In North Georgia, if your documents are damaged by water, do you know how to save them?

Fresh water and salt water damage have different effects on different products, and documents and electronics are no different. Special care is needed for salt water damaged property.

Fresh Water: Mold is the greatest danger when it comes to fresh water document damage. Mold loves any product made of wood, including paper. Mold will grow in less than 48 hours, is dangerous to your health and can stain documents causing them to turn yellow. These documents will also smell musty. Absorbent documents can also stick together and will warp paper easily.

Photographs and films will deteriorate very quickly as the chemicals and components used in making these products will breakdown as they separate.

Salt Water: Salt water damaged documents will dry on their own,

but warping and the residual salt left on the materials are the main concern.

Photographs and films will see increased corrosion due to the combination of salt and metal-based chemicals. When the salt water dries on them, the coating of salt will turn into crystals causing them to scratch easily.

There are many drying techniques used to dry documents, but they are tricky and time consuming. Some techniques are:

Fresh Water

Re-wet the documents and separate them, freezing them between paper towels or butcher paper and placed upright, if they have already dried stuck together.

Air drying if you can safely separate them between paper towels or butcher paper with a running fan.

Hang on a clothesline very carefully and use a dehumidifier.

If photographs and film are stuck together, re-submerging them in clean water and letting them naturally separate may work. Put them between butcher paper and allow them to air dry.

Salt Water

Salt water documents need to be rinsed off with fresh water and follow the above techniques.

It’s always best to let professionals recover your documents. Once they are lost, you can’t replace originals. Some of the professional techniques used for document and photograph/film drying are:

Vacuum freeze-drying

Vacuum thermal drying

Freezer drying

Air drying with a desiccant dehumidifier