A leaky roof in Arvada leads to water damage

Is your roof ready for winter?  If you are worried that your roof might be getting old, have someone inspect it before we start to see snowfall regularly here in Colorado.  A leak in your roof can really cause a problem for you this winter, and it might be more than just water damage if you don’t notice it right away! A small roof leak can go unnoticed for quite a while. Water from a roof leak will seep in spread around and saturate the structure and the insulation. By the time it becomes visible in the ceiling or walls you may already have mold in the insulation and structure.

PuroClean Disaster Response was recently called to a home in Arvada, Colorado when the homeowner noticed a water leak in the ceiling of their kitchen.  The water was coming in from a vent above the range.  They noticed the leak right after the first fall snowstorm in October. That storm had dropped wet, heavy snow. The water had to be coming through the roof; however they had just had their roof replaced a year ago, so how could water possibly be coming into their home?

When we arrived at the home, the roofer had already been to the home, identified and fixed the leak.  Just a small bit of flashing material had folded over in the roofing process and allowed water into the home.

The homeowner had already pulled out a lot of wet insulation from the attic. Some of the remaining insulation in the attic was saturated, as were sections of the attic joists and rafters. It was obvious that the leak had been active for a while. It could have been leaking since the new roof was installed.  This attic needed to be dried out along with the ceiling and walls around the range in the kitchen.  Given the length of time this had been going on there was also a concern about mold and what damage mold may have done in the attic.

We established a containment barrier around the affected area to concentrate the effectiveness of our equipment. We directed the dry air out of the dehumidifier into the attic to dry the ceiling drywall and wood structure of the attic.  It took 6 days to dry all affected areas of the attic. We had to pay particular attention to the soffits above the cabinets; areas like these can capture and hold moisture so they need special attention.

We monitored progress each day using moisture meters and moved our dehumidifier and air movers to target trouble spots so that every wet spot will reach the “dry standard” as quickly as possible.

We know that drying your home out quickly is paramount in saving you from more trouble with mold and other structural damage.  We use the most advanced techniques and science for drying effectively, safely and quickly. We will establish containment to effectively reduce the area to be dried; this allows us to concentrate the effectiveness of our equipment and time. We use a selection of air movers to deliberately direct airflow where it needs to go and we insert dehumidifiers into the system to extract the water from the air. We will take moisture readings daily at designated points to measure the effectiveness of our drying efforts. With these readings we will adjust the equipment as needed to ensure that the space and materials are dried as rapidly as possible. Finally, all of our technicians are certified in Water Damage Restoration by the IICRC.