Handling Water Damage to Your Restaurant

12/3/2020 (Permalink)

You can count on SERVPRO’s experienced professionals to eliminate water damage on your property. Call us today.

With the high volume of traffic that your franchise eatery receives every day, you need fast and reliable water restoration. 

Natural disasters and accidents that impact your Northern Virginia restaurant's productivity and operation are rarely situations that employees and property managers can handle on their own. Broken sprinkler heads, damaged sink fixtures, or broken pipes in the walls can cause substantial water damage to the building. How these conditions get addressed can often be a difference in whether your facilities can stay up and running after a loss or if the doors to your restaurant must close temporarily for professional water restoration companies to complete their recovery. 

Because water damage repair for Northern Virginian restaurants can encompass so many individual tasks, each approach for compromised businesses varies based on the circumstances and structure's layout. Certain fundamental mitigation steps are the centerpiece of our initial activity, but even these approaches get tailored to specific situations. For example, controlled demolition might not be necessary for most metal frameworks in wall systems. However, older franchise restaurants might still feature wood framing in the walls that could become overly damaged with exposure. 

What Water Mitigation Services Must Occur? 

Even with a fixation on cleaning and restoring a damaged property after a water disaster, your restaurant depends on the initial mitigation and emergency services our SERVPRO team provides. Applying some of these actions immediately can keep your facility open in some capacity, allowing you to continue serving customers while restoration, cleaning, and drying continue. Mitigation involves several quick approaches, including:

• Extraction – Removing standing water is a considerable initial concern, especially when floor drains in the building have become clogged or overwhelmed. This process involves several water removal tools, including pumps, extractor trucks, and wet vacuums. 
• Containment – Establishing physical barriers between damaged areas and unaffected portions of the restaurant can allow the establishment to operate in a limited capacity. 
• Controlled Demolition – Sagging and destroyed materials can be a hazard to employees and restorers working to recover the damage. 
• Repairs - With a team of in-house contractors on our roster, we can locate plumbing or fixture damage and repair it to prevent further property losses and restore water service.

What Materials Are Affected by Standing Water? 

No matter where the bulk of the damage exists in the restaurant, from the kitchen and food prep areas to the dining portion of the building, our contractors and restorers' response remains the same. Understanding what materials are the most likely to become damaged by the presence of water ensures that the appropriate drying and cleaning occurs promptly to reduce tear-out. 

• Drywall - Drywall is often a quickly damaged material, even if the entire wall surface does not become impacted. Establishing a dryline allows for flood cuts to get made that remove compromised portions of sheetrock.
• Subflooring – Carpets common to your restaurant's dining area either leads to concrete subflooring or OSB board. With the right length of exposure, both of these materials could become damaged. 
• Wood Framing – While newer commercial construction utilizes aluminum framing, older buildings can still be susceptible to migrating moisture and its effect on wood frames. 
• Furniture – Tables and chairs throughout the dining area can also be sensitive to water damage when exposure persists long enough to penetrate the finished wood. 

Is Mold Possible? 

If mold exists because of the water damage situations in your restaurant, it could welcome several immediate health and safety concerns for your patrons and staff. When water damages exist, our SERVPRO professionals work quickly to limit the spread and treat surfaces with antimicrobial solutions when possible.