Drying Out a Flood Damaged Cottage In Scotland

Having water pipes running about your property can result in a real risk of serious and very expensive damage when leaks occur. Just a loose push fit joint popping lose, or frost splitting a copper pipe and you’re looking at destruction on a frightening scale.

The Damage

The two pictures below are of a cottage in the Highlands of Scotland. A burst pipe brought down ALL ceilings in the property. Literally, tons of water poured through the fabric of the building, completely ruining everything.

Rockwool in the ceilings and walls soaked up a large quantity of water and the plasterboards bowed out. It was like a swimming pool in the house with inches of water on the floors. Damage was estimated in the tens of thousands. Conventional thinking required a stripping out of the property back to bare brick walls and earth below floors. The homeowner couldn’t get agreement from their insurers and was faced with ruin.

Our Solution

Their only hope was to try and dry the place out and salvage the fabric of the building. A seemingly impossible task. It was mid-winter in Scotland. And gaping holes up to the roof space made dehumidifiers largely useless. This is where Warm4less far infrared radiators came to the rescue. The owners placed 10 of our panels, mostly 600×100 panels (58w/600w) throughout the place. They placed them on timers and left them to do their work. Three months later a miracle had occurred. The house had dried out!. Not just superficially, but the whole fabric. As far infrared doesn’t primarily heat the air, but releases energy on contact with surfaces, an extremely effective process had taken place. The water had been stripped from all surfaces and then the moisture behind in the walls had been drawn out.

The workers who came to fix the damage were flabbergasted to see the dryness. It’s estimated that the panels had saved about £30,000 of work! Needless to say, the owners are now totally converted to far infrared heating.