Fire Damage and resultant flooding

When you hear about a house fire you do not always think of the related flooding! The fire damage is not the only thing to worry about.
Fires to buildings are generally put out with water, lots of water and that water can often cause more damage than the fire itself!

If you look at the construction of an average house with timber ground floors you will see that the sub floor void is usually well below external ground level and can turn into a mini swimming pool filled by the firefighting water and additional and ongoing water from rain which enters through missing windows and burnt off roofs.

Fire and flood refurbishment contractors

At Dryspace Maintain we are able to refurbish properties that have suffered fire damage and also provide specialist treatments for all retained timbers. We can assess the timbers and liaise with yourself (or your loss adjuster) to provide a permanent solution with no hidden nasties that will emerge later down the line after you have fully settled back in to your property. See the case study below to see why this is important.

Case Study

We were requested to inspect a large detached property in Gosforth near Newcastle upon Tyne which had recently been refurbished. The property had suffered a fire and been evacuated, thankfully no one was hurt. The fire was put out by the local firefighters and a lot of the property was saved thanks to their skill and expertise, however the water used to put out the fire meant that the house timbers and the sub floor were saturated. The insurers for the property found alternative accommodation for the family, and over the following months they organised the refurbishment. It was in fact several months before work commenced and the subsequent rain through the burnt out roof coupled with the firefighters essential use of vast amounts of water meant that the timbers were saturated for a prolonged period.
The builders carried out the work to refurbish the house, to their credit the finished job was to a good standard of craftsmanship.

Unfortunately no one had taken into account the condition of the remaining timbers or the fact they had been saturated/immersed in water for months. No one had ensured that the sub floor was adequately dried out prior to reconstruction and no one had ensured the correct levels of sub floor ventilation were present to keep the timbers dry as the moisture evaporated from the saturated sub floor.

The result was that a little over a year after the family had returned to their home they noticed some wrinkling on the paintwork of the skirting boards (this is a common sign of rot, the timber shrinks but the paint on the surface does not and creates a wrinkled appearance). Dryspace Maintain were called and our surveyor lifted the floorboards adjacent to the affected skirting board. The sight that greeted him is pictured below.

		This is the sight found on opening the floor up, note the sheets of dry rot mycelium which were attached to the underside of the floorboards and the paint shrinkage on the skirting board.
		After further floorboards are removed, the extent of the problem can now be seen. This is a satellite sporophore, the main attack was in the next room beneath the kitchen.
		This is a picture of a bottle found amongst the rubbish which had been swept beneath the floor. With a sell by date a few months after the date of the building work, we believe this was proof that the rubbish was from the recent refurbishment - the insurers disagreed!

Dry rot had established on some debris the builders had brushed under the floorboards and onto wet sub floor, this had spread to the floor joists which had a high moisture content due to the levels of humidity in the floor void, this was concentrated by lack of ventilation and saturated sub floor oversite.

In short, had a competent specialist been asked to inspect the property alarm bells would have sounded and the above could have been avoided through thorough drying out and increased sub floor ventilation. We have calculated the cost of this would have been in the region of £6-7 hundred at the time of the construction work, The entire ground floor timbers will now need to be replaced at a cost of around £8 thousand and the family will have to suffer massive disruption once again.

The builder should have ensured the timbers were sufficiently dried out prior to starting the refurbishment and he should have trained his men not to brush debris under the floor which is bad building practice.

At the time of writing, despite several site visits and written reports the family are still trying to get the loss adjuster to accept their further claim.

Fire and flood damage require specialist attention to ensure the problems are repaired quickly and efficiently, a run of the mill builder will probably not have such expertise, get the experts in, Dryspace Maintain can project manage or carry out the full works on your behalf, quickly, efficiently and thoroughly. Contact us today.

Our Fire and Flood service is available across the whole of Northern England and Southern Scotland

And all surrounding areas

• damp
• damp proofing in north east
• damp proof in wallsend
• damp proofing in gosforth
• damp proofing in jesmond
• damp proof in gosforth
• damp proof in tynemouth
• damp proof in jesmond
• damp proofing in gateshead
• damp proof in heaton
• damp proof companies in newcastle
• dampness in walls
• damp proofing in newcastle
• damp proofing in tynemouth
• damp proofers in newcastle upon tyne