How to Restore Water Damaged Documents

3/8/2020 (Permalink)

You wake up feeling really ambitious and decide to arrive early at the office to get some extra work in. As soon as you walk through the door, though, you sense something is wrong. There's humidity in the air and your feet are making a squishing noise. You walk a little further into the room and realize immediately that there has been a leak in the roof after last night's downpour. You look around and water is not only covering the floor, but it has also leaked onto a giant bookshelf you have against the wall as well as into several filing cabinets containing important documents. You feel your heart beating in your stomach and ask yourself if it's possible to salvage these documents.

Our answer is, "Yes, it is!" That is, through SERVPRO's innovative vacuum freeze drying method. We employ the same renowned technique used by the Library of Congress to dry out water damaged books.

What exactly is Vacuum Freeze Drying?
It is the most efficient and effective way to salvage your water damaged documents. The vacuum freeze drying process can be used to recover and restore paper files, books, and photographs as well as blue prints, microfiche, x-rays, business archives, etc. Typically, these items are one-of-a-kind or irreplaceable (historical, collectable, legal, medical).

The Document Restoration Team uses a process called “sublimation” to avoid causing more damage to your documents, such as after a flood. Sublimation converts solids into gas.

So, to break it down:
As soon as we get your wet or moist documents, we freeze them in a cold storage space. Damaged documents should be frozen as quickly as possible to stabilize them and prevent further damage. The water in your documents becomes ice, a solid element. Next, using our Vacuum Freeze Drying Chamber, located in Jackson, Tennessee, we extract the ice by sublimation. That is to say that the ice in your papers becomes a gas or water vapor in order to be vacuumed.

This extraordinary technology used by SERVPRO is the only method approved by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the General Services Administration (GSA).

Why is Vacuum Freeze Drying the best method?
Other methods like dehumidification can alter the structure of the paper’s fibers causing them to become more brittle.

How do I know my items are in good hands?
Once your items arrive at a SERVPRO facility, we guarantee around the clock video surveillance. Standard drying time is 7-10 days, but it could vary based on moisture content and backlog.

The Document Restoration Team offers cleaning, trimming from fire damage, refile jacketing, deodorization, gamma irradiation, and basic drying.

The idea of losing important documents can make you feel vulnerable and frustrated, but SERVPRO specializes in the restoration of water damage. So, call your trusted professionals at SERVPRO of Dyersburg/Union City today at 731-627-6251 and let us make the damage look "Like it never even happened."