Author: IRS Media

When you have a water emergency, your mind goes into overdrive. You’re wondering all kinds of things: Where’s the source? Do I need to get stuff off the floor? Is it worse someplace else? What can I do?

Well, you’ve already called IRS, and our guys are on the way to help you sort out your disaster in a timely fashion, but you’re also wondering what you can do to lessen the impact before our team arrives.

The easiest thing that you can do is shut off the flow of water coming into your home.

Easier said than done, right? Well, if you’re unsure where your water shut-off valve is, the first place to have a look is in your garage or basement. Follow any visibly apparent pipes until you find one located near an exterior wall that has a shut-off valve attached. This is a good sign that this is your internal water shut-off valve. This will shut water off to the inside of your home, but not the outside.

If your water loss is located outside, you may have to locate a shut-off valve that is hidden under an access plate. This is especially common in condominium-style living. Once the access plate is removed, just like the water shut-off valve inside, turn the valve clockwise until it shuts off. If it is a lever-style valve, turn the lever until it is no longer in line with the pipe.

With just this simple step, you can potentially stop more egregious damage than would happen without quick action. And, before you know it, the team at IRS will be there to help you get your life back to normal.

We’ve all been there. Insurance can be confusing, and they never seem to make it easy to understand. You’ve got coverage but you somehow owe money too? “But, I have insurance,” you may be thinking to yourself, “what gives?” We explain a little bit today on how a deductible works, in regards to your insurance, and give you a general overview of the most commonly asked questions that we get.

A deductible is simply the amount of money that you and your insurance have agreed upon that you will have to pay out of pocket during each year of policy coverage. For the purposes of this explanation, let’s say you have a $500 deductible, and you have not made any claims at all this year:

You have a burst pipe (and it would be a covered claim), therefore, you call out IRS and you file a claim afterward. Afterward, IRS sends you an invoice that totals $2,500. When your insurance company pays out for this covered claim, they will send you the amount of the invoice, minus the amount of your deductible. In this case, the check your insurance would send you in order to pay us would be $2,000. As the policy holder, the other $500 is your responsibility to cover.

Although there are also percentage-based deductibles, the majority of policy holders in the United States deal with dollar-based deductibles. However, the principles remain the same for how your insurance company would pay you out for a claim.

When working with IRS, be rest assured that we have your best interests in mind. Our knowledgeable staff can help you determine if filing a claim is even necessary at all, and, in either case, we help walk you through the process step-by-step to make it as easy and hassle-free for you as possible.

Short Answer: Yes

Long Answer: There’s no avoiding it, when you sell your home, current laws state that disclosure of these types of disasters must take place. You may wonder why you must disclose something that may have happened long ago, or, why it’s even relevant. “I got it done, right? And that’s all that matters,” you may be thinking to yourself. However, it can work to your benefit to show documentation that you addressed water damage correctly and to IICRC standards (read more here…).

While it may seem counter-intuitive, by showing prospective home buyers that you’ve kept up on maintenance of your property, and have done things the right way, there is a better chance of selling the home faster and with less problems. Rather than trying to hide issues from the buyer or the home inspector, let them know that you dealt with those problems immediately and correctly.

When you work with IRS, we ensure that you can give the next owners of your home the same peace of mind that we bring to you. We provide you with a clean bill of health, a certificate and a full report stating the scope of work performed and a final assessment showing that your home is free and clear. By letting them know, you also close the door to any issues coming back to cause legal problems for you down the line.

IRS helps ensure that when the time does come to sell your home, that you’ve got all your bases covered.

Did you know that in Texas, a roofer doesn’t have to have any licensing, certification, registration or even insurance?

Can you imagine hiring someone to work on your single biggest investment, and not having the peace of mind to know whether they are doing the job correctly?
We certainly can’t.

That’s why as a company, we are IICRC-certified and strive to go above and beyond for our customers. The IICRC ensures that there are standards to follow and guidelines for how work is to be performed.

But you may be wondering, what even is the IICRC and why should I care? To start, the Institute of Inspection Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) is the regulatory agency which develops and maintains the standards by which water damage and mold remediation companies are held to.

According to their own manual, the IICRC S500:

The S500 is a living document; subject to change as more information regarding water damage restoration becomes available and as scientific developments occur and advancements are made in restoration technology and practice. The S500 will be reviewed, evaluated and validated through application in the field, and thereafter revised and improved. This process and further professional and public review will allow our industry to develop a body of water damage restoration science and achieve the overall IICRC goal of improving the environments in which people live and work.

The reason why the IICRC is a well-respected and trusted institution cannot be stated better than they have done above. They use science to create a better environment and work to improve techniques and applications in order to further the science that drives their work. IRS believes in the message that the IICRC stands for and we do the best that we can to uphold these standards in order to make your home a safe and healthy place to live.

Mold is a 4-letter word, and, while we try our best to keep it out of our mouths, sometimes you can’t help but let it out. The last thing anyone wants to do, however, is bring that nasty guest into your home, uninvited or otherwise. So, when IRS places equipment at a job site, or at your home, it goes in clean. We treat your homes the way we would want our homes to be treated: with care and respect. Your investment is important to us, which is why we do things the right way.

The right way includes a full sanitization of all equipment that goes into any home, affected or otherwise. The reason for this is as simple as understanding that when you move equipment from one place to another, particles attach themselves to that equipment, and can then become airborne again once the equipment is disturbed.

Our air movers, air scrubbers, dehumidifiers and other pieces of equipment we use on mold jobs are cleaned thoroughly, and they do not leave a designated section of our shop until they have been cleaned and cleared for use again by our shop foreman.

In addition, when working under containment, our workers employ PPE (proper protective equipment) including a disposable Tyvek or similar suit that covers their clothing; just another step in lessening the chance of airborne particulates moving from one job to the next.

All of this is done with your health and safety in mind, because if you can’t trust the company you hire to make sure your home is safe and clean, then who can you trust?

You open your mailbox and rifle through the junk mail, only to find a thicker-than-normal water bill. You open it, only to find a request for payment from the water company for 2-3 times the amount you normally pay, if not more!

High water bills can be the symptom of many things. Those of you with teens may simply attribute it to them taking hour-long showers, or, someone using the back of a truck bed and a tarp as a makeshift pool during the hot summer months. However, in situations regarding drops in water pressure, or even an in-tandem spike in your heating bill, it could be a very serious sign of a slab leak.

What is a slab leak? They can have many reasons for occurring, but, the most common, overall reason is a failing pipe located beneath your foundation. Whether it happens due to corrosion, or, by failing and bursting, a slab leak can cause major damage if not dealt with properly.

That’s where a company like IRS comes into the picture. There are many ways to diagnose a slab leak, including simply listening for the sound of water. However, most times a slab leak is simply not detectable due to it being caused by pinhole leaks from corrosion. Without sensitive moisture reading equipment, such as the type we use, these leaks can go undetected for years, causing unknown amounts of damage.

You may be asking yourself, how do we solve this problem? But, you don’t have to worry about that, because with IRS, we make sure that the job is done correctly and that your peace of mind is secured.

Short Answer: Not Recommended.

Long Answer: There are a few good reasons why this is the case, but, to start with, using your central A/C unit or furnace can cause airborne mold spores to travel further and further into your home, making it harder and harder to clean properly once you decide to remediate.

A central air unit is not too dissimilar from an air scrubber that we use on our mold remediation jobs: both create a strong vacuum in the home and pull air from one area in order to move to another. One of the main differences is that with an A/C unit, whatever goes through your vents and ducts has the potential to stay there for a very long time, possibly growing and spreading, even after you think you’ve cleaned all the mold from a home.

With an air scrubber, you’re instead dealing with a standalone unit with a very efficient, ultra-fine particle HEPA filter which we remove from your home after the work is completed. These units are completed sterilized before they are put back into service in another home, this way we avoid cross-contaminating someone else’s home.

While you may think that your central air conditioning unit’s filter will catch all these particles, that’s where you would be mistaken. Depending on the type of filter that you purchase for your A/C unit, you may only be removing particles as big as 3-200 microns (the size of a human hair), while mold spores and other small particles are typically as small as 0.3 micron.

Because of this, when a homeowner or tenant has used the A/C while airborne mold was present in the home, we always recommend that their vents and ducts are cleaned by a certified company, in order to eliminate the possibility of mold growth and to maintain the health and safety of the living things in your home.

You may find many online articles about how you can clean up mold yourself, as well as a myriad of recipes for cocktails that will “get rid of your black mold once and for all”. But, is it too good to be true? Can you trust your home with the advice these bloggers give?

IRS would like to say, unequivocally, “No.”

There are far too many variables to take into consideration regarding mold damage and a bit of visible mold on your walls can be a warning sign of something much bigger and nastier lurking below the surface of your paint or behind the sheetrock. A simple spray-and-wipe of your wall where mold is visible may only be a temporary solution to a problem that may have lasting effects if not taken care of properly.

Why isn’t this recommended? While surface mold may be affected by these treatments, (the most popular commercial remedy being a spray-and-wipe followed by a spray that promises to encapsulate and neutralize surface mold growth), it does not solve the root problem that is causing mold to show up on the surface. In fact, it may take upwards of 21 days for mold to show visible signs of growth from an unmitigated water damage loss (read more here…), during which time it has been potentially spreading behind the scenes, feeding off the water and organic material in your walls.

When you hire a trained and certified company to perform your mold remediation and water damage repair, our main concern is to do the job correctly to get to the root of the problem. Make sure to call IRS, the Mold Remediation Pros in the Las Vegas Valley Pros. Your home and your health deserve it.

We hear you. We know it can be an inconvenience, but, the concept of monitoring equipment everyday is one of the most important things that we do for your home during the dry-out process.

But why exactly? It is important because we are observing how the structure is reacting to our equipment. Monitoring helps us decide if we need to take further action, or if the current plan of action is getting the job done correctly.

During this process, we are taking readings in order to determine if adjustments need to be made, because, until the home is dry, mold has the possibility to take hold. IRS wants to do everything possible to avoid this potential problem.

Dehumidifiers and fans can be noisy, and sometimes get in the way of resuming your normal life after a disaster invades your home. However, it’s important to allow the equipment to run until we determine that your home’s moisture levels are back to acceptable levels.

Why is this? Until the moisture levels inside your home are below an acceptable level, mold growth is a real possibility, and (in some cases where equipment is not allowed to run properly), a reality.

Trust our knowledge and expertise. IRS is your locally-based neighbor; your home and its’ contents are important to us because they are important to you.