Preserving Documents After Water Damage

7/2/2020 (Permalink)

Flooding in commercial buildings in Onatrio CA, can be costly and time consuming, and oftentimes the damage goes beyond just the floor. In a business, wet documents can be a huge problem. Even though so much is done digitally, companies still house many important papers. Here are some tips that may help in saving them.
Air Drying
This method of document drying is best for papers that are not severely damaged. You should first take a paper towel and remove excess moisture by gently pressing it down on the paper. Once you've carefully gotten as much liquid from it as possible, you can hang it up to air dry. This can be done with either a dehumidifier or a fan. You want to take care not to point the fan directly at the wet documents as this can cause them to fall apart.
Freeze Drying
You may want to consider freeze drying papers or books that are in bad condition due to the flooding or that have not dried after being hung up for two days. You can still begin by using the paper towel to take away some of the water. You will then put wax paper between all pages and put them in a zip lock bag before putting the items in the freezer. It is usually best to do this at the lowest temperature setting. After two weeks, you can take them out and air dry them.
If you are at all uncomfortable trying to salvage your wet documents yourself, you can call a water restoration professional in Ontario CA, to dry them for you. You should also consider hiring someone to help if the documents have been exposed to contaminated water as this may take a special type of clean up. No matter what method you decide to go with, you should take extra care when handling these papers as they can rip extremely easily.