Is There Any Hope of Restoring My Furnishings, Household Goods, and Personal Possessions After Torrential Rains and Flooding in Buffalo Grove?

6/17/2020 (Permalink)

Don't be the person floating on by all your personal belongings in your Buffalo Grove home. Call SERVPRO to mitigate your problem.

SERVPRO’s Team of Flood Damage Mitigation and Remediation Professionals Have a Broad Range of Solutions for Both Your Buffalo Grove Home’s Structure and Its Contents

The amount of water that can pour into your Buffalo Grove home during and after summer thunder showers, wind storms, or tornadoes can be substantial. Water can intrude through holes created as shingles and roof decking tear off, or trees, branches, or other debris break windows or punch through siding. Furniture, clothing, documents, books, pictures, and a host of other personal property risk ruin if rapid assessment and appropriate interventions do not occur.

How Will My Belongings Fare During Flood Damage Recovery?

After the storm blows over, your home’s structure might feel like the least of your concerns. Drywall and roofs protect you but can be switched out with few regrets. The flood damage to your Buffalo Grove house’s contents, on the other hand, is heartbreaking. After significant overland flooding through the foundation meets the waterfall cascading down walls and stairs from roof, window, and siding leaks, nearly everything inside your home is wet. Do not panic. There is a solution.

Should I Agree to a Pack-Out of Furnishings, Household Goods, and Personal Possessions?

SERVPRO understands it is very hard in the midst of such chaos to hand the bulk of your belongings to any restoration contractor. The feeling of loss of control is inevitable. Still, we have a tightly-structured protocol that not only safely removes your possessions and tracks them during our stewardship, but also permits talented and highly-trained technicians to return many items damaged back to previous function and appearance. Insurance contracts reference repair and restoration of the contents of your home in most instances, rarely willing to cover an entirely new set of furniture, clothing, floor and wall coverings, sports equipment, cooking and eating utensils, and on and on. For optimum recovery and excellent results, moving damaged items to our climate-controlled and specialist-staffed production facility can be your best option.

How Can I Trust that My Possessions Are Safe and Secure When They Are Out of My Sight?

We take the responsibility of managing your personal property seriously, using our Contents Claim Inventory Service (CCIS) throughout the process.  Once at our facility, or in a dry space on your property, we evaluate the condition of the items, planning for cleaning, disinfecting, drying, and deodorizing. We review the condition of the articles and report honestly on the results of restorative interventions as we work through each box or individual item. This detailed timeline allows you to make informed decisions on select items and provide data to your insurer to support claim or restoration coverage. Our trained technicians document the things we pack and follow each item through its restoration arc by employing:

• Check off and written lists
• Digital photography
• Barcoding technology

Can I Handle Some of the Work Myself?

We are always willing to partner with our customers on cleaning and restoration. It makes some sense for you to retain clothing and accessories needed for the short term for your family, as an example. You can wash and dry items at home if that equipment is safe to use or at a laundromat or dry cleaners. Trying to achieve optimum results when burdened with four seasons worth of clothing, towels and linens, outerwear and specialized outfits, is another matter. Some items are nearly impossible to clean and dry appropriately because of the need for specialized equipment or a short timeframe. These contents may be a better fit for the professionals at our production facility:

• Upholstered, padded furniture

We use portable moisture extractors and contained, small drying chambers to clean and remove all moisture before wood and textiles warp, delaminate, or fray, or mold growth takes hold.

• Documents, papers, books, and photos

These fragile items are challenging to save, but we have freeze-drying resources available that can deliver excellent results. Freeze-drying works through the process of sublimation, where frozen water transforms into a vapor without the intervening and damaging liquid state.

• Electronics

We need to handle electronics very carefully, drying them in a contained, controlled atmosphere, and availing the help of experts in this field before determining they are safe to operate. Our crew is cautious to moderate temperature so that the dried electronics are never subject to conditions that cause condensation on connection points by falling below the ambient dew point.

SERVPRO of Buffalo Grove / Lake Zurich SERVPRO of Buffalo Grove / Lake Zurich has the experience, resources, and training to sort out the chaos inside your home after storm-related flood damage. Contact us at (847) 279-1940 as soon as practical after the storm passes to get your property back on track.