Accelerated Slab Drying: The Fast Way Back To Normal

When homes with hardwood floors suffer a water disaster, time is of the essence. If the floors are dried quickly enough, sometimes they can be saved. More often than not, however, the damage is just too much. When those floors have been installed over a concrete slab foundation, there's more to replacing them than just tearing up the old floor and installing the new one.

Concrete is very porous and soaks up moisture quickly. Left alone, it slowly releases most of that moisture over time if the environment is dry. That's the problem. If new hardwood flooring is installed before that concrete slab releases the right amount of moisture, the new floors will simply absorb that moisture and begin to warp.

Since drying naturally could possibly take months, depending on the level of saturation, most people prefer a quicker solution that will get their homes back to normal as quickly as possible. That's where ServiceMaster by Cornerstone steps in with a solution: accelerated slab drying.

After the old, damaged flooring is removed, we begin the process by extracting any excess surface water. Then our team begins setting up for a technique we call "tenting". Tenting involves covering the affected area with thick, plastic sheeting which is secured to the floor with heavy, oblong sandbags.

A desiccant dehumidifier is then connected to a port in the tent and vented through another port that allows moisture to escape and be collected by the dehumidifier, which then discards the excess moisture into a container or through a window port. This all happens because the hot, dry air of the dehumidifier drastically raises the temperature in the concentrated area under the tent and speeds up evaporation. That, combined with the drying properties of desiccant, creates an environment under that plastic where excess moisture doesn't stand a chance.

In situations where multiple rooms are affected, or where the area to be dried is very large, a process that involves a long network of large plastic tubing is used in addition to tenting. The plastic tubes carry the dry air from the dehumidifiers to each location throughout the entire affected area, while another network of tubes collects the moisture and discards it.

Once an acceptable moisture level is reached, equipment is removed and installation of new flooring can begin. Done correctly, an accelerated slab dry will reduce drying time to a matter of days instead of weeks or months.