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Textile and Clothing Restoration After Mold, Water, or Fire Damage
10/13/2021 (Permalink)
SERVPRO of Amarillo is an expert clothing and textile restoration company. Contact us anytime for guidance.
Can Clothes Be Sanitized After Fire and Water Damage?
Yes! But not where you may think.
A regular washing machine can clean most clothing items, and there are even some detergents on the market today that tout they will disinfect your clothes to help battle Coronavirus. For an everyday clean, this method is excellent!
For other situations, a regular washing machine won’t be able to get your clothing sanitized correctly. Why?
- Home washing machines use the agitation method of cleaning. You put your clothes in the machine, they are exposed to clean water and detergents, and then they are thrown and pressed against each other inside the machine. The agitation helps clean the surface of the textile but can’t guarantee that every fiber is also cleaned--this is especially true in thicker clothing like coats, or blankets, linens, and towels.
- The agitation method of cleaning causes significant wear on clothes. A regular wash will destroy more than save for delicate items like dresses or your child’s favorite blanket.
- Regular detergents may be inadequate to eliminate the contaminant on the clothes.
- Many home washing machines aren’t large enough to properly clean bulk items like bedspreads. These items need plenty of space, water, and power to be properly washed.
When Do I Need Professional Laundry Service?
If you have already come against any of our bullet points above, it’s time to think about a professional cleaning service. There are also other situations where the benefit of a professional laundry company is necessary.
These situations include:
- Water Damage with Contaminated Water. Items that have soaked contaminated water should be handled carefully because they pose a risk to human health. We call contaminated water “Category 2” and “Category 3” water. This includes, but is not limited to, water that has passed through walls or floors, water that has sat still for an extended period, rising waters (floods), and sewage.
- Fire Damage. Sometimes it’s evident that a piece of clothing has been part of fire damage. The item isn’t burnt, but it’s covered in dark soot. Other times, you may be able to smell the odor of fire smoke on the item. In both of these cases, professional help is needed. Putting these items in a regular laundry machine or even a dry cleaning machine can embed the smoke and soot particles further into the textile and worsen the situation. Soot and smoke also need specialized detergents available to professionals to disinfect and eliminate the particles properly. Textile restoration after fire damage should happen as quickly as possible because eventually, the soot will permanently stain the fabric it’s sitting on with a yellow or brown hue.
- Mold Infestation. Closets are popular places for mold growth, so we often get calls asking for textile sanitization as part of mold remediation. We can successfully rid the item of the mold spores, but cleanup should happen quickly. Mold eats the surface of whatever it’s sitting on, so eventually, it will eat any fiber and even leather shoes.
- Biohazard Cleanup. We can safely remove contaminants after biohazards like sewage, bloodborne pathogens, and much more.
Contact SERVPRO
SERVPRO of Amarillo uses the Esporta Wash System to sanitize clothing and textiles of all kinds.
We are the only Esporta Certified Operator in Amarillo, the Panhandle, and the High Plans Area.
Our office has multiple machines to handle any size job, and our textile restoration technicians have sanitized hundreds of thousands of items.
Contact us today for complimentary guidance. We’re Here to Help.
What are Textiles?
We use the term “textile restoration” because textiles encompass many different items, including clothes.
Imagine your home flipped upside down. Everything that is not physically bolted into the frame of your home will fall. All of those items are called contents.
Now imagine going through your pile of contents on the floor (remember: your house is still upside down). Any contents that haven’t broken are called soft goods or textiles. Textiles are what our Esporta Wash System can sanitize.
Textiles include:
- Clothing
- Leather items: shoes, belts, gloves, hats
- Shoes
- Blankets
- Stuffed Animals
- Toys, including dolls
- Sports Equipment, including helmets and bulky hockey equipment
- Hats
The Esporta Wash System
We’re able to sanitize textiles thanks to the most advanced technology on the market--the Esporta Wash System.
SERVPRO of Amarillo has been an Esporta Certified Operator for over five years, and we have invested to own multiple machines to help us with any size project.
The machine helps us produce the best-in-class restoration numbers, with over 85% of textiles successfully sanitized on average for each of our clients. No other cleaning type is this successful.
Esporta can:
- Sanitize up to 100 pounds of clothing in just one (1) cycle. The large size helps us process large loads quickly.
- Sanitize Category 2, Category 3 water-damaged affected items, plus
- Fire damaged items, including those heavily covered in smoke and soot, plus
- Mold infested items
What makes the Esporta Wash System unique?
- It uses a proprietary blend of up to seven detergents to safely and correctly sanitize contaminated items. The machine is intelligent enough to mix the detergents depending on the severity and type of contamination.
- It is large enough to have any sized job. We have yet to encounter a blanket too big for the machine to clean.
- It uses hydraulic pressure to push the contaminants out of each layer of fabric. The machine cradles the clothing inside its inner compartments and then spins rapidly enough through detergent-laden water to force the contaminants out of the material.
- It is pH friendly. The result is an environmentally friendly product and produces textiles that are clean enough to wear safely.
- The machine is gentle. Because it doesn’t need agitation to do its job, clothes laundered don’t experience the wear and tear of a typical washing machine.
We Use Esporta Ourselves!
When we need to clean our heavy winter blankets and clothes, we trust our technicians and Esporta Wash System to get the job done correctly. The results are always impressive:
- Fresh
- Light - getting rid of all dust makes your textiles feel lighter
- Soft
- Clean
SERVPRO of Amarillo’s Textile Restoration Procedure
Pick-up, storage, and delivery are available! Our clients should expect no less from a full-service restoration company like SERVPRO of Amarillo.
Textile restoration services are usually part of a major mold remediation project or a water and fire damage restoration. Our procedure involves:
- Move-Out. We pack our client’s textiles and drive them back to our cleaning warehouse. We’re willing to go wherever you are, whether it’s Amarillo, the Texas Panhandle, or surrounding areas.
- Inventory. Our textile restoration technicians inventory every piece of clothing. We use this information to create an estimate for you or your adjuster to approve.
- Approval. Once we receive approval, we begin the cleaning process.
- Sanitization. Items are laundered in the Esporta Wash System. For soft goods that need even more care, we also treat them with a pre-wash soak and scrub.
- Drying. Textiles that can handle the heat are dried in an industrial dryer. If they are more delicate, then we process them in a specialized, humidity-controlled drying chamber.
- Finishing. Afterward, dried items are steamed, pressed, and either folded or hung on a new hanger.
- Storage. If our clients can’t immediately take their items back, they are stored in our facilities until they’re ready to be reunited with their owners.
- Move-Back. We deliver the items back to their owners.
Laundry Cleaning as Part of Your Insurance Claim
Textile sanitization is often a covered part of an insurance claim after water and fire damage. We have processed textile claims for hundreds of clients and worked one-on-one with their insurance companies and adjusters.
All insurance is accepted.
Proven Clean
We’re the industry’s leading restoration company, and we take our job seriously. It’s not enough to wash items in the best textile sanitization system on the market--we also take the last step to prove that your items are clean.
Before and after the washing cycle, we test textile items using ATP Testing. ATP stands for Adenosine Triphosphate. We swab the clothing items and put them into a hygiene monitoring meter to test for contamination levels. Zero is a perfect score--the item is considered food-grade safe! Higher numbers indicate higher contamination levels, and we make sure the numbers fall below our quality standard of safety before its return.
The results are passed on to your insurance company to validate our procedure.
Trust Amarillo’s Expert Damage Restoration Company
We’re a locally owned and Texan-run company in Amarillo, Texas. When we get a call for help, we know it’s from one of our neighbors. We’ll always be here for our hometown.
Contact us anytime at (806) 331-4555 for guidance and expert consultation.
