How Odor can help you Protect your Home.

3/19/2019 (Permalink)

We are here to help!

When it rains it pours and when it pours basements start filing up with water. Most of the time it is pretty obvious when this happens, you go downstairs and the squish of the carpet tells you everything you need to know.

Sometimes when water makes an intrusion it is not as obvious. Maybe the sump pump didn’t break but couldn’t keep up with the deluge. Water may have seeped into just the edges of rooms where you don’t walk or in closets filled with storage containers. While the carpet may not be noticeably wet the drywall where the water came in or the pad underneath maybe quiet saturated.

You can fight this by keeping your nose alert to any new odors that suddenly spring up especially if they are musty. Water which has been able to go undetectable has a large chance of doing damage to your home via discoloration, rot, and even mold growth. If you do smell a new and unwelcome odor in your basement after a large rain try to follow the scent and try to find some kind of visible indication of what the cause could be.

Here are some quick facts about odor which can help:

• Odor can become more less intense based on temperature and humidity
  • An increase in temperature or humidity will increase the strength of an odor
• A musty odor can be indicative of an old water damage or even mold growth
• A poor odor can also be indicative of poor air quality which a duct cleaning can help with
• The ability of a material to hold odor is based on how porous that material is, the more porous the more is can hold odor

Here at SERVPRO of Northeast Wichita we do free inspections for mold and water intrusion and while it is better to bring us in if you have an idea of where water may have made an intrusion we bring thermal cameras, water meters and a wealth of experience which can help even if you haven’t been able to find a source of a new odor. So give us a call at: 316-684-6700.