It is fortunate that most offices in the Unites States are located in large office buildings, located way above the ground level. That’s not say that there aren’t offices in those places where they flooded. The office is a unique environment since the valuables which water damage restoration attempts to save, may not be totally physical material, but rather objects which represent or store intellectual property. While intellectual property is not tangible, the physical items that contain this information is what the restoration aims at saving.

Aside from the traditional material which needs to be restored through regular water damage restoration procedures, there are some specifics about the office environment which need special water damage restoration procedures. These specifics include office equipment, documents, and digital storage mediums (tapes, CDs, flash RAM, etc.) Other than these specifics, water damage restoring carpets and/or office furniture is not different from other restoration procedures.

Office equipment is highly sensitive devices with a lot of cabling, power chords, and links to the mains and to each other. The best policy for this is to not need a lot of restoration. Follow a comprehensive prevention plan will spare the most sensitive devices exposure to uncontrolled water. Let’s face it, if the flood enters an office with copiers and computers, chances are those items will not survive the ordeal. In which case, the water damage restoration would only be about furniture, carpeting, and documents (electronically stored or otherwise).

Again, with the virtually impossible task when it comes to office equipment water damage restoration, one needs to take preventive measures, prior to the disaster taking place, to make sure that these hard to salvage items are well protected and that no amount of flood could get to them.

As for the rest of the office material (documents, storage media, etc) there are many professional today to help you with drying your documents. It all depends on the amount of damage done to the documents and storage media. Preventive measures will ensure that you don’t stake your life’s work on Mother Nature’s one hand, industrial water damage restoration techniques on the other.

Important papers and documents should be copied and saved in separate places, hopefully in two different flood zones. Otherwise, there is no control over the damage which can be done to them. There are several industrial products exist, which can help you in preventing water damage to documents, drawings, blue prints, etc. One of these products is a silicon spray which you can spray on your document, creating a thin waterproof film over the document/drawing. While this may be good enough to help protect against a few droplets of water, like during a brief exposure to rain while you take the document out of the car, and walk to the office building, it is not strong enough to protect against a continuous exposure to water, like as in a flooded office. Therefore, the moral of the story remains, prevention is still the best policy.

Ramona Weisly is a water service advocate for Tampa Water Damage Restoration and Tampa Water Damage Restoration