Do you have to remove tile when water gets behind it? Not always. We have a full video on out YouTube Channel watch the video now. Click here- https://youtu.be/mv_mZ31f_nQ
"Hello. Okay. So, a question I always get with water Damage is, is there water behind tile? We just had a house flood and the entire basement flooded had about two to three inches of water and just wanted to show you in this bathroom. It's all sealed. From what we see. It looks all sealed, right tile to tile to tile tiled a tub here. And so, it looks like that's all sealed. But if I take a meter and there's a non-penetrating meter, so when I put it up to a moisture, it gives me a reading and you see how it just kind of runs up there. This if I come up here, everything's going to give us some reading. So right now, that's about here. And as I come down, you're going to see. It starts to spike and then it just goes all the way up as I come down to the low. So, yes, down here is wet. And so that's a problem because I can't dry it from this side because there's tile, in the way can't drive from this side. There's a tub in the way. A bigger problem is This wall is an exterior wall and an exterior wall. I can't dry it. So technically I could take out the other Side of the tub, put are behind the tub. And try this side. It'd be harder. It's going to take a long time and with heat I could do it. And sometimes what we'll do is if we have an area that's really sealed, and we can't take out the tile will use high extreme heat and just power it through a power through it with that.
The problem is at this house. They flooded a few years ago and the Restoration company didn't do anything about the tile, and it was wet behind here and they just let it dry on its own and they've always complained since then they kind of smelling musty mildewy smell time to time. So, if we come here, this is an exterior wall where I can't get behind it and I'm not seeing it but then right there I'm just seeing that moisture right? So, we're going to come in, we're going to cut out likely, we're going to have to cut out higher would normally just cut down two and remove it and then some people I mean, it's not that much to do the whole thing. But if you if people were trying to save money, they'd come in and replace this maybe with a different color. So, it looks stylish. We're going to come up a little bit higher because we know that there's a possibility of mold in there.
So, with the biggest thing we're concerned about isn't the drywall. It's the fact that there's insulation back there, holding water onto the sill plate, the sill plate, we've exposed on this side because it didn't have tile, but that's the sill plate, right? This is the sill plate. Once, this is dry Then we know that the buildings dry - and that’s good, if we don't get this sill plate dry, the drywall will go up against that sill plate and that moisture will come out on the drywall and it will have mold right there on the bottom of that. So just wanted to give you a tip. If you're dealing with tile. It is important that you get it dry all the way and the best way to do that is going to have to either be immediately use heat or you're going to have to remove it because if you know if we waited too long or it's at wet for a long period of time, then the microbial growth will start to grow, microbials, will start to grow, and then, if you wanted to add heat, all you're doing is incubating it. You're making it worse. So, that's where we're at .Okay. Now we've had our guys come in and take out the tile. So, they've taken it out. Now this green that you're seeing on the wood is not mold. This is just pressure-treated lumber, but you'll see that there are areas where there was microbial growth and it hasn't been here enough to be from this time, but it's probably Amplified because of this flood which it happened a few days ago like two or three days ago. So, we took that out where we were able to pull out the insulation that was on the bottom here. So able to vacuum out, they always had a lot of construction debris, sawdust things like that, that gets caught back behind sill plates and that's all-good food for mold. So, this is the proper way, unfortunately to get rid of water behind tile is awesome for water if it's on this side of it, right, but if it can sneak through and I'll show you the way it snuck through in this area. This had a piece of wood base board on it and went down the tile went down here; the wood baseboard went to hear. Well, that's not sealed. Correctly, right here. And or right here, the tile how we saw it before is sealed from the ground to hear from wall to wall like this, but when it can find its way in, it's going to go and it's just going to use that as a little pipeline, or a Hos almost like a little river to get right behind walls. So, this is Mike with 24 hr.Flood Response. Just trying to give you another tip on how to get dry and prevent mold."