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Rainbow restore Cheddar Gorge shop, who were left in a pickle following a flood

Rainbow restore Cheddar Gorge shop, who were left in a pickle following a flood

When heavy rainfall in the area turned the steep road running down to Cheddar Gorge into a river, the local Rainbow branch were on hand to restore properties back to their pre-incident condition. For the Cave Shop located in the extremely popular tourist area, Rainbow did just that.

Following a bout of torrential rainfall, the Cave Shop fell foul of the excess water, with their shop floor and storerooms being flooded with 30cm of water. This standing water caused severe saturation damage throughout the property. Due to the severity of the saturation to the shop the Rainbow team had to strip out all plasterboard and plyboard to expose the brickwork – doing this would allow the saturated brickwork to be thoroughly dried once the drying equipment could be installed. This as a result would reduce the risk of secondary damage caused by the water.

All lower level timerwork also needed to be removed as this had been damaged beyond repair by the flooding. The walls of the shops were covered in hessian and chicken wire – to resemble the inside of the iconic caves, this was removed due to the water penetrating behind the materials and affecting the walls beneath.

In the affected storerooms the painted flooring had started to blister and peel away as a result of the flooding, as had the tiled flooring in the shop area. The experienced technicians at Rainbow were aware that testing needed to be carried out on the floor tiles, and adhesive to see if they contain Asbestos. No removal work could be done on these areas until the results of this testing had been received. This is a precautionary measure to ensure safety to themselves and anyone who would come into contact with that area of the building. Safety precautions like these are something Rainbow takes very seriously.

After receiving the test results back, it was confirmed that the floor tiles and adhesive did infact contain Asbestos. The trained technicians at Rainbow are able to remove this type of Asbestos, following the regulations set by the HSE. The technicians got to work quarantining the area, restricting access whilst the removal of the material took place. All of the materials removed were packaged and disposed of safely and in the correct manner.

Once all of the floor tiles were uplifted the remaining adhesive needed to be removed, to allow the drying of the sub-flooring. A diamond grinding machine was used to remove this adhesive layer in preparation for the installation of the drying regime.

Reassurance air testing was carried out to ensure asbestos contamination was removed. Normally the drying regime would be estimated at 5-6 weeks however by installing a specialist drying regime of heated mat to work alongside de-humidification and air movement they were able to reduce the drying to just 2 weeks.