Equipment Spotlight: Using Air Scrubbers to Restore the Indoor Air Quality of Homes and Businesses

3/22/2019 (Permalink)

Always striving to make it "Like it never even happened."

One of the ways that we here at SERVPRO of Dale City/Lake Ridge strive to offer the best service to our customers is through our equipment. John and his team work to maintain, continually update, and replace equipment that is worn out or aging. I would like to take a minute and tell you about one of the pieces of equipment that we feel gets overlooked for its greatness -- air scrubbers. Unlike a dehumidifier or an air mover— whose names are also their function— the air scrubber is more industry specific and we would love to share a little bit about what we use it for.

How Does It Work?

In many loss situations, whether it be water, fire, or mold damages, there are contaminants left behind in the air. While our technicians are working to remove and restore the damage on material pieces of a home or business, we cannot forget about restoring the air as well. This is when we place an air scrubber. This piece of equipment works by passing the air inside a room through three filters to remove contaminants and small particles.

What Is It Used For?

During a water damage, especially one with a lot of demolition needed, we will install an air scrubber. As we are removing the structure items pieces of the drywall, flooring and insulation can float into the air. In this situation, an air scrubber can be installed to keep these particles to a minimum and return the affected area to its preloss condition more quickly.

Air scrubbers are essential in situations where damage has been caused by sewage or a sewer line back up, to help remove left over contaminants from the air.  We use air scrubbers to make sure that as we are decontaminating the surfaces, the air isn’t retaining any particulates that could leave behind germs or odors.

While restoring an area that has been affected by mold, we will also place air scrubbers. Mold spores are always present in the air, because we open our doors and windows.  Air scrubbers are important because while working on a loss with visible mold growth, a higher mold spore count is also present in the air. As such, while we work to remove the visible mold from the structure materials and prevent additional growth, we also remove these spores from the air by having the air scrubbers running.

Overall, an air scrubber assists in the restoration process and provides a cleaner, healthier environment in an area affected by a disaster.