As well as being local leak detection specialists in the York area, Rainbow Restoration is a Water Damage Restoration company, and one of the services we offer is Pressure Drying, which is sometimes called injection drying, which we will explain further in this article.
Pressure Drying is an advanced drying solution utilising specialist drying equipment and has both domestic and commercial drying applications. In both of these instances, there are huge benefits of this type of drying properties after a water leak or even as part of modern flood damage management systems.
What is Pressure Drying?
Pressure Drying is a drying method which is particularly useful in modern building construction drying, where moisture has become trapped in voids or layers within a buildings floor, walls, ceilings or other void spaces. That said, it has other applications within various situations in older buildings too.
The word ‘pressure’ is used to describe this type of drying as it utilises positive or negative pressure from a turbine or blower with attached hoses, to replace damp and humid air in the voids with dryer air which also helps to dry the building structure and materials around it. At the same time, the moist wet air is extracted, often supported by traditional methods.
When moisture is trapped it is much harder to dry the property back to pre-incident levels with ‘conventional drying’ methods which tends to utilise air movers, heaters, dehumidifiers (either refrigerant or desiccant versions) and other drying equipment. These traditional drying methods are very effective when carrying out most property drying, but pressure drying is more advanced drying which is extremely beneficial in certain situations – more on that next. Pressure drying can be enhances with the support of remote monitoring solutions.
Pressure Drying Main Advantages
Pressure drying has a lot of significant advantages, this includes:
- It is targeted drying specifically tackling moisture in a location
- It is highly cost effective in comparison to the alternatives
- It can save huge amounts of time and money vs stripping out and reinstatement
- It also causes much less disruption to the property and it’s occupants
- It can be deployed very quickly helping to prevent secondary damage
- Likewise, it can be removed once the drying has been completed
- You can dry in places that you cannot necessarily access easily
- The process is highly calibrated with proven tolerances and measures
- It works well with remote monitoring solution
- It works well alongside other systems from various manufacturers
So as you can see from that list, pressure drying has many advantages over the alternatives, which might often include major, invasive, costly and disruptive building (and reconstruction work). It can be more expensive than regular drying but it is likely preferential to the other options.
For example, let’s say you had an underfloor heating leak on on the ground floor of your property, or similarly, a central heating leak in a layered / floating floor. You might have flooring such as carpet, tiles (maybe even marble), laminate or engineered flooring. Then there may be things like underlay, concrete flooring, rigid insulation (such as Kingspan or Celotex etc) which may include foil, possibly then a membrane all on top of a concrete base slab.
If water has leaked between one or more of those layers, bearing in mind some of them are waterproof and act as vapour barriers trapping moisture, then it could be difficult to access it to dry the surfaces affected without disruptive and destructive works (and costly replacement) but with this drying that can be avoided often.
Positive vs Negative Pressure Drying
Something that comes into consideration with pressure drying is positive vs negative pressure drying. In a nutshell, positive pressure is ‘blowing’ air into the voids, whereas negative pressure drying is ‘suction’ / sucking the moisture out in the form of water vapour to be extracted. Some machines are capable of both these methods.
Whether or not negative or positive pressure is the best option (there are pros and cons to both on top of this) may vary according to the structure, layout and materials in the building.
The same goes for the supporting drying equipment. That said, oftentimes, both systems can work, or as we will discuss next, in conjunction with each other to do what is called push pull pressure drying or push pull injection drying. We mention pressure drying in our Winter water damage article.
Push Pull Pressure Drying
Push pull drying is where, for example, holes (usually 50mm or sometimes 25mm) are drilled into the floor for the hoses and nozzles used as part of the system and along one side of the room positive pressure air is blown in (pre-conditioned or desiccated often) and at the other side negative pressure / suction is used.
These two together help to draw the air across the area affected, in the desired direction and can in some instances (and it will depend) make a better setup to aid the speed and effectiveness of drying. Again, this may be supported by other equipment too, in particular heaters, air movers and dehumidifiers too.
Pressure Drying Applications
There are many applications whereby pressure or injection drying is the best solution or even advantageous for other reasons, but equally, it can be used in a number of specific drying applications in various properties.
Pressure or injection drying can be used on the following and more:
- Pressure drying of floors
- Pressure drying of walls
- Pressure drying of ceilings
- Pressure drying of cavity wall
- Pressure drying of insulation
If you need any of these services after a water leak or flood, contact our local team today. Regarding flooding, you may find our Xmas Flood Safety guide useful and our Xmas Water Leaks guide too.
Pressure Drying – Conclusion
Hopefully you can now understand what pressure drying is, what the benefits of it are vs the alternative options and importantly, how efficient and effective it is. It is a versatile, modern drying system that can help prevent other secondary damage to your property, including damp and mould and not just mould in a house.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post, we have a range of other valuable leak detection blog posts.
We provide a number of damage management services, we can help you deal with this.
Pressure Drying – Top Tip
Leak Detection Team
“Before you start to do a lot of construction or demolition work to your property to access water damage, contact a pressure drying expert such as ourselves. It may be a much better, efficient and more cost-effective solution which is also faster and less disruptive!”
Pressure / Injection Drying – Other Useful Information
Here are a few other articles related to this topic that you may find useful to review too:
If you have a water leak contact our friendly and experienced team for help.
What is injection drying?
Injection drying is a name often used for pressure drying which is utilised when, generally, voids with trapped water after a leak or flood are trapped between the layers or in the void of a building structure. Air is injected at pressure to help the drying process and to force the moist, humid air out of the voids and so drying the materials around it. It is often supported by dehumidifiers too.
What is Push-Pull Pressure Drying?
Push-Pull Pressure Drying is where positive (blowing) and negative pressure (suction) are used together to push air in one part of a void and pulled out in another part, when they are used together they can help improve the drying process and make it more effective. It is often used in conjunction with other pieces of drying equipment including heaters and dehumidifiers (various types).
At Rainbow Restoration – York & Yorkshire Coast we are experts in Leak Detection, including business water leaks, so if you need help finding a water leak or getting your property back to normal after a water damage or a flood, get in touch with our friendly local team who will be happy to help you with this. We are based in York and help with water leak detection in York.
