cleaning supplies and tools, consider some important information.

Risks of DIY Mold Remediation | The Home

Mold is a notoriously stubborn fungal growth that can emerge within days. If your home experiences water damage, it will gather mold quickly, compromising the entire property.

Most homeowners do not know how to clean mold off surfaces or in air vents properly. Some may use corrosive cleaners that damage their property. Others may even tear down interior features of the home to get rid of more significant mold outbreaks.

Prepare for unnecessary expenses if you repeat these DIY mold remediation mistakes. Removing walls or other features may not reduce the risk of mold regrowth in your spaces. It is devastating to find mold on the surface of your newly installed renovation, necessitating even more work.

Mold spores linger in the air and grow in places you may miss. Unfortunately, you won’t find the tools and wisdom needed to address this problem in a hardware store.

Don’t spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on home replacements because you didn’t invest in professional help. A technician will identify at-risk areas of your house and use mold prevention strategies to secure those areas. They will also monitor air quality so you know if the problem is severe.

Risks of DIY Mold Remediation | Your Health

Like most homeowners, wasting money is likely a concern for you. However, risking your health is arguably worse than losing money on renovations.

When you clean or knock down mold-infested walls, thousands of spores release into the air. These toxic particles significantly impact your health. Mold removal requires personal protection equipment to ensure the safety of the person working on the mold.

Some types of mold even cause rashes and irritation during contact with your skin. A simple dust mask and rubber gloves aren’t always enough. A professional technician will have everything they need to protect themselves from these elements when servicing your home.

Remember, mold may hide in other spaces around the house. Partner with a mold remediation crew to locate and purge spores from problematic areas.

Mold Remediation is Challenging

Mold remediation is challenging because of how elusive spores can be. A mold infestation may be accumulating long before you notice the evidence. Confidence aside, you likely do not have the knowledge you need to do the job right.

Avoid finding lackluster solutions on the internet. Videos and blogs rarely offer comprehensive remediation plans. At worst, they may even mislead you with dangerous or expensive strategies that create more stress down the line.

Avoid Making the Situation Worse

DIY mold remediation typically makes the situation worse in most homes. Spores that spread from improper cleanup can quickly ruin other areas of your home. Unfortunately, this means spending more on renovations, repairs, and remediation.

Avoid these problems by hiring a professional for a mold inspection. They will use high-tech devices to ensure your home is safe from black mold. This way, you can be confident about the safety of your space.

How To Find a Reliable Mold Remediation Service

Finding reliable mold remediation professionals is easier than it may seem. Search online for emergency home services in your area. Most mold specialists offer their services through HVAC, home renovation, or property sanitation companies.

Check online testimonials for accurate company reviews. Numerous five-star reviews indicate that professionals provide quality work and excellent customer service.

Because mold is so dangerous to human and pet life, find a company that offers 24-hour services. These emergency responders will quickly assess and resolve the problem so you can rest assured that your home is safe.

Ensure that your contractor has the tools to remove mold from hard-to-reach spaces, like vents and basements. These spaces tend to harbor some of the worst mold outbreaks in residential buildings.

Schedule Your Appointment With Restorerz Emergency Services

If you are looking for top-tier results at affordable rates, trust Restorerz Emergency Services. Our veteran technicians help hundreds of homeowners clean out dangerous elements like mold every year.

We also provide services for those whose homes have experienced fire damage, water damage, and other disasters. Avoid the hassle of trying to save your home alone by investing in our excellent cleanup solutions.

We also help you prevent disasters before they occur. Need to know the signs of when to call an emergency plumber? We’ve got you covered.

Learn more about the dangers of DIY mold remediation by contacting us today. Call Restorerz Emergency Services in Van Nuys, CA, at (323) 970-4761.

How Intense Is Water Damage Cleanup?

Written by adleverage on August 23, 2022. Posted in Blog, Mold Inspection. No Comments on How Intense Is Water Damage Cleanup?

Water damage cleanup can be quite intense because of how fast water can do damage. Regardless of the cause, furniture, books, upholstery, flooring, building materials, and more can be permanently damaged or destroyed. Moisture can damage the structural integrity of your home as well, not to mention allow mold to grow and proliferate. For these reasons, the cleanup process must proceed immediately and quickly.

A Timeline of Water Damage

Your belongings can be saturated with moisture within minutes. Within an hour, drywall can swell and break down and within 24 hours, water will tarnish metal surfaces; be soaked into flooring, cabinets, and wooden table legs; and emit musty odors. If you’re on vacation and come back within a week of a flood, high humidity will have saturated the air, causing moisture to damage materials that weren’t initially exposed to water.

Mold can start growing in any moist area in 24 to 48 hours. By a week, mold and microbial growth would have already taken hold and spread to previously unaffected areas. Within a week, an affected building can become structurally unsound and unsafe to occupy.

Water Damage Cleanup Process

Don’t hesitate when you encounter a water-damaged home. Take these steps right away.

Wipe or mop up any small spill right away.
If a water-using appliance fails, turn off the water to it and your home.
Immediately turn off the power before entering a flooded home.
Move any electrical appliances/devices away from standing water.
Suction moisture with a wet vacuum, set up fans, and use a professional grade humidifier to dry out the space.

Drying out a water-logged room can take several days. Water is thorough and will seep everywhere, so no detail must be left out. Depending on the problem, it can be too much for one person or even a general contractor to deal with. Contact a water damage cleanup professional who knows what to do and how to restore any salvageable belongings.

Water Damage Remediation/Restoration

Once you call in a professional, they will immediately assess the situation and start the process. Water damage cleanup is intense and requires the following steps:

Water Removal: Using professional-grade equipment, they will extract water from carpets, floors, drywall, ceilings, furnishings, and any affected item or material. Carpeting, pads, furniture, electronics, and other affected items will be moved away from water.

Moisture Detection: Residual moisture can hide in pockets. Our team uses specialized monitoring equipment, including a thermo-hygrometer, to find these areas to prevent mold growth, wood rot, and other potential long-term problems.

Cleaning and Sanitizing: We use products designed and approved to clean and sanitize affected surfaces, materials, and furnishings. Your belongings will be collected; if salvageable, we’ll move them to our secure, climate-controlled facility.

Intensive Drying: Industrial fans, dehumidification, and ventilation equipment is used to completely dry out affected areas. We’ll inspect your property along the way to make sure we’re taking the right steps.

Water Damage Repair: Before the restoration process begins, we’ll repair damage and remove materials that are unsalvageable. Our team will replace insulation, drywall, and panels to start making your home livable again.

Do I Need a Water Damage Cleanup Professional?

It can be hard to find the proper equipment at rental centers, while safely using industrial-grade equipment requires training. Even Category 1 clean water from plumbing lines can do a lot of damage. Category 2 water can contain bacteria and other types of contamination, while Category 3 water from sewage backups and natural floods can contain illness-causing pathogens.

The short answer is—you need a professional. In addition to fast assessment, they use water extractors, moisture meters, and wood floor/subfloor drying systems as well as centrifugal air movers and axial fans to dry things out quickly. Proven and approved cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products will be used as well.

Will My Homeowner’s Insurance Cover the Costs?

Usually, unless the problem originated from a sewer line backup outside your home, due to poor maintenance, or if a natural flood event caused water or mold damage. Most insurance policies cover specific plumbing problems, so if mold results from one of these, you experience a burst pipe from freezing weather, a plumbing leak, or appliance breakdown, cleanup should be covered. Insurance riders or separate policies may be available to provide additional coverage.

Restorerz Helps Make Water Damage Cleanup Less Intense

Our licensed Emergency Services crew springs to action quickly and does whatever it takes to protect your property, remove water, and restore your home. We’re the leading water damage restoration company in Los Angeles. Available 24/7, our specialists are certified by the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration (IICRC). Our work always complies with required health codes and environmental regulations. To request service, contact us online or call 323-709-7536.

What to Do After Fire Damage: Life-Saving Tips

Written by adleverage on August 20, 2022. Posted in Fire Damage. No Comments on What to Do After Fire Damage: Life-Saving Tips

When your home needs reliable and effective restoration, call Restorerz Emergency Services at (323) 970-4761.

House fires are one of the worst experiences a homeowner can live through, and they’re often so shocking that victims don’t know how to handle the immediate aftermath.

Below, we’ll walk you through what to do after fire damage to save your property and your life.

Call Your Fire Department

House fires are fast-acting destructive forces that only need a few minutes to tear through a building, so the first thing you should do after a fire is call 911 for your local fire department. Even if you think you’ve handled the fire yourself and now only have to deal with the damage, you should still call the fire department.

Fire departments do more than douse flames. They can ensure that you’ve completely eradicated the fire, secure as much of your property as possible, and create a detailed fire report that will help your insurance company provide fitting coverage.

Check on Your Housemates

Immediately after the fire department eliminates the initial threat, you should take time to check on your housemates’ and pets’ health. House fires pose severe health threats like burns, but they have several other hazards as well.

The smoke and soot from house fires can infect your and your housemates’ lungs and lead to severe illness. Many symptoms from inhaling smoke show up after the fire, but you might notice others immediately, and it’s essential to call for medical attention if that is the case.

House fires can have as many mental health impacts as physical ones, so it’s vital to check on your housemates’ emotional states as well. Calming your friends and family’s nerves after a traumatic event and contextualizing that you have the situation under control can save them significant heartache in the future.

Reach Out to Your Insurance Agent

Now that you know what to do after fire damage in the early stages, we’ll look at how you should handle the process hours after the event, starting with contacting your insurance company.

When the insurance agent arrives, you will need to explain how the fire started and the extent of the damage. Then, they will walk you through what to do to move on from this unfortunate experience and file a claim for you to recover finances for your personal property.

Experienced insurance agents have seen hundreds of similar incidents, so they might know how to minimize fire damage after the fact and take small matters into their own hands. For example, some agents might pry open ventilation holes in damaged areas to air out the smoke. This also helps them examine your home and better understand how to file the claim.

Examine Your Home and Prepare Temporary Living Arrangements

Small, contained house fires might not do much to your home overall. In those instances, you can likely stay the night in your house after the fire department and insurance team leave. However, not everyone knows what to do when flames destroy most of their property.

After severe fires, finding a place to live away from your home is essential. Large house fires can weaken your home and leave soot and smoke over every wall and floorboard, which are hazardous to inhale. Both consequences have severe health risks and can lead to fatal illness or injury, but keeping your distance until your property is safe will protect you and your housemates.

Los Angeles Residents can trust Restorerz Emergency Services to secure their homes quickly. We offer a fire damage restoration service in Los Angeles that emphasizes fast action and thorough reconstruction to make your home look as good as new.

Call a Fire Damage Restoration Company

Fire damage restoration companies know precisely what to do after fire damage to preserve as much of your property as possible and make it safe to return to quickly. When the team arrives, they’ll immediately start work on the following services.

Securing Your Property

Fire-ravaged buildings can collapse without warning, even after the flames go away. Therefore, a fire damage restoration company’s first step will be to secure the property, looking for structural weaknesses and reinforcing them. Not only will that let the team work unimpeded, but it will also save your home from additional damage.

Filtering Out Smoke Damage

Smoke can linger in the air and burrow into your floor and walls, even if you’ve ventilated the area. However, it’s essential to remove it for happy, healthy home living. Your fire damage restoration team will filter out every trace of it as soon as they’ve secured your property.

Restorerz Emergency Services uses state-of-the-art fans and filtration equipment to suck smoke out of every nook and cranny and expel it from your living space.

Preventing Water Damage

A fire department’s primary responsibility is to use hoses to extinguish house fires, but their heroics often leave pools of standing water in your home, which can leave stains, attract pests, and rot your flooring and drywall.

Fortunately, the team at Restorerz Emergency Services is as adept at reversing water damage as we are at restoring fire damage. We’ll restore your home no matter what elements damage it.

Finishing Touches

Damage restoration teams know what to do after fire damage to keep you and your home safe. After those services, they’ll move on to work that gets your property looking its best again.

Restorerz Emergency Services will remove soot from stained areas, replace worn-down building materials, and recover as much of your personal items as possible so you can return to your home and a sense of normalcy.

Fire Damage Restoration from Restorerz Emergency Services

Now that you know what to do after fire damage, you can call Restorerz Emergency Services to move on from this experience as quickly as possible. We offer expert fire and soot damage restoration that effectively restores your home.

Call Restorerz Emergency Services today at (323) 970-4761 for fire damage restoration or to learn more about effectively getting the smell of smoke out of your home.

5 Hidden Dangers of Untreated Water Damage

Written by adleverage on August 10, 2022. Posted in Flood and Water Damage. No Comments on 5 Hidden Dangers of Untreated Water Damage

There are dangers associated with a water-damaged house when the damage is caused by untreated water. Most people know about floor and wall stains, mold growth, and structural damage. Those effects are bad enough to call a plumber and water restoration company as soon as a leak hits. However, there are even more risks attached to untreated water damage that many aren’t aware of.

At Restorerz Emergency Services, our Southern California water damage experts do more than prevent mold after water damage. We’re remediation professionals who restore your home to its original condition. We handle all types of water damage, remove the dangers, and make sure you can live comfortably in your home again.

Why You Should Never Ignore Water Damage

Water damage is more than what you can see. You may need to remove standing water, replace your carpet, and keep an eye out for mold, but there are hidden issues that can cause serious problems if left unaddressed. From pest infestations to health concerns, the answer to the question “Is water damage dangerous?” is that it can be, unless it’s treated promptly.

Here are five hidden dangers of untreated water damage.

1. Mold growth and air quality issues

Mold growth is one of the most common consequences of untreated water damage. Mold and mildew thrive in damp, dark environments, and floors and drywall that have absorbed flood water are prime real estate.

White and black mold can trigger allergy symptoms and sickness with enough exposure, but mold isn’t the only health risk attached to untreated water damage. Untreated water may become a breeding ground for bacteria and fungi, which also affect air quality, causing respiratory symptoms and other serious health concerns.

2. Structural weakness and wood rot

Water left standing for too long can do the following damage:

Rot wood like structural beams, flooring, and walls, eventually making your home unsafe to live in.
Affect the foundation, causing cracks that’ll affect the entire house.
Corrode your home’s pipes and create even more water damage.

3. Electrical and fire hazards

Although it sounds counterintuitive, water damage can cause dangerous home fire hazards. If a leak interacts with your home’s electrical system, it can damage the circuits and create a house fire. In addition, water-soaked electrical wiring can cause electrical shocks, adding to the health risks present with untreated water damage.

4. Hidden contamination and bacteria

Depending on where the flood came from, exposure to water can be just as toxic as exposure to the mold and mildew it brings. Flood sources like dishwasher leaks and burst sewer lines have chemicals and contaminants that are hazardous to human health.

5. Declining property value and expensive repairs

Untreated water damage may create water stains and wear down the building material, making it unsightly and unusable. Water damage is even worse for wooden floors and walls because it can rot the structure, significantly weakening it and promoting mold growth.

These effects adversely impact property value. People want well-kept, safe houses, not rebuilding projects. Even if shoppers are content with buying a fixer-upper, untreated water damage is notoriously difficult to restore.

How To Spot Hidden Water Damage Early

It’s important to catch hidden water damage early. Common signs of water damage include:

Musty, damp smells
Stained or discolored walls or ceiling
Peeling paint or wallpaper
Warped or soft flooring, walls, or baseboards
Visible mold patches

Is Water Damage Dangerous To Live With?

So, how bad is water damage to a house? It’s generally not safe to live in a water-damaged home because of the chances of coming into contact with bacteria, mold spores and other contaminants, or structural or electrical damage. If your home has water damage, call a professional team for an inspection and remediation.

What To Do If You Suspect Water Damage

If you suspect you have a hidden leak in your home, or believe there’s water damage, take the following steps:

Step one: Turn your water main off.
Step two: Shut off the electricity to the area if safe to do so.
Step three: If you must enter the area, wear protective gear like gloves and boots.
Step four: Relocate furniture and other items from the area.
Step five: Take photos and document everything for your insurance claim.
Step six: Call a plumber.
Step seven: Contact your local restoration company.
Step eight: Find out how to maximize your insurance claim.

Contact Restorerz Emergency Services for Water Damage Restoration in Southern California

Untreated water damage may cause issues that can reduce your health and quality of life. You’ll need a team of experts to ensure your house is completely water damage-free, and Restorerz Emergency Services is ready to step up for you.

Our Los Angeles water restoration company offers speedy service 24 hours a day throughout our service area, which includes these communities:

We arrive at your home within an hour of your call, drain every drop of water from your home, rebuild the damaged areas, and give you a budget-friendly rate.

Contact Restorerz Emergency Services today for untreated water damage restoration or to learn more tips on preventing flooding in your house.

Frequently Asked Questions

How bad is water damage to a house?

Water damage can be very bad for a house, especially if it’s left for weeks or months. The faster you deal with flooding and water leaks, the less costly and invasive the restoration will be.

Can I clean up water damage myself?

No. If your home has water damage, there’s a good chance there’s hidden damage, mold, and rot that can spread, unseen. Call Restorerz Emergency Services for professional remediation. We’ll make sure your home is clean and safe to live in after water damage.

How long does it take to dry out a flooded house?

Drying a flooded house may take anywhere from a couple of days to a few weeks, depending on the extent of the flooding. It can take longer than you’d expect, especially if it’s in the middle of a wet SoCal winter.