Hardwood Floors December 2019/January 2020

The No.1 in floor protection

By Joel Kaufman

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That’s a question that few restoration industry pros asked themselves. Even 20 years ago, restoration technology had advanced to a point that moisture could be physically removed fromwet hardwood flooring. This fact was largely ignored by the restoration industry and the insurance community because tear-out and replacement was “how it has always been done” and the process of restoring hardwood flooring in-place still needed a lot of trial-and-error refinement. Very few restoration companies were interested in investing the time required, or had the willingness to take on a challenge this big. Our company, ACR Inc., has always been committed to staff education in restoration techniques and drying standards. Our restorers learned all about the then-current knowledge base from the most-advanced thinkers in restoration. We looked outside of the restoration industry as well, reaching out to the NWFA to better understand the characteristics of various hardwoods, the wide variety of installation approaches, mill standards, and more. We benefited with highly qualified staff, which was the prime goal of all of this valuable education provided by NWFA, but something else happened too. Our key people suspected that the sophisticated techniques that they learned could be adapted and controlled to dry water-damaged hardwood flooring without removal and without damage to the wood flooring. If this was possible, and if it could be done consistently, two things would happen. First, insurance carriers could satisfy their policy’s claim at a much lower cost. Second, property owners could experience far less inconvenience. After all, tearing out and replacing a hardwood floor in an average residential loss can take months. Experiments and refinements were producing positive results; more and more hardwood floors were saved by controlling the material’s moisture content downward to equilibrium level. More and more facility managers, buildings and grounds people, and adjusters assigned to their losses began to see for themselves that the problem can be solved through mitigation rather than replacement. Our biggest breakthroughs came on a large scale. Our company has long had a large client list in the educational sector – school districts, colleges, and universities – virtually all of them have at least one hardwood gym floor. Water losses hit gym floors far more often than you’d guess, so this was a great opportunity to develop and improve hardwood floor drying processes for the future.

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„The best choice for protecting your floor.“

protects

waterproof

anti-skid

breathable

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www.floorotex.com mail@floorotex.com

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