This weekend, our team attended a Category 2 escape of water at a music college in the Stokes Croft part of Bristol. Category 2 indicates the level of contamination in the water. In this case, the grey flood water had overflowed from the communal toilet area. Because we were able to attend within 48 hours & because the water was predominantly clean water, we were able to disinfect the carpets & save our client the cost of replacement.

Full survey

Water tends to find its way down through a building and can exploit cavities and holes in ceilings. In this case, once the flood had filled the communal toilet area, it spilled into the adjacent corridor & rapidly down through the floor and through the suspended ceiling below into a music performance area & another corridor.

Moisture meter readings gave a clear picture of how the water had travelled. The readings also gave a clear indication of how much water had been absorbed into skirting boards & plasterboard walls. Luckily, at the time of the survey, the signs were that there had been minimal “secondary damage”. It was therefore critical to carry out the cleaning & decontamination work before 48 hours elapsed. This is because even clean water becomes significantly more contaminated as time goes on, owing to exponential microbial activity.

The deep-clean

Our first job was to carry out a methodical deep-clean of all affected areas & surfaces. We used a commercial grade solution to knock-back the bacterial & soil load, prior to rinse extraction cleaning.

In order to carry out the deep-cleaning of safety flooring in the toilet areas, we used a rotary machine. The flooring was textured, so the stiff brush element of the machine ensured the strong detergent solution we used was effectively worked into the floor.

We used a wet vac to lift the resulting slurry, then rinsed the floor & repeated.

We applied a specialist cleaning solution to the carpet, agitated it with a rotary machine with a soft brush, then rinse extracted the floor.

After both the safety flooring & the carpets had been deep-cleaned, we next applied a biocidal/anti-fungal solution with a LOG KILL of:

ANTI-BACTERIAL EN1276 LOG KILL 6 = 99.9999%

ANTI-VIRAL EN14476 LOG KILL 4.33 = 99.99%

ANTI-FUNGAL EN1650 LOG KILL 6 = 99.9999%

After a ten minute contact time with each surface, we rinse extracted the areas.

We carried out the same process on the downstairs performance areas & additional corridor.

Decontamination fogging

Once a thorough clean has been carried out, decontamination can begin. Our standard professional clean will usually achieve a sanitising level of hygiene. To achieve d i s i n f e c t i o n, a suitable biocidal solution needs to be employed. With easier to reach surfaces like the safety flooring & carpet, this can simply be sprayed down, given sufficient kill time, then extracted.

Within complex environments such as the cavity within the suspended ceiling, where there is a complex network of ducted cabling and rock wool insulation, standard cleaning is impossible. In situations such this, ULV fogging (Ultra Low Volume) can offer an effective method of biological control. The disinfecting solution is atomised into very fine droplets that permeate the volume of air and (because of their low density) remain suspended in the atmosphere and penetrate hard to reach places.

The images & short video below show our technician wearing a mask & safely carrying out the fogging in the ceiling cavity.

Commercial drying services

After our team had carried out the deep-clean & decontamination treatments, all that remained was to ensure that the areas were dried effectively. We installed an array of air-movers to promote rapid evaporation. Ordinarily, we would pair these with large commercial dehumidifiers.

However, because the remaining moisture levels were not too high & this college has a modern HVAC system, we liased with the site team to ensure that the interior humidity levels were brought down by the in-house system. This saved our client both the cost of additional machine hire & electricity costs.

If you have any questions regarding either our commercial flood restoration service in Bristol, decontamination cleaning

or hiring commercial drying equipment in Bristol, please feel free to get in touch.

Thank you for reading!