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Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Happy Thanksgiving!
ServiceMaster Anytime recently offered to donate Turkeys when a customer booked residential services. Thanks to our loyal customers, we were able to donate 100 pounds of Turkey to the Santa Barbara County Food Bank!
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
ServiceMaster Anytime Volunteering and Serving the Community
Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) “The function of this organization is to encourage cooperation and coordination in planning for and responding to disasters. We do this so that our response will be more effective, duplication of services will be minimized, and more efficient service will be provided to those affected by a disaster.” explained David Ross, VOAD coordinator.
Under VOAD, there are several sub committees; ServiceMaster Anytime’s Justin Haagen has been part of the Long Term Recovery Committee (LTRC) for over the past year. The LTRC is the committee that oversees and recommends to whom and how the $435,000 that was collected & donated to assist the Tea fire victims is disbursed.
The LTRC concluded it’s finally meeting today by recommending disbursement of all the final monies to victims from the Tea Fire. This is right on plan, as the first anniversary of the Tea Fire is on November 13, 2009.
A smaller fund was collected to assist the victims of the Jesusita Fire and the committee will continue its work in the same fashion. Currently the Jesusita Fire relief fund is $50,000. Approximately 35 cases have been identified by the LTRC committee.
Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters (VOAD) “The function of this organization is to encourage cooperation and coordination in planning for and responding to disasters. We do this so that our response will be more effective, duplication of services will be minimized, and more efficient service will be provided to those affected by a disaster.” explained David Ross, VOAD coordinator.
Under VOAD, there are several sub committees; ServiceMaster Anytime’s Justin Haagen has been part of the Long Term Recovery Committee (LTRC) for over the past year. The LTRC is the committee that oversees and recommends to whom and how the $435,000 that was collected & donated to assist the Tea fire victims is disbursed.
The LTRC concluded it’s finally meeting today by recommending disbursement of all the final monies to victims from the Tea Fire. This is right on plan, as the first anniversary of the Tea Fire is on November 13, 2009.
A smaller fund was collected to assist the victims of the Jesusita Fire and the committee will continue its work in the same fashion. Currently the Jesusita Fire relief fund is $50,000. Approximately 35 cases have been identified by the LTRC committee.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
From Wet to Dry and In Between… The Drying Process Overview
About 1.2 million homes are affected by water damage each year, with billions of dollars of insurance claims filed and costly damage. You may have been led to believe that restoring a room and its contents to normal condition after water damage is simple—just turn on a fan and let it dry for a few days, for example, and you’re done.
If so, think again. Professional water-damage restoration has come a long way. Improved structural drying technology is required to reduce the severity of the water loss and damage. It’s a complicated business, requiring a careful, scientific approach, with frequent monitoring of specific and relative humidity, temperature and moisture readings of the contents and structure, from start to finish. Otherwise, you are liable to end up with an unsatisfactory result: under drying that doesn’t get the job done, and may produce a mold condition, or needless and costly over drying, which can cause its own problems, such as wood cracking.
How long a job will take and how much dehumidification—which equipment, and how much of it--is required to accomplish the job depends on how wet the contents and air have become, the relative humidity, temperature, how effective the drying method being used turns out to be, and constant checking on the drying progress.
There is no rule of thumb, like: the drying process takes three days or six days or six weeks or a month. Jobs are dry when they’re dry. And modern methods are a must. For example, we don’t use fans to dry out wet environments any more. A fan is something you buy at the Mart for $18.95. Instead, we use high-velocity air movers, and we may need to use several units for an affected area, depending on the extent of wetness in the area. We may also bring in dehumidifiers—using a refrigerant, which reduces moisture by lowering the temperature, or a desiccant, which absorbs moisture directly. We may use high-capacity pumps to remove water from the area to begin with, and then wand extractors, then use specialized deep extraction units to remove moisture from the pad. Extraction is 1,200 times more efficient for drying than evaporation or dehumidification.
A wet-carpet service in the past would typically extract water from the carpet, replace the pad, then dry and re-install the carpet. Now, we use scientific techniques and state-of-the-art equipment that can sharply reduce the severity of damage. We delve deeply into “psychrometry”—the science of drying, which involves the relationship between temperature and relative humidity, using a psychrometric chart and calculator to figure the air’s moisture content, or GPP (grains of moisture per pound of air) from those two factors. We would already have used a thermo-hygrometer to assess the temperature and relative humidity of the air, both indoors and outdoors, which affect the drying process (low-humidity outside air can sometimes be used to dehumidify inside air, by opening doors and windows). We measure air moisture in both affected and unaffected areas indoors, to give a benchmark for restoring the environment in the affected area to the pre-loss condition. We may use moisture sensors to tell us if materials are wet or dry, and penetrating or non-penetrating moisture meters to measure the extent of wetness in building materials.
In all of this—from evaluating the moisture in the air, structures and contents to diagnosing the nature and amount of water damage to prescribing drying methods to monitoring the drying process to judging when the drying job is really done—we rely on precise standards set by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, or IICRC (see the institute’s website, www.iicrc.org, for the institute’s S500 Standard and Reference Guide for Professional Water Damage Restoration—2006.)
So restoring rooms and contents to pre-loss conditions has become a much more sophisticated process, just like auto repairs have moved from the days of “shade-tree mechanics”— repairing a vehicle under the shade of a tree, to computer-controlled corrective work, starting with electronic diagnosis of the vehicle’s problem. Today’s technology and science play a huge role in water damage restoration. Your water damage restoration company must be technically trained and should be certified to perform any drying or restoration work for you. Proper liability and pollution insurance is a must in today’s litigious world.
The consequences of ineffective drying and restoration can include possible health effects, secondary damage or even mold growth. Most property and home owners are not familiar with the science and technology for proper restoration, and naturally, they have a lot of questions. We’ll detail proper drying and restoration techniques in part two of this series.
If so, think again. Professional water-damage restoration has come a long way. Improved structural drying technology is required to reduce the severity of the water loss and damage. It’s a complicated business, requiring a careful, scientific approach, with frequent monitoring of specific and relative humidity, temperature and moisture readings of the contents and structure, from start to finish. Otherwise, you are liable to end up with an unsatisfactory result: under drying that doesn’t get the job done, and may produce a mold condition, or needless and costly over drying, which can cause its own problems, such as wood cracking.
How long a job will take and how much dehumidification—which equipment, and how much of it--is required to accomplish the job depends on how wet the contents and air have become, the relative humidity, temperature, how effective the drying method being used turns out to be, and constant checking on the drying progress.
There is no rule of thumb, like: the drying process takes three days or six days or six weeks or a month. Jobs are dry when they’re dry. And modern methods are a must. For example, we don’t use fans to dry out wet environments any more. A fan is something you buy at the Mart for $18.95. Instead, we use high-velocity air movers, and we may need to use several units for an affected area, depending on the extent of wetness in the area. We may also bring in dehumidifiers—using a refrigerant, which reduces moisture by lowering the temperature, or a desiccant, which absorbs moisture directly. We may use high-capacity pumps to remove water from the area to begin with, and then wand extractors, then use specialized deep extraction units to remove moisture from the pad. Extraction is 1,200 times more efficient for drying than evaporation or dehumidification.
A wet-carpet service in the past would typically extract water from the carpet, replace the pad, then dry and re-install the carpet. Now, we use scientific techniques and state-of-the-art equipment that can sharply reduce the severity of damage. We delve deeply into “psychrometry”—the science of drying, which involves the relationship between temperature and relative humidity, using a psychrometric chart and calculator to figure the air’s moisture content, or GPP (grains of moisture per pound of air) from those two factors. We would already have used a thermo-hygrometer to assess the temperature and relative humidity of the air, both indoors and outdoors, which affect the drying process (low-humidity outside air can sometimes be used to dehumidify inside air, by opening doors and windows). We measure air moisture in both affected and unaffected areas indoors, to give a benchmark for restoring the environment in the affected area to the pre-loss condition. We may use moisture sensors to tell us if materials are wet or dry, and penetrating or non-penetrating moisture meters to measure the extent of wetness in building materials.
In all of this—from evaluating the moisture in the air, structures and contents to diagnosing the nature and amount of water damage to prescribing drying methods to monitoring the drying process to judging when the drying job is really done—we rely on precise standards set by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, or IICRC (see the institute’s website, www.iicrc.org, for the institute’s S500 Standard and Reference Guide for Professional Water Damage Restoration—2006.)
So restoring rooms and contents to pre-loss conditions has become a much more sophisticated process, just like auto repairs have moved from the days of “shade-tree mechanics”— repairing a vehicle under the shade of a tree, to computer-controlled corrective work, starting with electronic diagnosis of the vehicle’s problem. Today’s technology and science play a huge role in water damage restoration. Your water damage restoration company must be technically trained and should be certified to perform any drying or restoration work for you. Proper liability and pollution insurance is a must in today’s litigious world.
The consequences of ineffective drying and restoration can include possible health effects, secondary damage or even mold growth. Most property and home owners are not familiar with the science and technology for proper restoration, and naturally, they have a lot of questions. We’ll detail proper drying and restoration techniques in part two of this series.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
ServiceMaster Anytime aids in the cleanup & restoration of the Jesusita fire
On May 5, 2009 at approximately 1:45 p.m., the Jesusita Fire began in the hills of Santa Barbara. Before it was 100% contained the fire would claim 80 homes and burn more than 8,700 acres.
The resulting poor air quality, soot and debris quickly created a need to clean and restore homes. The smoke and odor damage in the homes near the fire in Santa Barbara was tremendous and affected hundreds of homes. ServiceMaster Anytime immediately held a meeting with the management team and began executing a strategic plan of response and restoration actions and set up our own incident command center.
ServiceMaster Anytime restored 69 homes after the Jesusita fire. Depending on the square footage of the home, restoration times varied anywhere from 72 man hours to up to 80 man hours. We worked with all insurance companies and assisted homeowners with claim management. We worked exhaustively to advocate and appeal for the homeowners we served. ServiceMaster Anytime has the capacity to respond to large scale damages like in the Jesusita fire due its expertise in strategic deployment of equipment, man hours and its resources in partnership with other ServiceMaster Clean franchises. Special thanks to our local ServiceMaster Commercial Building Maintenance and ServiceMaster of Santa Barbara. We incorporated cleaning professionals from each businesses to supplement our crew sizes.
The Jesusita fire was a complex fire so restoration and cleaning resulted in three categories.
CATEGORY 1 (Light Soot)
This represents the Hepa vacuuming/dusting of all horizontal area’s including floors, exterior cabinets, door frames, door jam, baseboards, window sills etc. affected by soot. It also includes the HEPA vacuuming of any affected upholstery, and carpet.
CATEGORY 2 (Medium Soot)
This represents all Category 1 functions above plus the Hepa Vacuuming and dusting of all affected walls, ceilings, and floors as well as carpet and upholstery cleaning services. Drapes/area rugs would be separate and subcontracted out.
CATEGORY 3 (Heavy Soot)
This represents all processes from Category 1 & 2 plus the heavy cleaning of all walls, ceilings, using dry cleaning sponges and wall glide processes. Interior windows to be cleaned, all affected surface contents will be wiped down. Cabinets and drawers to be cleaned inside and out.
As needed, separate restoration processes included power washing, duct & furnace cleaning, attic restoration, major deodorizing, window cleaning and textile restoration were required. In some cased content pack out and cleaning were necessary.
The Jesustita fire was classified as a “complex” fire. A complex fire is a result of materials burning and acting as synthetic fuels. These synthetic fuels form acid gases and corrosives such as hydrochloric, hydrofluoric, sulfuric and nitric acids. Some of the synthetic fuels are foams, films, polyethylene, polypropylene, melamine, acrilan, Saran, synthetic rubbers, Teflon, polyurethane, polyvinyl chlorides and fluorides. Objects made from these materials include: toys, carpets, flooring tiles, and sheet goods, furniture, clothing, shoes, appliances, plumbing, dishes and bathroom equipment. Even wood fires have been analyzed and found to produce over a dozen different organic acids. In a fire, acid gases combine with heat and water vapor and penetrate cracks and crevices. When the surfaces cool, the gases condense, forming highly corrosive solutions.
Soot is comprised of carbon and other materials, which are incompletely burned or oxidized. Although some of the carbon particles have electrical charges causing them to stick together, more often greases and oils are the adhesives. Some soot particles are dry and can be vacuumed effectively. Other soot particles require alkalinity and/or solvent action to dissolve the greases or oils. The alkalinity of a cleaning solution plus
the lifting-wetting action of surfactants chemically reacts with oil or grease to form a new product, a water-soluble soap, which is washed away.
The most important action to take in fire restoration is drying out the area as soon as possible. Smoke, water vapor and other gases should be evacuated. Portable metal objects should be moved, cleaned and dried with warm air as soon as practical. Smoke & Odor cleaning should proceed as usual, starting the salvage procedures in the wettest and heaviest areas. Delays in cleanup may change the probability that soil will be removed, requiring more time and more products than would have been necessary if restoration had not been delayed. Delay may also allow further chemical attack and decrease the level of success in cleaning. Some surfaces may even become so severely attacked that they are no longer salvageable. Visit our website www.svma.com for more about Smoke & Odor Damage remediation.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Emergency Planning Resources For Your Business
Disaster Preparedness Training:
Emergency Planning For Business: The goals of a business continuity plan or contingency plan include, but are not limited to the following: Minimize interruptions to business operations, Limit the severity of the disruption, Establish alternative means of operation, Resume critical operations within a specified time after a disaster, Expedite the restoration of services, Maintain a positive image of the organization, Minimize financial loss, Train personnel and familiarize them with emergency operations, Establish awareness. Homeland Security Business Ready planning is intended for small businesses who need a basic plan, this service is FREE., Large scale Continuity Planning services are a fee service and done in conjunction with Continuum Recovery Inc. ServiceMaster Anytime CAN HELP WITH YOUR PLANNING!
Disaster Preparedness Free Training:
Emergency Planning For Employees: Your employees and co-workers are your business's most important and valuable asset. Remember, disasters don't just happen when are at home with our families, half of our day is spent in the workplace. So helping your employees be prepared at home and at work is good business for everyone!
Emergency Planning For Business: The goals of a business continuity plan or contingency plan include, but are not limited to the following: Minimize interruptions to business operations, Limit the severity of the disruption, Establish alternative means of operation, Resume critical operations within a specified time after a disaster, Expedite the restoration of services, Maintain a positive image of the organization, Minimize financial loss, Train personnel and familiarize them with emergency operations, Establish awareness. Homeland Security Business Ready planning is intended for small businesses who need a basic plan, this service is FREE., Large scale Continuity Planning services are a fee service and done in conjunction with Continuum Recovery Inc. ServiceMaster Anytime CAN HELP WITH YOUR PLANNING!
Disaster Preparedness Free Training:
Emergency Planning For Employees: Your employees and co-workers are your business's most important and valuable asset. Remember, disasters don't just happen when are at home with our families, half of our day is spent in the workplace. So helping your employees be prepared at home and at work is good business for everyone!
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