Fire Damage Goes Hand-In-Hand with Water Damage

10/22/2022 (Permalink)

If you have fire damage like this call for the help of SERVPRO of Bartow / Lakeland Highland.

Fire Damage Goes Hand-In-Hand With Water Damage

Fire damage and water damage are two different kinds of damage that often go hand in hand. If you have a fire on your property in Bartow, FL, the way the fire is extinguished can make a difference in the amount of damage. There are many ways to prevent fire damage after a fire has happened.

Fire damage is serious damage.

Fire damage can cause serious damage that can be difficult to mitigate on your own. Soot and smoke damage needs professional care in order to be cleaned up properly and most of all, safely. It can affect your property value and cause other problems, such as mold growth due to fire suppression systems or firefighting efforts.

There are different kinds of damage after a fire

The most obvious is the damage caused by heat and flames. This can include charring on walls, ceilings, and furniture.

Smoke damage can cause discoloration or staining to ceilings, walls, floors, and other surfaces both inside your home as well as outside on siding or roofs. When smoke enters your home, it also affects the air quality which leads to odors that may take months or years before they dissipate completely from an affected area of your home's structure. Luckily, our SERVPRO of Bartow/Lake Highlands team is highly trained in smoke odor removal!

Water damage is common

To fight a fire on your residential or commercial property, you might have sprinklers that extinguish the fire, or firefighters might have to extinguish the flames. Nevertheless, the water being used to extinguish the fire can cause a ton of damage to your property.

If there is water damage in your home, it can be evident will from discoloration or peeling paint on surfaces such as walls or ceilings.

Structural issues can arise 

After a fire, the amount of fire damage in a building is determined by the type of material and how much heat was involved. The most common types of materials used in construction are wood, brick or stone, and steel. The degree to which these materials are damaged depends on their exposure to heat during a fire.

When there is fire damage it can cause major structural problems, such as the roof being burned or warped, holes in the roof, melted pipes, and electrical issues. All of this can lead to further expensive damages to your property.

When there is a fire in your home, it can be very scary. You may not know where to start or what to do next. You should never try to tackle any type of restoration work yourself unless you have been trained specifically in this type of work. The good news is that there are professionals who can help you out with this process, so you don’t have to deal with the stress alone. If you need fire and water damage cleanup and restoration services, our SERVPRO of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands team is only one call away! Our team offers an immediate response to a loss in your home or business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year!

Begin Fire Restoration by Following This List

7/25/2022 (Permalink)

A problematic disaster like this calls for the help of SERVPRO of Bartow / Lakeland Highland.

Follow This List to Begin Fire Restoration

No matter how safety-conscious you are, natural disasters or accidents can strike and cause a house fire. What do you do if your Winter Haven, FL, residence experiences a fire? Here are some ways to quickly initiate the fire restoration process.

1. Submit an Insurance Claim

Contact your property insurance company to file a claim immediately. Be prepared to provide photos or videos of all damaged structures and belongings for the fire insurance claim. You will also need to write a list of all damaged or destroyed items, accompanied by receipts or other records when possible.

Don't throw anything away before the insurance company sends an adjuster to your home to assess the damage. Make time to be present during the inspection to ask questions or voice concerns.

2. Request Fire Restoration Services

Call a fire damage restoration company to begin the cleanup process. A company agent will ask you questions over the phone to determine the resources they need to help you. Then, a company team member will arrive on-site to investigate how much smoke cleaning and other restoration work is needed.

3. Temporary Protection

Some windows or walls may require temporary protective tarps or boards to help prevent damage from weather, animals, or looters. A restoration company can provide this service immediately following a fire.

4. Water and Smoke Removal

The fire damage restoration team can then begin the drying and water removal process, as well as smoke and soot removal from surfaces such as ceilings and walls. Don't attempt to enter or clean in unstable, damaged areas. The expertise of the fire damage restoration team will safely return structures and belongings to their pre-fire state.

5. Repair Work

The final steps in the restoration process are cleaning, deodorizing and repair work. Repairs may be as minor as new carpet installation and painting or involve more significant work restoring entire rooms or sections of the house.

Returning a structure to its pre-fire state may seem daunting at first. These tips can help you begin the fire restoration process and get your life back to normal.

3 Ways To Maintain the Pipes in Your Rental Property

7/20/2022 (Permalink)

3 Ways to Keep Your Rental Property's Pipes in Good Condition

As the owner of rental properties, you know that regular maintenance is vital to keep costs low and help things stay in good working order. One area of your Mulberry, FL, investment property that is especially important to maintain is the plumbing system. Here are three ways to maintain the pipes in your investment property. 

1. Check for Polybutylene Pipes

If your property was built between 1978 to 1995, there is a good chance you need to replace the pipes. PB-1 pipes were manufactured with a resin on the inside that has been shown to break down over time because of chlorine in the municipal water system and other chemicals in household cleaners. Contact a plumber to inspect the pipes and check for corrosion. If they notice an issue, replace the pipes as soon as possible to prevent a total system failure. 

2. Regularly Use Enzymes

Even if the property doesn't have polybutylene pipes, you could still have problems with clogged pipes in your investment home. The clogs could be from built-up hair, food scraps or grease. It's essential to keep clogs at a minimum because they can cause your plumbing system to back up into your home, which could cause you to spend thousands of dollars on water damage restoration services. Keep clogs under control by giving your tenants enzymes to put in your plumbing system each month. They simply flush the enzymes down the toilet and pour them down some pipes, and the enzymes do the rest. 

3. Clear Trees From the Property

As beautiful as they are, trees that are too close to the plumbing system can wreak havoc on your pipes. The tree roots spread out and can pierce the pipes, destroying them and causing blockages. When planting new trees, keep them at least 100 feet from your main sewer line. If you have existing trees too close to the pipes, contact an arborist to remove them. 

Whether you have polybutylene or clogged pipes or errant tree roots, keeping the pipes in your investment property healthy will be easy to manage with some maintenance and planning.

Fixing Commercial Fire Damage In Your Bartow Self Storage Facility

7/9/2022 (Permalink)

Repairing Fire Damage in Your Bartow Self-Storage Facility

Once fires start in your Bartow, FL home or commercial property, they spread quickly, and if your self-storage facility is hit, you are likely to incur substantial damages. Having a robust fire suppression system is probably one of your major selling points to customers so you might stop the blaze before it devastates your entire facility. However, you still have to grapple with damages to your Bartow facility.

An incident of commercial fire damage in your Bartow self-storage facility can ruin it in many ways. The smoke produced during combustion is likely to spread all over the facility even when flames are restricted to a small location. The smoke deposits soot and leaves lingering odors to building materials and contents. Our SERVPRO technicians can help clean all residues left on materials and deodorize all affected areas. It is an excellent experience for your clients if they don’t have to deal with smoky smells on items after a fire incident at your facility.

In most cases, water is the primary agent used to quell fires. Because of the high amounts used and indiscriminate spraying when fighting the flames, it can reach many unwanted areas where it can cause additional damages. Extracting any pools left and drying the materials helps stop further deterioration. Our SERVPRO technicians use advanced and straightforward water extraction equipment to ensure your facility dries fast. Water extractors are particularly useful because they have different components, including a pump and a vacuum system, ensuring maximum efficiency.
 
Even when a fire does not damage the items you have in your storage facility, it can create conditions that might cause other damages. If the fire damages the doors, roof, or outer walls of the structure, it leaves the contents stored in the facility exposed to weather elements, vandals, and even rodents that might cause further damages. Our SERVPRO technicians can help you avoid such additional problems by boarding up the affected areas or installing roof tarps. We do it professionally so that it is secure and it does not look like a temporary patch-up so that you can take time to get the best fix.

Even though your clients might understand the accidental nature of a fire incident, the way you respond can leave a negative impression. SERVPRO of Bartow / Lakeland Highlands. We’re Faster to Any Size Disaster.

SERVPRO Is the Business Partner You Didn’t Know You Needed | SERVPRO® of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands

3/26/2022 (Permalink)

SERVPRO of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands is your local commercial restoration expert. Contact us today should you experience any damage.

Running a business means taking all the help you can get. When you manage a property or a company, you know that any available hand is needed to keep things running smoothly. A major disruption or a loss can be a catastrophe.

You have a built-in silent partner available right here in your Florida backyard with SERVPRO. We can carry the burden of any cleanup and recovery needs, as well as data backup and regular deep-cleaning. SERVPRO can carry so many aspects of your business that it’s like having an ally that is invested in you, your company’s business success plan, and your neighborhood.

Large loss recovery. Natural disasters are among the top causes of loss for businesses. Fires, storms and flooding cause massive amounts of damage across the United States, and when action isn’t taken quickly, the disruption time to your company can continue to add up. We are no strangers to extreme weather here in the Bartow and Lakeland areas, especially weather that brings extreme heat and severe thunderstorms. Our team is highly skilled and has the equipment to respond to your crisis 24 hours a day. SERVPRO’s proven emergency services can minimize your time away from your business and get you on the road to recovery faster.

Emergency Ready Plan. Recovery from a disaster should start long before the emergency strikes with the proper planning. We can tailor-make the perfect comprehensive plan for your business that includes everything from a chain of command, alternate work locations and temporary vendors. When a disruption happens and you say “go,” your Emergency Ready Plan will click into place and your business will start moving back toward normal right away.

Cleaning of all kinds. We have every aspect of cleaning you and your business could ever need covered. SERVPRO has been cleaning a long time, and we have the equipment and training to handle basic deep-cleaning of high traffic areas, carpets and upholstery, as well as specialty cleaning needs including trauma site cleanup and safe biohazard removal. There isn’t a situation we haven’t seen, and we can clean them all.

Restoration services. A heavy rain storm produces a flash flood, an intern burns lunch in the cafeteria or a pipe bursts during one of our unusual cold spells—anything can happen that leads to your business needing some kind of restoration. As Florida natives, we are highly trained in our communities’ unique cleaning and restoration needs. From water removal to reconstruction, SERVPRO of Bartow and Lakeland Highlands can get your business back in order better than anyone.

Industry specialization. There isn’t a corporate office we haven’t studied and trained to work on in our community over the decades. Whatever your business’ specific needs are, we are ready to handle them. In many cases, we can tackle your cleaning or restoration needs in an enclosed area while you continue to run your company.

Whatever your recovery need may be, and whatever your commercial property may require, trust SERVPRO to get the job done. Contact us today to get started on an Emergency Ready Plan or find out how we can serve your business.

Get Ready With the SERVPRO Emergency Ready Plan | SERVPRO® of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands

2/26/2022 (Permalink)

If the day comes where your business is hit with disaster or emergency, you can be assured SERVPRO of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands will be there to help.

Running a business will keep you busy—so busy if you were to calculate all of your time you would be well into what most consider “overtime.”

In a business market that is constantly changing and shifting, you have payroll to manage, competition in your marketplace to handle and staff to care for, all while creating a presence on social media. Finding the balance of it all can feel like walking on a tightrope.

In a business market haunted by the memory of pandemic closures and uncertainties of what lies ahead, it has become more important than ever to have a solid emergency plan in place for your business. You need to know with certainty what to do and when following any type of emergency.

But three-quarters of small businesses do not have a plan in place in the event of a natural disaster or other business disruption—an alarming fact that SERVPRO of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands hopes to change with our Emergency Ready Plan.

One business disruption can derail a business permanently. FEMA found that 40% of small businesses affected by a natural disaster never reopen, while another quarter of those businesses that do reopen close within a year. In our constantly changing Florida weather, it is more important than ever to have a plan that minimizes your time away from your business after a natural disaster.

SERVPRO of Bartow/Lakeland Highlands will work with you to create a plan that is ready as soon as you say “go.” You will know the chain of command, where your alternate work locations are, what alternate vendors are available to you and so much more. We even cover data backup and recovery so you spend as little downtime as possible.

Natural disasters and emergencies are not something we want to think about. But when they happen, we don’t want to find ourselves adding to the alarming statistics by going off the rails.

Small business is the heart of our Florida community. Let us secure your business in the event of a disaster. Reach out to start your Emergency Ready Plan today.

When your business is ready to prioritize planning and safety to prevent extended downtime, contact SERVPRO to get the Emergency Ready Plan underway from the folks who know all there is to know about disaster and recovery.

The Importance of an Emergency Readiness Plan for Commercial Buildings

2/10/2022 (Permalink)

Water Damage in a break room from a dirty water source.

Water damage is one of the largest loss causes we deal with in commercial properties, yet only a small percentage of clients have a formal Emergency Readiness Plan in place.  

SERVPRO of Bartow Lakeland Highlands offers Emergency Readiness Plans to all commercial business at no cost.  We are happy to help gather the necessary information, put together a plan and submit it to all personal to have at their fingertips in case of an emergency.

Even a small amount of water can cause a significant loss to high-valued equipment.  In a space with low content, there can still be significant cost.  Water damage can mean tearing out flooring, ceilings, walls, and insulation.  There is also the potential problem of the space being unusable and causing slow or shut down business until the work is completed.  The magnitude of these losses is often dependent on how prepared the business is to handle the disruption.  

Contact SERVPRO of Bartow Lakeland Highlands at 863-510-5962 to schedule your free Emergency Readiness Plan as soon as possible so your business is prepared.