Battling the Beast: Why Commercial Water Damage Requires a Different Approach

What Makes Commercial Water Damage Different Than Residential Water Damage?

Water damage restoration takes on entirely new dimensions when tackling commercial properties. Chad Mallonee, owner of Hazard Clean Restoration, pulls back the curtain on the complex world of business restoration in this eye-opening conversation.

The structural differences alone create significant challenges. Unlike residential properties with their wood frames and limited square footage, commercial buildings feature steel framing, concrete walls, and multiple floors—meaning water doesn't just affect one room, but can cascade through an entire building. Add in specialized areas like data centers, mechanical rooms, and sophisticated electronics, and you've got an entirely different restoration puzzle.

Perhaps most challenging is balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders. While residential jobs typically involve working with a single homeowner who might temporarily relocate, commercial restoration requires coordination with building owners, property managers, business operators, and sometimes government officials—all while keeping businesses operational. This demands creative solutions like after-hours work schedules, phased restoration approaches, and alternative access routes for customers and employees.

The stakes couldn't be higher. As Chad explains, rapid response to commercial water damage doesn't just save thousands of dollars—it saves hundreds of thousands or even millions. He shares a powerful example of arriving at a building to find water flowing out of the lobby and down the exterior stairs. Through immediate action and specialized equipment like trailer-mounted desiccant dehumidifiers, his team prevented catastrophic damage that would have threatened the building's very operations.

Whether you're a business owner, property manager, or restoration professional, this episode delivers crucial insights into the high-stakes world of commercial restoration. Subscribe to the Restoration Revolution podcast for more expert guidance on navigating property disasters and putting your family or business on the road to recovery.

To learn more about Hazard Clean Restoration visit:
https://hazardclean.net/
Hazard Clean Restoration
772-259-5018

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Restoration Revolution podcast,
where we help restore hope andput your family on the road to
recovery, one episode at a time.
Here's your host and owner ofHazard Clean Restoration, chad
Melody.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Water damage is never welcome.
Welcome, but commercialproperties bring a different
level of complexity.
Let's explore the challengesunique to business environments
and how professionals rise tomeet them.
Welcome back everyone.
I'm sophia yvette, co-host andproducer, back in the studio
with Chad Maloney, owner ofHazard Clean Restoration.

(00:48):
Hi, chad, how have you been?

Speaker 3 (00:50):
I'm doing good.
Doing good Slammed but I'mdoing good.
I'm glad I was able to make ittoday.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Definitely Now.
Chad always fired up to diginto real world restoration with
you.
Nobody tackles tough damagewith more heart and precision.
So what makes commercial waterdamage different than
residential water damage?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I mean there's a lot that goes into that.
So first, when you know youthink residential people are
thinking you know maybe a a pipethat that goes or whichever has
a leak, or, and it's usuallyaffecting one room, it's not
usually affecting the wholehouse, where that it does happen
to uh, especially if you getbackups and everything.

(01:40):
But in in commercial you'redealing with a whole nother kind
of animal because you'redealing with the entire building
.
And if it's multi-floored, youknow something that affects.
You know, if you have a pipethat springs a leak on one floor
and it's the top floor of a youknow 10 story building, five

(02:03):
story building, now more thanlikely that water is going to go
somewhere and usually it'sgoing to go down, you know.
And so now you're going to havemultiple, you know floors that
are impacted.
Instead of just like one roomor maybe two rooms in an area,
you're going to have rooms andfloors and everything impacted
in commercial you.
Also, in commercial buildingsthey're built differently.

(02:25):
In most residential homesyou're not going to have
mechanical rooms and all thesesprinklers and fire suppression
systems and all these thingsthat you have to be aware of
when you think about all theelectronics in a commercial
building, you got data closets,you got all this going on, and

(02:52):
yet you have to be aware of that.
And in residential you don'thave as much of that that you're
really dealing with.
So commercial can be a lot morecomplex.
When you think about even howthey build the buildings,
commercial versus residentialit's usually a lot different.
In residential, you may, youknow, you may have wood frame,
you may have a CBS block, butwhen you get to commercial, you
know you're dealing with, youknow, steel framing a lot of

(03:14):
times, concrete walls.
You're dealing with a lot ofdifferent types of building and
the inside of the building maybe different A lot of times.
In commercial you have theglued down carpets and
everything.
In residential, you're going tohave, a lot of times, different
types of flooring andeverything.
And that can sometimes be thesame depending on how that

(03:37):
commercial building was builtand what kind of how the owner,
what they want to do as far asthe inside of it.
But it does change Every timeyou go into a commercial
building with.
You know you think steelframing and that how it was
built, uh, you get data rooms,all these, all these different
things, all these complexities.

(03:57):
It's going to affect yourdrying strategy, you know.
So you know your dryingstrategy is going to be a lot
simpler if you're just dryingout a couple bedrooms in a home.
Even if you're drying out aresidential home, it's a lot
smaller, so it's lesscomplexities.
Usually they're one to twostories.
You're not dealing with theadditional complexities that

(04:25):
commercial brings.
You know the the additionalcomplexities that commercial
brings.
You're also usually withresidential.
You're just working with youknow one-on-one with that that
homeowner.
On commercial, you're workingwith a lot more than that.
You know you're working withmaybe the building owner,
property manager.
You may have some city involvedor anything, depending on where

(04:45):
that commercial building isoperating, so you could have
another manager.
But maybe there's differentbusinesses and different floors.
You may have that company orthat manager of that business or
owner of that business that isin that floor that you're
dealing with.
So you're dealing with a lot ofdifferent complexities as well.

(05:05):
And then with commercial, ofcourse you've got to make sure
that everything's compliant andthe same with residential.
But you've got OSHA, you've gotADA standards.
You have a lot of differentthings that you have to be aware
of when you're in a commercialbuilding and our strategies have
to be different and ourstrategies have to be different.

(05:27):
So in residential, thathomeowner could have the choice
of do they just want to get ahotel while we're trying out the
building and they can just goget a hotel.
And in commercial, thatbusiness owner usually is going
to want to stay open.
So we got to find ways toeither have different access
corridors so clients orcustomers can enter the building

(05:51):
.
We have to phase our work.
We maybe have to do some partsof it during off work hours.
We're going to try to make surethat that business can still
operate in that commercialsetting when in residential,
like I said, homeowner can justsay, hey, we're just going to go
stay in a hotel, for while thisproject's going on, they can
obviously stay there, you know,depending on what the scope of

(06:12):
the project.
But yeah, there's just a lotmore logistics and everything
you know that goes into acommercial, you know building.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Now are there legal or insurance complexities that
make commercial jobs moreintense things that it's

(06:48):
covering and the higher dollaramount on.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
You know what the building's insured for.
You know sometimes there'smultiple you know policies or
whichever that you're workingwith, and you know it's not
always.
You know as cut and dry as itmight be in a typical little
townhome or something thatsomeone has a you know a policy
on.
So, yeah, there can be addedcomplexities to that as well.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Now, what kind of equipment or techniques do you
deploy in commercial settingsthat you wouldn't normally use
in residential, specifically,it's a great question.

Speaker 3 (07:22):
It really depends on the type of commercial setting
that we're focused on.
But with equipment, you think,if let's just talk basic water
damage, in a residential we'reusually going to use what's
called portable dehumidifiers,lgrs, those type of things.
So we're going to use theseportable dehumidifiers to make

(07:42):
sure that we can help dry outthe building.
And in a commercial settingit's going to be think big
dehumidifiers that are going tobe on a trailer and they're
what's called a desiccant typedehumidifier.
We're going to use those to dryout that building and we're

(08:02):
going to be basically ducting inthe dry air throughout the
building so that way they don'thave all these portables
throughout the building andeverything.
They do a really good job, youknow.
And we can also bring inportable air conditioning and
there's lots of things that wecan do.
But you're you know we'retaking what you would normally
think of.
If you were in your bedroom andit was hot and you got a little
window unit portable windowunit and you wanted to bring the

(08:25):
temperature down, we wouldbring in a trailer mounted air
conditioning unit in order tobring the temperature down in
the building, or multiple ofthem, and the same thing with
the desiccant trailer mountdehumidifiers.
We're going to bring insometimes a couple of them or
more for really large buildingsor high rises, in order to make
sure that we can accomplish whatwe're trying to accomplish,

(08:48):
depending on, obviously, thescope of the project and the
amount of water damage that wasinvolved.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Now Chad.
Final question for you todayCan you share an example of a
commercial job where rapidresponse truly saved a business?

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Yeah, I mean there's a bunch of times rapid response
makes a difference.
I can tell you that we had onewhere we got called to a
commercial building and when wegot there and the trucks pulled
up there was water just flowingout the lobby, flowing down the

(09:25):
stairs to where we had pulled up.
It was a lot and it ended upflooding out.
Let's just say, multiple floors, multiple areas, and our rapid
response really helped minimizethe damage that had occurred
there.
If we had shown up hours later,that water would have continued

(09:46):
to build up and it would haveimpacted way more than it
actually did.
By the time we got there andset up and started extracting it
and working with the buildingowners and the property managers
on that building, we reallysaved them a lot of money.
And when you think aboutcommercial, you know in
commercial projects you're notjust saving a couple thousand

(10:08):
dollars, a couple hundreddollars or anything like that.
You're usually saving hundredsof thousands or, you know,
millions of dollars with whenyou get there fast and you start
making sure you can now reversethat water damage and start
drying out that building.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Wow, appreciate the clarity.
Chad, your team turns pressureinto precision and it's
inspiring to hear how you keepyour business afloat.
Catch you on the next one.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Thanks, catch you then too.
Bye everyone.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Thanks for listening to the Restoration Revolution
podcast, where recovery startshere.
Let us help put your family onthe road to recovery.
Go to hazardcleannet or call772-259-5018.
That's 772-259-5018.