24/7 Emergency ServiceWhy Hire A Professional Water Restoration Company?
2/5/2020 (Permalink)
If water damage happens to your home or business call SERVPRO of Marietta West!
Homeowners call SERVPRO of Marietta West on a daily basis looking for advice and asking our professional opinion on any number of home maintenance issues. From water in their crawlspace, to odors in their attics. Many of these homeowners become loyal SERVPRO of Marietta West customers. Some of them ask, “Do you think I can handle this myself?”, and in most cases, our reply is, “Without seeing the issue first hand and conducting a proper inspection, it is impossible for us to determine the extent of the damage/issue.”
SERVPRO of Marietta West’s number one goal is to help our community recover after water, fire, or mold damage. In that spirit, our loss coordinators (the talented and knowledgeable SERVPRO team members that answer customers calls 24 hours a day, 7 day a week) are well versed in home repair issues, as they relate to water, fire, or mold damage. There’s not much in the field of residential or commercial restoration that they haven’t seen at least once or twice. So when a customer calls SERVPRO of Marietta West with an issue unsure if they need assistance, our loss coordinators are great at helping them sort things out and can provide them with information that will help them make informed decisions about their home or business’s repair.
As reputable mitigation and restoration specialists, when asked to weigh in on given customer's ability to resolve an issue, we can not in good conscious tell customers, “Yeah sure. Go ahead. You seem plenty capable. Give home restoration a shot.” There can be many unseen perils when it comes to restoration projects. Depending on the scope of the project and the training and assets needed to complete the restoration project, dangers can vary greatly. From quality of workmanship suffering, all the way up to endangering the occupants of the structure, taking on a restoration project ill equipped and untrained is never a good idea. In contrast we also do not want to cause homeowners alarms or want to use scare tactics to pressure them into having work done. Our goal is to inform the customer about the situation going on in their home or business, so they can make the best decision on a course of action for themselves. We will provide them information concerning things like overall cost of repairs, likely needed skilled trades, and possible health risks. These concerns complicate taking on a restoration project on your own. Without the proper tools and applicable skill sets, residential and commercial restoration are probably best left to the professionals. Let’s take a little closer look at these three primary reasons to leave it to the pros that know at SERVPRO of Marietta West.
Three Reasons To Leave It To The Pros
- The number one rule for any restoration project is SAFETY. Whether your a multi-million dollar restoration company or an average homeowner doing a little clean up after a bad storm, your number one goal should be safety. Can you safely conduct repairs with the home or business in its current condition? Are there fall hazards or structural support issues? Are there electrical or breathing hazards present? Is the use of potentially hazardous materials or chemicals necessary to complete the restoration? Have you been trained in the prevention of diseases transmission? These are all valid questions to consider before taking on a restoration project by yourself. If you do decide to take on home repair yourself, please be sure to take all necessary steps to ensure your health and safety.
- Will repairs require specialized tools, treatments or otherwise specialized trades? The restoration field has come along way from its early days of “placing some fans and letting the property dry”. With modernization of the building codes and the age of the “smart home”, it is only logical that the standards, tools, and training required to restore homes have changed as well. Advances in the fields of study relating to hazardous materials, bacteria, viruses, and other microbes have led to the need for specialized training and treatment protocols for certain restoration projects. Will opting to take on your restoration project yourself result in the same quality of work and craftsmanship as a trained professional? In some cases it will not, but in others this is a very real subject to explore. Do you have access to the proper materials to perform the restoration project yourself? Often times homeowners can find so called “professional” or “commercial grade” products and materials at home improvement stores, and in some stores can even rent “professional grade” equipment. Does this make DIY home restoration a good idea? To put it kindly...Not always. Only someone properly trained or extremely well versed in the restoration industry will know the proper products and materials to be used on a given project, and will be able to discern between the commercial/professional grade materials and inferior products. Also, no one should ever operate heavy equipment without proper operational and safety training. Just because you have access to the piece of equipment or product, doesn’t always mean it’s a good idea to try to learn to operate or use them in the setting of your home or business.
- What will it cost to repair your property to preloss condition? This is probably one of the top motivating factors when it comes to making the decision about taking on a restoration project yourself. Everybody wants to save money, and why not save a few bucks if you are capable of doing it yourself? With all the new DIY TV shows and the abundance of youtube experts in today's online world, there are some great and not so great resources for minor home repair protects. When we talk about the cost of a restoration project many times customers only look at the price tag on the estimate. Doing this can sometimes be a bit short sighted. Factors like quality of work and craftsmanship immediately come to mind. Picture the very first time you tried to cook a fancy meal. Hopefully that meal was delicious, but I would wager that a fair number of people’s experience could have used some...let's call it “better quality of work and or craftsmanship”. All joking aside this is a very real question to contemplate. Will the work stand up to the test of time? If you do repairs yourself there is very little you can do to warranty your work. Sure some materials may offer some type of coverage for factory defect but none will cover installation issues, and many product warranties are voided if not installed by a trained or certified professional. Another major factor many homeowners neglect is the cost of their own time. What is your time worth? Perhaps you think you can complete the home repair over the weekend. What happens when that weekend project get stretched out into a month long ordeal, complete with a million trips to the local Home Depot or Lowes, and sleepless nights due to restlessness and regret that you didn’t call SERVPRO of Marietta West to take care of that pesky leak as soon as you found it.