Your Floor Is Dry.
Your Walls Aren't.

About 120 pints a day and the ability to work at lower humidity levels. Your household dehumidifier is designed to keep your living room comfortable. My LGR dehumidifiers are designed to force moisture out of structural materials — drywall, wood framing, concrete — at rates that outrun mold growth. They pre-cool the air before condensing moisture out of it, which is how they work at humidity levels your home unit would give up on. They're not bigger versions of the same tool. They're different tools.

I'm measuring three things. First, the moisture content of your building materials — I push pins into the drywall or wood and measure the electrical resistance between them. Wet material conducts more electricity. That gives me a percentage number. Under 16% is dry for most materials. Second, I'm measuring the relative humidity and temperature of the air with a psychrometer, which tells me how much moisture the air is carrying vs. how much it could carry. Third, I'm looking at those numbers together — the gap between them (the grain depression) tells me how efficiently the system is pulling moisture out of the structure. If the numbers look good, we're drying. If they don't, I adjust.

Cupping is often salvageable. Buckling is a harder conversation. Here's the difference: cupping happens when the bottom of the wood absorbs more moisture than the top — the edges curl up. That can often be reversed with controlled drying that targets the underside of the flooring. We dry slowly and evenly to prevent overcorrection. Buckling happens when the wood expands beyond what the installation can contain and the boards literally lift off the subfloor. If the fibers aren't broken and the board still flat down under its own weight, we have a shot. If the boards are tenting or cracked along the grain, drying won't fix structural damage to the wood itself. I'll tell you what we're working with before we start.

You can. But you probably shouldn't. Replacement means demolition — ripping out drywall, baseboards, sometimes flooring and framing. Then you're rebuilding. That's reconstruction, which is a different trade from what I do. Structural drying saves materials in place: your existing drywall, your existing framing, your existing insulation. If the materials pass protocol — meaning they reach target moisture levels within the right timeframe — they don't need to come out. My entire business model is saving as much of the structure as possible. I don't do reconstruction, so I have zero financial incentive to demo your house. <a href='/services/water-damage/'>Learn more about our water damage services</a>.

They're fundamentally different drying environments. Slab foundations trap water between the concrete and the flooring, so we use floor mat drying systems that create suction beneath the surface material and pull the moisture up and out. There's no airflow underneath a slab — we have to create the escape route. Pier-and-beam houses have a crawlspace, which gives us natural airflow below the subfloor. We can place equipment both above and below the floor assembly. But crawlspaces also mean exposed joists and insulation that can hold moisture for weeks — they need to be inspected and dried too, not just the living space above.

Then we keep drying and I submit a supplement. Your adjuster's estimate is based on software that uses national averages for drying time. I'm basing my timeline on actual moisture readings from your actual walls. Sometimes the software's right. Sometimes it isn't — especially in Oklahoma where humidity levels and foundation types don't always match national assumptions. When the numbers disagree, I document every reading, submit the data to your adjuster, and request authorization for continued drying. The documentation speaks for itself. Adjusters follow measurements.

Safe? Yes. The equipment is industrial but it's not dangerous — air movers push air, dehumidifiers remove moisture, neither produces harmful byproducts. Quiet? No. Air movers run around 60-65 decibels, roughly equivalent to a loud conversation or a dishwasher. Most people adapt after the first night. Closing the bedroom door and running a white noise machine helps. The more important question is whether the affected area is properly contained, which I handle with plastic sheeting and negative air when needed. If the damage is severe enough to affect air quality — Category 2 or <a href='/services/water-damage/sewage-cleanup/'>Category 3 water</a>, or if we suspect mold — I'll tell you straight whether staying is a good idea.