Water damage restoration and cleaning in Fort Lee, NJ

The water almost always comes from inside the building, and in a tower that is a different job entirely.

The borough grew after the George Washington Bridge opened in 1931 and then again through the high rise apartment construction of the 1960s and 1970s, which is why the housing profile is unlike anywhere else in the service area. Alongside the towers are the older streets of Coytesville, Linwood, Palisade and Taylorville. A loss in a 30 story building and a loss in a Coytesville house have almost nothing in common except the phone number that gets called.

In a tower, water uses the stack

A failed supply riser, a burst flexible connector or an overflowing fixture on an upper floor sends water into the shaft, the corridor and the units below in a vertical line, and it will often be reported first by an apartment three or four floors down whose occupant has no idea where it came from. Mapping the affected units is therefore the first task, before any equipment is placed. Building management, the affected residents and more than one insurer are usually involved from the first hour, and the file is built per unit so each party can read the part that concerns them.

Corridors, shafts and the paths nobody looks in

The hidden route in a high rise is not the visible ceiling. It is the space above it, the chase behind the plumbing wall, and the corridor floor that runs the length of the building. Water tracks along those, wets insulation and gypsum out of sight, and shows up as a stain in a lobby ceiling a week later. Access points are opened where the readings say the material is wet, and a moisture map of the floor is drawn before the plan is agreed with management.

Living in the building while the drying runs

Residents usually stay in occupied units, which sets the terms of the work. Equipment has to be quiet enough and placed so a family can still use the apartment, containment has to hold in a corridor that people walk down, and HEPA filtration has to run wherever material is being disturbed. Products used are EPA registered and described as safe around pets and children.

Hours matter as much as method. Work in a residential tower is scheduled around what management will allow and what neighbors can live with, and the plan says so in writing up front instead of being renegotiated at seven in the morning on day two.

Clean water, and how much of the apartment survives

Most Fort Lee losses start with category 1 clean supply water, which is the best case in this trade. Reached quickly, carpet is dried in place, the pad is often saved, drywall stays up and cabinets are dried from behind without being pulled out, and the cavity behind them is read at a marked point. That status degrades with time and contact, so the same loss found three days later is a category 2 job with material coming out.

Where the water passed through a ceiling, insulation and building materials before reaching the unit below, the category is judged on what it traveled through. That judgement is written down with its reason, because in a multi party building every decision will be read by somebody who was not there.

The older streets on the cliff

Coytesville, Linwood, Palisade and Taylorville hold conventional houses where the losses are the ordinary ones: a supply line, a water heater, an appliance, a roof or a window in a wind driven storm. Those are dried the way any house is dried, with monitoring points marked, daily readings taken and the equipment leaving when the readings match an unaffected part of the same building.

Carpet, rug and upholstery cleaning across the borough is done by the same IICRC certified technicians, which for a tower resident usually means the rug and the sofa are handled without a second company being let into the building. The estimate is free and written before work begins, with no hidden fees. The business is IICRC certified, licensed and insured and family owned since 2010.