Structural Drying in Somerville, MA

Structural drying in Somerville means drying buildings that were put together a century ago. Plaster on wood lath, balloon-framed walls with open cavities from basement to roof, thick old-growth floor boards and fieldstone foundations all hold water differently from modern drywall and plywood. Drying them properly takes measurement, not guesswork.

What the IICRC S500 standard requires

IICRC S500 is the industry standard for water damage restoration. It sets out how to classify a loss, how to size drying equipment and how to confirm the building is dry. Two classifications drive the plan:

• Category 1, 2 and 3 describe how clean the water is, which decides what is dried and what is removed.
• Class 1 through 4 describe how much water is in the materials and how hard they are to dry, which sets how much equipment a room needs.

Plaster, hardwood and masonry are often Class 4 materials: dense, slow to release water and in need of low humidity, directed air or desiccant dehumidification.

How the drying goal is set

The drying goal is not a date on a calendar. The drying team takes a reading from the same material in an unaffected part of the building, the dry reference, and dries the wet material until it reads within 2 to 4 points of it. Daily psychrometric readings (temperature, relative humidity and grains per pound) show whether the dehumidifiers are keeping up. Equipment stays until the readings say dry, not until the surface looks dry.

Balloon framing and hidden water

Many older Somerville houses are balloon framed, with wall cavities that run from the basement to the attic. Water that enters on an upper floor can travel down inside those cavities. Thermal imaging and pinless meters follow it, and small access openings let air into the cavity. The EPA indoor air quality pages explain why moisture control matters, and NIST publishes building science research. See emergency water removal for the step that comes first.