There are lots of donated items at holy name Catholic on Hogan Street. The organizers here would like to send everything to a smaller shelter or other facility besides Dynamo stadium. Anybody know a good location in town or small shelter in town?

are dehumidifies worth the money? I have 4 family houses that have 2'-5' of water in them that we will start cleaning out tomorrow. As far as drying out the house, will shop fans and open windows be sufficient or is it worth spending money on an industrial dehumidifier?

I bought a 24" diameter barrel fan for my friend's house so they could speed up the drying a bit. There were still a few left at the Home Depot at 59 and Williams Trace as of about 10 am

A dehumidifier is a must in an area with humidity like Houston if you want any prayer at getting your place dried out.

Edit: I'm no pro, but I worked restoration in high school, and my dad spent most of his career at a major restoration company in TX.

I will second the recommendation of the dehumidifier. Particularly considering that by default the air in the Houston area will be ultimately humid over the next week or so.

Also, another good recommendation I saw was to cut the sheetrock out in 2 foot increments to maximize the replacement sheets. If you flooded to 2.5 feet, cut it at 4ft. Not only do you not have to cut the sheets down (think about it, you are left with 1.5ft to cover 2.5.ft for the remaining piece of rock, but the added benefit of removing insulation and spraying against mold for water that may have wicked up above the water line.

For those asking - any water and you should get a dehumidifier in there ASAP! I had a water heater break and it only got about 1/2 the house. We had 2 dehumidifiers running for 3 days along with 15+ fans to mitigate.

ok, dehumidifier are expensive . $1500+ for industrial, down to $100 for smaller units. Any place I can rent them from? If not, how big of a unit is necessary?? I'm in Fort Worth now, so I should be able to find decent options and availability.

Skillet Shot said:

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ok, dehumidifier are expensive . $1500+ for industrial, down to $100 for smaller units. Any place I can rent them from? If not, how big of a unit is necessary?? I'm in Fort Worth now, so I should be able to find decent options and availability.

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I've only used commercial ones personally, so I can't speak for the cheaper ones. Normally you can rent them from a restoration company, but they will probably be deploying all of their assets to Houston. You could still call an outfit up in DFW though and find out.

Skillet Shot said:

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ok, dehumidifier are expensive . $1500+ for industrial, down to $100 for smaller units. Any place I can rent them from? If not, how big of a unit is necessary?? I'm in Fort Worth now, so I should be able to find decent options and availability.

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My experience has been that a small $100 unit is good for 200+/- sq ft. About 2-3 days depending on how much moisture

Skillet Shot said:

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ok, dehumidifier are expensive . $1500+ for industrial, down to $100 for smaller units. Any place I can rent them from? If not, how big of a unit is necessary?? I'm in Fort Worth now, so I should be able to find decent options and availability.

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I guess the Servpro folks are pretty busy right about now, but have you tried them first before trying to do it yourself? I'd guess they'll be bringing in crews from all over the country to try to keep up with demand. They specialize in this stuff and when I had a hot water heater in the attic of my house bust, they came out and ripped up carpet, cut sheet rock, had several dehumidifiers and fans going for days. That's what they do. I'd try them first before you start buying stuff.

EDIT: From their website

Quote:

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In addition to the 121 local Franchises that are in the states affected by Hurricane Harvey, SERVPRO has a national network of over 1,700 Franchises across the country and our designated Disaster Recovery Teams have been deployed to the affected areas bringing hundreds of crews from across the nation to help.

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PS: Sorry you folks are having to go through this. Can't imagine the stress. Good luck!

2100 memorial is a senior living facility. They just got power turned back on but the residents need eggs milk cheese condiments like salt and honey and lactose-free milk

We called ServPro yesterday to arrange their services for our church. The soonest they can start for us is Friday. We're working to get the floors out and first four feet of the drywall removed before they arrive in hopes of saving a little money. We were told they are bringing in stuff from all over to handle this.

Home Depot. I looked into it yesterday in anticipation of taking it with from dallas to help my sister, as I anticipate they will be in high demand down there.

Biggest unit I can find has a capacity of 6.25 gallons/day. Where do they sell the industrial units?

flown-the-coop said:

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I will second the recommendation of the dehumidifier. Particularly considering that by default the air in the Houston area will be ultimately humid over the next week or so.

Also, another good recommendation I saw was to cut the sheetrock out in 2 foot increments to maximize the replacement sheets. If you flooded to 2.5 feet, cut it at 4ft. Not only do you not have to cut the sheets down (think about it, you are left with 1.5ft to cover 2.5.ft for the remaining piece of rock, but the added benefit of removing insulation and spraying against mold for water that may have wicked up above the water line.

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If you are taking out over 4' of drywall, you might as well go to 8'. They will use the same amount of material covering up 6' vs. 8' and there will be a bit more labor hanging it and finishing it.

TMoney2007 said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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I will second the recommendation of the dehumidifier. Particularly considering that by default the air in the Houston area will be ultimately humid over the next week or so.

Also, another good recommendation I saw was to cut the sheetrock out in 2 foot increments to maximize the replacement sheets. If you flooded to 2.5 feet, cut it at 4ft. Not only do you not have to cut the sheets down (think about it, you are left with 1.5ft to cover 2.5.ft for the remaining piece of rock, but the added benefit of removing insulation and spraying against mold for water that may have wicked up above the water line.

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If you are taking out over 4' of drywall, you might as well go to 8'. They will use the same amount of material covering up 6' vs. 8' and there will be a bit more labor hanging it and finishing it.

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2' increments will cut material by 25% in your scenario. Labor to tape and float will be same and you just add a 2' cut that take 30 seconds at most.

Good idea to get started. Be very careful with any contractors, and make sure to get exactly what they are going to do in writing, and don't pay for things up front.

During Ike I had a less than positive experience with a ServPro group from Florida. I explained where we had taken wind damage and a bit of water intrusion after siding had been blown off. We agreed on what they would do. When I returned from work that evening they had pulled down drywall and insulation for WAY more than I had talked with them. They completely stripped one of my entire bathrooms, ceiling and all for a very small amount of water at the bottom of one wall. Same story in my garage, they pulled down sheetrock from an entire wall and the entire ceiling for a small amount of water damage at the bottom of one wall. They then presented me with a bill for $6,000 for the demo.

Btw, LCMS disaster relief services are coming in tomorrow. They are officing at Memorial Lutheran on Westheimer.

Interview from my pastor + team
http://kfuo.org/2017/08/30/web-only-feature-disaster-response-2017-08-30a/

More information
https://www.lcms.org/harvey

Donate:

https://www.lcms.org/disaster-response


If you need assistance, I can help put you in touch.

eidetic78 said:

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Good idea to get started. Be very careful with any contractors, and make sure to get exactly what they are going to do in writing, and don't pay for things up front.

During Ike I had a less than positive experience with a ServPro group from Florida. I explained where we had taken wind damage and a bit of water intrusion after siding had been blown off. We agreed on what they would do. When I returned from work that evening they had pulled down drywall and insulation for WAY more than I had talked with them. They completely stripped one of my entire bathrooms, ceiling and all for a very small amount of water at the bottom of one wall. Same story in my garage, they pulled down sheetrock from an entire wall and the entire ceiling for a small amount of water damage at the bottom of one wall. They then presented me with a bill for $6,000 for the demo.

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This is true for all of this type of contractor. Even the most reputable will likely have all the equipment and a supervisor, but will likely rely on local day labor to do demo. If the supervisor goes to another location, you are at the mercy of the people they leave behind.

Definitely. Didn't mean to call out ServPro in particular, that's just who I happened to have dealt with.

Luckily, we just built, well, completely remodeled this church less than a year ago. We purchased the property of another church that had closed it's doors a few years ago from the local Methodist district and completely remodeled it. The GC that oversaw all the work reached out to us when he heard the news and told us he wanted to take on the work. He's been great to us and we accepted immediately. He'll be down tomorrow or Friday to begin the process. We were getting ready to celebrate our 1st anniversary in October. We still will, but we'll be under construction while we do.

I think it's important to remember even with some of the larger companies - there are some ****ty franchises. Just the way of the world.

SpreadsheetAg said:

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plowboy1065 said:

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They've already started with the 20-24 inches of rain possible. They are going to have sh*t fits if we barely get an inch

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Good call Nostradamus

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Ha yeah good catch!

Bondag said:

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TMoney2007 said:

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flown-the-coop said:

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I will second the recommendation of the dehumidifier. Particularly considering that by default the air in the Houston area will be ultimately humid over the next week or so.

Also, another good recommendation I saw was to cut the sheetrock out in 2 foot increments to maximize the replacement sheets. If you flooded to 2.5 feet, cut it at 4ft. Not only do you not have to cut the sheets down (think about it, you are left with 1.5ft to cover 2.5.ft for the remaining piece of rock, but the added benefit of removing insulation and spraying against mold for water that may have wicked up above the water line.

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If you are taking out over 4' of drywall, you might as well go to 8'. They will use the same amount of material covering up 6' vs. 8' and there will be a bit more labor hanging it and finishing it.

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2' increments will cut material by 25% in your scenario. Labor to tape and float will be same and you just add a 2' cut that take 30 seconds at most.

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Then what do they do with the 2' piece? They'll throw away that piece for most of the sheets they hang. You're not going to save money by only cutting to 6'.

I run a drywall company... They'll use the remnants where they can, but most are going to get tossed in the trash.

You lay drywall horizontally so you use the 2' on the section next to it.

What do we do about the wood paneling and cabinets? We had about 18" get wet for 12 hours. The water is down in the house now but I can't get to it by vehicle yet.