There are many factors that can influence when and how fast mold grows on your stored or water damaged documents. If you live in a humid climate, moisture levels and seasonal weather will have a large impact on the rate of mold growth. Cooler climates, however, are not much better off. In general, documents that have come into contact with water recently – through a flood, hurricane or water leak, for example – can begin to grow mold within just 48 hours.
The good news is that there are a variety of document restoration methods available for recovering mold damaged records. To give you an idea of what document restoration for mold damaged records entails, here’s a look at some of the techniques we use:
Desiccant air drying. Wet documents must first be thoroughly dried in order to prevent or curtail the growth of mold. Our document restoration professionals use a desiccant air drying system to quickly and thoroughly remove all moisture from mold damaged records. A desiccant is a substance that has the ability to trap and hold water molecules, effectively removing them from the surrounding air.
Vacuum freeze drying. An alternative method for drying wet documents, vacuum freeze drying works by freezing the documents and then lowering the surrounding pressure, causing the frozen water to evaporate without becoming liquid again. Not only is our vacuum freeze drying system able to quickly dry a large volume of wet documents quickly, but this method minimizes damage and makes the restoration process much easier.
Cleaning existing mold. For records that have already been damaged by mold, our document restoration experts use specific, proprietary processes to clean or reproduce the contaminated documents.