When I joined the industry years ago, I started asking questions and quickly realized that we could not answer many of them. It became my life’s mission to find solutions and answers to drying out structures. Regardless of what type of equipment is being used, most restorers are guessing as to what is going to happen within these wet buildings. It is not the restorer’s fault for not realizing the inaccuracies of this thinking; it’s the lack of proper training along with the information provided to us restorers by the industry.  

I have found one common theme through educating thousands of restorers, instructors and consultants. That is that they know one thing: To check the moisture content of the materials on a loss, no matter how you are checking the moisture content (meters, screws, etc.). Is it bad to check the moisture content of building materials on a water loss? No! In fact, that is the only metric we have that tells us when the building is back to acceptable levels. But think about this: What is driving the rate at which these materials are brought back to acceptable equilibrium levels? It’s the conditions that these materials are exposed to on these losses, and what is driving these conditions is the performance of the equipment being used on these losses.