Restoration Rewind Delta Development Group Monthly Newsletter
December 2017
NO SHAVE NOVEMBER The goal of No-Shave November is to grow awareness by embracing our hair, which many cancer patients lose, and letting it grow wild and free. The money that is normally spent on shaving and grooming supplies is used for education on cancer prevention, helps saves lives, and aid for those fighting the battle. Delta Disaster Services of Denver had serval employees donate and participate. Here are the before and after photos of some who decided to participate. We thank you for your time and donations.
Bobby – Mitigation Supervisor
Jason – VP of Business Development
Bruce – Construction Supervisor
Josh – Mitigation Manager
Ken – Construction Supervisor
Kristian – Construction Manager
Nick – Mitigation Technician
Ron – Construction Carpenter
Tyler – Mitigation Technician
Zach – Mitigation Technician
CASH IN THE DOOR DELTA DISASTER SERVICES OF SOUTHERN COLORADO knocking it out of the park with Cash in the Door! Great job Emmis and team!
Marketing Corner 2018 is bearing down on us like a freight train. None of us own a crystal ball to see the future and if you did you would not be reading this piece. There is much speculation buzz about 2018 and what major and minor external factors will be affecting our future. The only thing we can do to prepare is to build a plan, a business plan specifically. Most of you already have one from last year but need to take the time to review and revise for this upcoming year. Below is a great article from Forbes on how to interject new data points for your 2018 plan. Enjoy! Jason
Six Tips for Planning a Great 2018 By Bill Fotsch and John Case
The fourth quarter of 2017 is almost upon us—time to start your planning process for next year. It always amazes us when we come across a company that doesn’t take planning seriously. You think the New England Patriots or the Golden State Warriors head into the new season and every game without a plan? You imagine that Apple or Amazon or Airbnb just continue on their merry way without figuring out where they want to go next and how they will get there? Careful planning is essential to sustained business success. It defines winning for the next 12 months. It gives you—and everyone in your company—a road map for decision making. It helps you figure out where to invest, and how much. So here are six tips for a productive planning process, culled from many years of experience helping entrepreneurs and company owners create thriving businesses. 1. Begin by defining your goal. Every company’s situation is unique, because every owner’s situation is unique. Some aim to sell their business in the next few years. Some
are looking to grow the long-term value of the company. Some want to maximize shortterm cash flow. Differing objectives naturally call for different plans. 2. Do your homework. As Thomas Edison said about inventions, planning is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. Heading out to an offsite—the kind of meeting where everyone spouts off without any supporting data—isn’t planning, it’s corporate selfindulgence. A good plan requires several different kinds of data. Sales, costs, and other financial figures, of course—usually for the past three years. Detailed information about the profitability of different products, services, and customers. Trend lines showing (for example) gross margin and SG&A as a percentage of revenue. But we also suggest two other kinds of input: 3. Involve your customers in your planning. One key source of good data is your customers. Ask your customers how likely they would be to recommend your company to a friend or colleague who’s in the market for what you offer. Probe to find out what they like and don’t like about doing business with you. Ask for their insights into potential changes in the marketplace.
By the way, not only will you get great input for your planning discussions, you’re also likely to get a good deal of repeat and referral business out of this process. 4. Get front-line employees involved as well. Anyone who has worked on a company’s front line knows that these workers see things that management doesn’t. They know where the bottlenecks are. They know where time and materials are wasted. They often spot opportunities for new products and services or new ways of doing thing. Do they bring these observations to management? Not always—in part because management never asks.
So, here’s a huge opportunity. Ask people, either in person or through a simple survey, what their biggest challenges are and where they see the most promising opportunities. Ask them if there was one thing they could change about the company, what would it be? You’ll be surprised at some of the answers—and you can use the input for creating a better plan. (Again, if you need a starting point, we will provide a copy of the employee survey we use.)
5. Write your plan down, and use it as the basis for your financial budget. The budget—essentially a projected income statement for the next 12 months—should derive from and reflect your plan. Let’s say you’re aiming to increase profitability by boosting gross margin, and your plan spells out the measures you intend to take to reach that objective. The budget should specify the target gross margin by quarter, and it should project profits accordingly. At the end of each quarter you can see how close you came to the goal and alter your course when necessary. 6. Specify other quarterly deliverables, at least for the first quarter. Let’s imagine that you want to get closer to customers and grow your sales, so in the first quarter you plan to start using a customer-relationship management program. Or maybe you want to increase efficiency, so in the first quarter you plan on conducting your first lean event. Each of these actions should help drive results. The point of the quarterly deliverables is to ensure that these objectives don’t fall between the cracks. Remember, the objective of any plan is to advance your goal. Planning that does not advance the goal is of little value. But planning that moves your company forward toward the goal is indispensable.
New Product Available This is an item that is now available through Shubee. It is a protector for hardwood floors and tile. It is about half the price of the current product we are using. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this new product.
What You Need to Know About Desiccant Drying Restoration desiccants dehumidify the air by exposing the humid air to a desiccant material that adsorbs moisture.
Desiccant dehumidifiers have become an important tool for many restoration contractors. While the majority of the dehumidifiers in a company’s equipment fleet are often LGRs, desiccants offer some unique performance features that make them better suited to some specific drying applications. The primary distinction between desiccants and refrigerant-based dehumidifiers is in how they remove the water and the exceptionally dry air desiccants can produce. Desiccant dehumidifiers that are commonly used in restorative drying are capable of drying air to single-digit grains per pound (GPP) levels, which is about 4% relative humidity (RH) at 70°F. These are dew points several degrees below freezing. LGRs under the best situations cannot dry areas below a 32°F dew point; therefore, desiccants can create a much drier environment. Restoration desiccants dehumidify the air by exposing the humid air to a desiccant material that adsorbs moisture. This moisture is then exhausted from the desiccant and expelled in the form of water vapor through the “reactivation” outlet. There are two airflow paths through separate sealed chambers. The first path is the air to be dried referred to as the process air - and the second is the regeneration or reactivation air that exhausts the moisture. The process airflow is directed through a thick rotating
honeycomb disk, called a rotor that is coated with the desiccant material that attracts and adsorbs water vapor. When the water vapor comes into contact with this desiccant material, it actually sticks to the surface and is adsorbed, similar to a sponge. The desiccant material consists of a silica gel compound. The rotor is usually four to eight inches thick and can be one foot to several feet in diameter. The water vapor is removed from the desiccant rotor (or “wheel”) by exposing the “wet” portion of the rotor to a flow of hot air. This is called reactivation. It causes the water vapor to be released from the surface of the desiccant material and enter the reactivation airflow. This hot, moist air is then exhausted from the unit. The power source for the heat regeneration is electricity on portable desiccants and can be electricity, propane gas, natural gas or sometimes diesel fuel on large desiccants. The desiccant wheel slowly rotates through the process, or drying, chamber and the reactivation chamber. The airflow of the two air streams are usually in opposite directions through the wheel. These opposite airstreams tend to blow out any airborne debris that may have been captured from the process air. The regeneration airflow is normally one-fourth to two-thirds of the process airflow. This is a continuous cycle - process section to regeneration section. The moisture loads up in the process section and then unloads in the regeneration section. Desiccants with completely separated airflows are commonly referred to as 4-hole desiccants (they have separate inlets and outlets for process and reactivation). They are usually designated by the process airflow volume, which helps identify the desiccant’s drying capacity. A variation on this design is the 3-hole desiccant, which uses a single inlet for both the process and reactivation air and then diverts a portion of the processed air for reactivation. Three-hole desiccants often have better performance in cool and damp situations because the reactivation air has been warmed and dried in the process stage. The warmer and drier the reactivation air source, the more efficient the desiccant’s operation. Desiccants: When, Where and How to Use Them Desiccants have been used for many years to facilitate industrial process drying such as pharmaceuticals and food processing. But more recently, they are increasingly being employed in the water damage restoration industry.
Some building materials and assemblies retain water much more tenaciously than others. For these materials, the extremely dry environment created by a desiccant can significantly help to remove moisture. It is usually complex assemblies, consisting of various materials and voids, and dense and semi-porous materials like hardwood, plaster, concrete and large timbers that can benefit the most from desiccant drying. Because of the heat required for regeneration, desiccants are less energy efficient than refrigerantbased dehumidifiers, yielding about 1 to 2 pints per kilowatt for electric reactivation models. If power is in short supply, it may be difficult to use an alldesiccant strategy for drying out an entire structure with available power, but portable desiccants make it possible to focus the low grain drying on particular difficult areas where their use will greatly accelerate the overall drying process. Once again, hardwood flooring, plaster, crawlspaces and concrete are a few of these “specialty drying” situations. Larger desiccants, from 3,000 to 10,000 CFM, can be operated off generators, “dropped” power or use alternate fuels like propane for regeneration. These units are particularly well suited to large commercial structures and provide an attractive economy of scale. One large desiccant can be used instead of many smaller LGR dehumidifiers with obvious setup advantages. Desiccants are also the only reasonable option when temperatures in the affected area are below 65°F. On average, conventional desiccant designs will provide grain depressions of 40 to 50 GPP in situations where the inlet air is as high as 100 GPP. As the ambient GPP drop below that level the grain depression will be approximately 40 to 50% of the ambient air GPP. Higher efficiency desiccants that are designed to maximize water removal per kilowatt will provide higher CFM flow but lower grain depression, usually 20 to 30 GPP. This lower grain depression is offset by the increased pounds of air processed, providing similar total water removal with lower power requirements. These designs are used in some portable desiccants that are intended to operate on the limited power available in most structures. Four-hole desiccants can be set up to manipulate the pressure in a structure to maximize results. Large desiccants located outside the structure are often set up for positive pressure at the beginning of a dry down because the outside GPP are lower than the affected area. This provides drier air than processing the return air from the affected area. As the affected area is dried this is switched to neutral pressure when the affected area GPP fall below the outside levels. Of course, caution should be taken if
dealing with a contaminated structure to avoid the spread of contaminates to unaffected areas. Negative pressure can be achieved by taking the reactivation inlet air from the affected area and exhausting outside the area. This is easily achieved with portable desiccants located inside the affected area simply by ducting the reactivation outlet outside of the affected area. It should be noted that in a negative pressure set up, the air drawn into the affected area is untreated and can add to the moisture load. A negative pressure drying environment is the natural 3-hole setup. It is also possible to achieve natural pressure with a 3-hole desiccant, but positive pressure requires additional equipment. The driest air will be achieved with neutral pressure when the desiccant can continually remove moisture from the same air volume. With 4-hole portable desiccants this can be achieved by ducting the reactivation inlet and outlet outside the affected area. With large 4-hole desiccants located outside the affected area the process inlet and outlet are ducted to the affected area. The inlet and outlet ducts should be separated to promote air flow through the area to be dried. To further concentrate the low humidity air, tenting can be used to reduce the volume of the affected area.
Tips and Tricks There will always be some ducting whenever a desiccant is properly set-up. Duct length and sharp bends in the duct reduce air flow, affecting performance. Efforts should be made to keep duct runs as short and as straight as possible. Make sure the processed airflow moves throughout all of the affected areas. Never place the ends of the processin and process-out ducting too close to each other. This will cause a “short circuit� of the airflow. Since the dew point of the reactivation outlet air can be higher than the ambient conditions, it may be necessary to use insulated duct to ensure that any condensation that may occur inside the duct does not flow back into the desiccant. Running the reactivation duct across a cool slab can also cause condensation inside the duct. When
possible, the reactivation duct should be run similar to a drain line so condensation does not leak back into the affected area. In some cases when portable desiccants are located in the affected area, it may be difficult to find an appropriate method to vent the reactivation exhaust outside. In these cases, an LGR of suitable airflow and capacity can be used to dehumidify the reactivation air, essentially creating a condensing desiccant. It is recommended that the LGR’s air flow be at least twice the reactivation air flow. In these situations, additional grain depression can be achieved by taking the reactivation inlet air from the LGR’s process air. When thinking about drying with desiccants, it is very effective to think in terms of %RH. If you are familiar with the EMC (equilibrium moisture content) for wood, then it may be helpful to know the desiccant rotor responds to changes in %RH just like wood does, except the silica in the rotor responds about 1,000 times faster. The process inlet air should be the highest %RH possible and the reactivation inlet air should be the lowest %RH possible (that could mean taking the inlet air from a warmer location, taking it from indoors or just not letting it get cold). When the process RH is high, the rotor will adsorb maximum moisture. When the regeneration RH is low, the rotor will give up maximum moisture. That is the proven to get the best grain depression numbers and the driest air.
Congratulations Delta Disaster Services of Southern Colorado!
Alacrity awarded Delta Disaster Services of Southern Colorado for being one of the top 10% in the nation for CIP Performance. Congratulations to Emmis and his team for a great achievement!
Delta Gives Back Delta Disaster Services of Denver did a food drive for the Arvada Community Food Bank. We received over 200 pounds of food to donate. Below are two of our technicians, Tyler and Buddy, loading the food to be delivered.
The coat drive that was held was a huge success too! We donated close to 50 pounds of coats, hats, gloves, and blankets to The Action Center.
Meanwhile, a few other technicians, Drew and Nick, volunteered their time at the Denver Rescue Mission. They helped sort food to be donated.
Delta Disaster Services of Denver wants to thank everyone who donated food, clothes, time, money, and energy to give back and help our local community. November was a great success!
And we will leave you with this…