WINTER WATER DAMAGE EQUIPMENT Winter is right around the corner and you know what that means…burst pipes, ice dams, and roof leaks for homeowners and commercial buildings. Except for the deep South and Southwest, a majority of the United States and Canada territories experience cold winters (temperatures averaging below 60 degrees). So how do restoration technicians remove water and moisture from hardwood flooring, plaster, crawlspaces, concrete, and other building materials during the colder months? There are two simple solutions to this problem; use a desiccant dehumidifier and/or add heat.
COMMERCIAL GRADE DESICCANT DEHUMIDIFERS Unlike refrigerant dehumidifiers, which work best between 70 and 90 degrees, Phoenix Restoration Equipment desiccant dehumidifiers offer some unique performance features that make them better suited to colder situations. Restoration desiccants dehumidify the air by exposing the moist air to a desiccant material that adsorbs moisture. In other words, a desiccant is a chemical that adsorbs (not absorbs) moisture. Moreover, the desiccants used in desiccant dehumidifiers are able to release the same adsorbed moisture when heated. This ability to not only adsorb moisture but also to release it when heated is absolutely critical to the proper functioning of a desiccant dehumidifier. Depending on the size of your job, our smaller desiccants, Phoenix D385 and Phoenix D850 are ingeniously designed to operate vertically or horizontally and have a wide operating range and ultra-low grain depression. For bigger water restoration jobs, we recommend our large desiccant dehumidifier, the Phoenix 4800.
HEATERS As we mentioned earlier, adding heat directly to wet material helps release absored moisture. If you have a drying job in a cold, freezing basement, you need a lot of heat to get things dry. For example, you can place a Phoenix FireBird in an area with below-freezing temperatures and quickly produce 360 CFM of air over 100°F. In addition to its heating power, FireBird heaters are designed with several key safety features. Internal temperature cutouts prevent the FireBird from overheating an areaA startup delay prevents the potentially dangerous arcing/sparking that occurs with most other high-powered heating devices during plug-inThe heating elements are shielded within a double-walled and screened enclosure, preventing external surfaces from becoming too hot to touch. Phoenix Firebird Heaters (Firebird and Firebird Compact 20) give you portable BTUs wherever you need them.