Glossary

Here's what each word on your estimate means.

Search the term you were told, or open the group it belongs to. If the answer isn't here, read us the line and we'll explain it.

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All Water & drying Mold Insurance Equipment

28 terms

Water & drying

Category 1, 2, and 3 water

How clean the water is, which decides what can be dried and what has to come out.

Category 1 came from a clean supply line. Category 2 has been through something on the way, like a washing machine or an overflowing tub. Category 3 carries sewage, or has sat long enough to grow its own contamination.

See how category 3 work runs

Water & drying

Class of loss

How much wet material there is, on a scale of one to four.

A wet tile floor is a low class. Saturated insulation, plaster, and hardwood in one room is a high one. Class drives how much equipment goes in and how long it stays.

Water & drying

Extraction

Pulling the water out with pumps and wands, before any drying equipment goes in.

Every gallon extracted is a gallon that never has to be evaporated, so this is where most of the first visit goes.

Water & drying

Structural drying

Drying the building itself: framing, subfloor, drywall, and concrete.

A floor can feel dry to a bare foot while the wall cavity behind it still holds water. That gap is the reason this is a separate line from cleanup.

Water & drying

Dry standard

The number your wet materials have to come back down to.

It comes from a reading taken in a room the water never reached. It lets us call a room dry as a measurement instead of an opinion, and it is why we read dry rooms on the first visit.

Water & drying

Wicking

Water climbing up through a material against gravity.

It is how a leak at the floor becomes a damp line thirty inches up a wall, and why we check well above the visible water line.

Water & drying

Flood cut

Removing the bottom two feet of drywall so the cavity behind it can dry.

We do it when a wall will not release its water any other way, and we tell you before a blade touches the wall.

Mold

Mold assessment

Testing and inspection by a licensed assessor, who writes the protocol.

The assessor works for you, not for us. Florida licenses assessment and remediation separately, so on most jobs they sit with different companies. We do not perform assessments.

Mold

Mold remediation

The cleanup: containing the area, removing what cannot be cleaned, drying the source.

Florida licenses remediation separately from assessment, so the company that tests is not the company that cleans. Call and we will tell you plainly where your job sits.

What we do and do not do

Mold

Protocol

The assessor's written instructions for the cleanup.

Which materials come out, how the area is contained, and what has to be true before the job is finished. We work to it as written, and if we think it is wrong we say so in writing.

Mold

Clearance

The test after the work, confirming the protocol was met.

Also called post-remediation verification. Containment stays up until it is done, because taking it down early can put you back where you started.

Mold

Spore trap sample

An air sample read in a lab, compared against an outdoor sample from the same visit.

Indoor counts mean little on their own. A result without its outdoor baseline is not an answer.

Mold

Containment

Sealed plastic barriers keeping the work area separate from the rest of the building.

Held under slightly lower pressure so air flows in rather than out. It is what keeps a bedroom problem from becoming a whole-house problem during the work.

Insurance

Mitigation

Stopping the damage from getting bigger: extraction, drying, cleaning.

Repair is the separate stage that comes after, and most policies treat the two as different pots of money.

Insurance

Scope

The written list of what will be done, room by room and material by material.

A contractor prices from it and an adjuster reviews it, so a vague one costs you twice.

Insurance

Adjuster

The person deciding what your carrier pays.

A desk adjuster works from the file alone; a field adjuster comes out and looks. Either way, day-one readings and photographs are most of what they see, because by review time the building is dry.

Insurance

Public adjuster

Someone you can hire to handle the claim for you, paid a percentage of the settlement.

Some jobs benefit from one and some do not. We work with them routinely and take no cut either way.

Insurance

Deductible

The share you pay before coverage starts.

Worth asking early. On a small job the deductible can exceed the whole invoice, and then a claim costs you the claim history for nothing.

Insurance

ACV and RCV

What your material is worth today, versus what a new one costs.

Actual cash value takes age off; replacement cost value does not. Many policies release ACV first and pay the difference once the work is finished and documented.

Insurance

Sudden and accidental

The phrase most water claims turn on.

A pipe that burst is sudden. A shower pan seeping for two years is usually treated as maintenance. That is why the date and cause get written down before anything is pulled apart.

Insurance

Assignment of benefits

A document letting a contractor bill your carrier directly and deal with them for you.

It is convenient, and it signs away some control. Read it before signing it, including ours.

See how claims work

Equipment

Air mover

The low fan aimed along a wall or floor.

It strips the still, humid layer off a surface so water can keep leaving the material. Moving one out of position costs about a day.

Equipment

LGR dehumidifier

The machine doing the actual drying, and the loud one.

Low grain refrigerant: it keeps pulling water out of air that is already fairly dry, which is where an ordinary unit stalls.

Equipment

HEPA air filtration device

A HEPA filter box, also called an air scrubber, that cleans the air inside a contained area.

Ducted outside, it also holds that area under negative pressure. Standard on contaminated water and mold work.

Equipment

Moisture meter

The handheld tool behind every reading in your file.

Pinless meters scan through a surface without marking it; pin meters go into the material for a reading at depth. Both get used, and which one produced a number is written next to it.

Equipment

Thermal imaging

An infrared camera showing where to point the meter.

It shows cold, not water, so nothing is recorded as wet on the strength of an image alone.

See how we trace water

Equipment

Daily monitoring

The return visit where every wet material is read again.

Equipment gets adjusted, added to, or pulled based on what the numbers did. Drying is a curve, and the visits are how anyone knows yours is still heading down.

Equipment

IICRC certification

The standard that defines drying to a measured goal.

It is a training and documentation standard rather than a state license, and it is what our drying work is measured against.

Read how we work

Someone read you a term you didn't recognize?

Read us the line off the estimate. We'll tell you what it means and whether it belongs on your job.

Call (305) FAST-⁠DRY See what happens on a job