Garland’s GoFundMe Campaign

Houston is our second oldest location and when Hurricane Harvey hit, it had a profound effect on our team residing there. We want to do everything we can to help our community. After Hurricane Harvey, we set up a GoFundMe page to give back to our employees who have given us so much through their hard work and dedication.

We received tremendous support and were able to raise a total of $2,750! After forming a committee to evaluate Hurricane Harvey Relief Requests, we presented a check to Alejandro Durante. We wish him luck and are so glad we could help him find some relief after the storm.

Do you need fiberglass products to repair your home insulation? We can help!

We want to continue assisting those affected by the storm any way we can. Due to a city-wide shortage of building supplies, we are temporarily selling our fiberglass insulation stock at a reduced price. Check out our Houston page for more information.

If you have water in your home how do you know what to do next? Here is Garland Insulating’s guide to Hurricane Harvey insulation repair.

Fiberglass Insulation and Crawl Space Repair Tips

Do I need to replace my insulation? If you had flooding…yes! Any part of your insulation that got wet needs to be changed out (with the possible exception of flood resistant spray foam). Floodwater contains dangerous toxins and soaked insulation needs to be replaced to prevent the growth of mold. If you’ve experienced a disaster in your home and have sustained a water damaged subfloor as a result, you might want to give professionals like ServiceMaster Restoration by Zaba a call to help out if it’s too big of a job to do yourself.

Removing current insulation and preparing for repairs safely, is the first priority. Protect yourself by wearing a helmet, eyewear, a mask, gloves, and rubber or waterproof boots. Avoid any potential danger involving electrical outlets and water by turning your electricity off. Keep other areas of your home that are still salvageable clean and avoid tracking mud and dirt in by creating plastic barriers such as the one in the image below. If you are working in repairs, you may be interested in software similar to open source repair tracking software so you can keep track of your repair tools and inventory needed for any repairs you may have.

Next, wall paneling must be removed to get to your insulation. Discard all of the interior surface of the walls to a point just above where the water reached. The easiest way to toss out the insulation material is by working from the bottom up, carefully pulling out batt rolls.

Once the damaged insulation material is gone, before new insulation can go inside your walls, the space must be disinfected and dried. One option to sanitize the area would be to use one cup of bleach and a gallon of water and to spray this solution on the space. Open up all doors and windows then add fans and dehumidifiers to speed up the drying process. To be sure that wall spaces have properly dried you can go to your local hardware store and buy a wood moisture meter. If the percentage reads less than 15, you are good to go!

Besides walls, crawl spaces are another area that can be easily damaged in flooding. When preparing to have your crawl space repaired, first, you should remove all debris and water from the area so that there is an open flat surface. There will be a larger amount of water in this area than inside your house because it is closer to the ground.

To drain water, a water pump might be necessary. Don’t forget to remove the plastic vapor barrier to allow the ground to dry. Lastly, you can then disinfect and dry out the area the same way as mentioned above.

Replacing Your Crawl Space Insulation

If you don’t have crawl space insulation, now would be a great time to consider getting it installed while you are making other repairs to your home. Crawl space insulation is important because it helps inhibit warm and cool air from escaping through the floor. It also decreases the chance of mildew, mold, and other allergens from entering your home by reducing and preventing moisture from traveling into your house through un-insulated floor structures. It would a good idea to have a repair service come in and perform crawl space inspections to ensure that you don’t have any mold, mildew, or moisture in your crawl space.

Your foundation will play a large part in what insulation material you choose for your crawl space, but if the option is available, you may want to consider installing spray foam insulation. Spray foam is the only insulation product FEMA recognizes as flood resistant. Read more about its flood resistance capabilities here. After a disaster such as flooding it can be prudent to make sure that the foundation itself hasn’t suffered any damage throughout, as failing to identify this early on can lead to disaster at a later date. Finding a Quality Foundation Repair group to survey this for you is important to not only give peace of mind, but to fix any issues if any are indeed found.

We hope that those who experienced flood damage will be able to use these tips to start rebuilding quickly. If you need an insulation installation or have questions about the insulation replacement process, please contact us by calling (713)-896-4608.