Home Animal Damage Prevention and Repair Tips

home animal damage problem

The weather is getting warmer, the animals are getting ready for Spring…but do you know if your home is safeguarded? Animals such as raccoons, bats, rats, squirrels and others can easily infiltrate your home and cause extensive damage to it. They can affect the structural integrity of your home and damage the insulation, duct work and wiring. Once they enter your house, they will become the house guests that never want to leave. To say it is hard to get rid of them is putting it mildly. In order to remove them from your home, repair the damages and prevent invasions in the future, you need the help of a competent animal control specialist.

Rodents such as flying squirrels, grey squirrels, mice and rats have the tendency to chew on things. These rodents when invade your house, they chew on everything they can find, including clothes, upholstery and wiring. Rodents chewing off the insulation of your power lines can create serious fire hazards. They often nest in hard to reach places. A professional service will not only remove these rodents from your house, but will also detect and repair the damage inflicted to your power lines preventing devastating fires.

Wild animals gain access to your home through the entry points that were either left open because of poor craftsmanship or created by these animals themselves. These entry points or holes may be in the siding, ceiling, soffits or wood fascia of your home. Over the time, these wild animals will gnaw and pull out the building and holding materials making holes larger. Groundhogs are known to dig bigger holes underneath the foundations putting your home and lives of your family in grave danger. These access points must be identified and repaired immediately after removing the animals.

Furthermore, rats, mice, opossums, raccoons and skunks often find their way into the duct work. They chew up the flex ducts in your home making large holes in them causing your heating and cooling systems to operate overtime driving up your electrical expenses. Cable, telephone wires and security lines are also damaged by these animals. These incursions and damages require immediate attention.

This challenging problem of animal invasion and damage should be handled by professionals only as they have all the expertise and equipment needed to get the job done. A professional animal control expert can remove the unwanted critters from your property, and then turn the repairs over to a firm (like Jarvis) that has the experience and to inspect your home thoroughly from damages and take the right steps towards getting it repaired correctly.

Severe Storms Hit Center Point Alabama Heading Towards Georgia

A major tornado hit Alabama late Sunday evening, racing past Birmingham Alabama and touching down in Center Point, Alabama where homes and businesses have been left in a mound of debris. The storm system was working its way across the State on Monday morning, with a new target on the horizon (Georgia). The storm system caused substantial damage to numerous communities and has left thousands without power. January is generally not a month of year that is known for tornadoes, but the unusual weather patterns of 2012 continue to surface. This year has seen much warmer temperatures across most of the country, and limited amounts of snowfall. Last week a large system dumped snow and record amounts of rainfall on Washington and Oregon, which created some areas of flash flooding. The one piece of good news from this latest storm system in the South is that early warning systems were in place for most residents throughout Alabama. Following a record number of tornado disasters in 2011, the early start to severe storms in 2012 may not be a good sign for things to come this spring. Jarvis’s disaster recovery team is monitoring the developments in Center Point and Georgia, for response to commercial buildings damaged from this recent storm. Commercial property owners in need of cleanup assistance can reach our offices at 1-866-452-7847.

Coldest Day Of 2012 Greets Michigan Friday Morning

Temperatures in Michigan will get down into the low single digits overnight. Forecasts for temperatures as low as five degrees, could push lower depending on the wind, creating dangerous conditions for anyone who is left to brave the elements for an extended period of time. The cold weather will last most of the Day, and the high temperatures likely wont get back into the Mid Thirties range until the weekend. Severe cold weather, is going to put home heating systems to the test as severe cold weather will put an additional strain on all things mechanical over the next few days.

The largest area of concern for property owners is going to dealing with the potential of pipes freezing. Single digit temperatures are notorious for creating frozen pipe disasters, causing pipes to burst, explode and create water damage disasters in homes. Vacationers are often the most susceptible to this type of property disaster, as their homes can be left unattended for days at a time. Returning from a vacation to find ice coming out of your front door is certainly not an experience anyone would want to experience. This is why it is very important to have a buddy system in place when you are away for the winter, to ensure you have someone checking on your property status every 48 hours if you will be gone for extended periods of time and don’t wish to winterize your home.

Disaster Cleanup Jobs Require High Tolerance for All Things Gross

Disasters that leave homes and businesses wet, flooded or generate a huge cleanup effort, are not to be taken lightly. From Bio Hazard, Trauma, Property Hoarders, Animal Damages, Sewer Backups, the cleanup crews from Jarvis tackle some of the hardest jobs every day, one thing is for sure to be an expert in disaster cleanup you will need a high tolerance for all things GROSS!

Home disaster ? Well if you want to tackled this on your own, here is what we would recomend, when the coast is clear and you can return to your property to assess the damage, make sure that you wear appropriate clothing to protect yourself from injury and the potential toxins that could be airborne as well, and remember, you never want to re-enter a property from a fire or flood if there are structural issues or a potential for stray electrical lines. If you are certain the home is ok to re-enter, you probably will want to wear rubber boots, gloves, a bio hazard suit, goggles and a face mask to help reduce your contact with both visible and invisible items.

If you decide to bypass the cleanup on your own, you can call in the experts from Jarvis who not only have the training to get you cleaned up and put back together, they have years of experience in handling some of the largest property disasters.

Cleaning up your property will begin by assessing the contents. What you can keep and what needs to be thrown away. Depending on the type of disaster, you will probably end up throwing away items like mattresses, pillows, upholstered furniture, toys, clothing etc. Really, anything that has been submerged in dirty water (sewer water) has really got to go. The odors, toxins and the soils that are embedded into the fabric will make cleaning them properly an almost impossible job. Even if it does have sentimental value to you, there are still very severe health risks that remain.

These are times when you might want to hire a professional disaster cleanup company. Let’s take a look at the most common types of disaster clean-up jobs affecting us.

Fire and Smoke Damage

Fire and smoke damage is a serious mess, it can make your business or home totally unlivable if it’s not taken care of quickly. It is nearly impossible to remove the smell of smoke unless you hire a certified restoration expert who has the proper tools. If you think you may have to condemn your building talk to your local restoration expert first, they may be able to fix your problem.

Black Mold Damage

There is no bigger cancer than black mold being found in your home or business. Black mold is caused by an extreme amount of moisture build up that can spread quickly and cause serious property and health damage. There is only one way to control and safely remove black mold and that is by hiring a professional mold removal company and retreat the previously infected area to make sure that the black mold spores don’t grow back.

Flooding and Sewer Backups

Flooding and sewer backups can be extremely stressful ordeal. The damages done to your property are both visible and invisible, making the cleanup efforts all that more challenging. When you have a sewer backup, one thing is for certain, you need to discard most items that come in direct contact with the backup, and cleaning is a bit more complex than a shop vac and some household bleach.

Hoarding and Bio Hazard Cleanup

Critical cleaning in homes or business, often requires compassion and discretion. One area that is often a challenge is cleaning a property when a homeowners creates a hoarder environment that is not only overwhelming to view, but could be full of potentially dangerous objects, bugs, rodents, feces and other undesirable items you would want to encounter. The prospect of hoarder cleanup is not a task for the faint of heart and requires the proper tools, equipment and ability to interact with the customer.

Freezing Temperatures Hit The Midwest As Cold Weather Arrives

The extended fall was fun while it lasted. Cold weather looks to finally be arriving in Illinois, Ohio and Michigan as temperatures will be in the teens by the end of the weekend. 2012 has started as a much calmer weather year than 2011, which witnessed numerous records for storms, rainfall and extreme weather. The drop in temperatures will pave way for the potential of snowfall, but there are no major predictions for large amounts of accumulation as of yet. The cold weather will likely be welcome news for contractors in the restoraiton, plumbing and hvac industries. As temperatures linger in the teens, furnaces will be under additional strain and have a higher likelyhood of failure. Freezing weather also means there is a potential for frozen and burst pipes, which are a lifeline for the plumbing industry.

The Sourthern part of the U.S. has been affected by several storms already in 2012, that have brought flloding in Texas, and snow storms in the Rockies. For the owners of repair and restoration industry, a dip in temperatures will keep the technicians busy and phones rining, which is always good news. If you experience any related issues with water damage, ice damage or ice due to the storm system we have crews on standby 24/7 @ 866-452-7847.

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