Restoration glossary
72 property-restoration terms in plain language.
Understand the property-restoration terms used in water extraction, structural drying, mold remediation, fire and smoke cleanup, contents work, estimates and reconstruction. The terms run alphabetically, so a word from an estimate can be found by its first letter.
Part of the Vermont property restoration resources.
A
- Actual cash value
- Actual cash value pays replacement cost minus depreciation for age and wear. Unlike a replacement-cost settlement, no holdback gets released later.
- Affected area
- Not every room in the building counts. The affected area is only the rooms, materials, contents or zones actually reached by the water, contamination, smoke, soot or fire residue.
- Air mover
- An air mover is built to do one thing: push air across wet material. The resulting airflow speeds evaporation as part of a controlled drying plan.
- Air scrubber
- An air scrubber cleans the air, not the surfaces. Portable, and commonly fitted with HEPA filtration, it removes airborne particles from a defined work area.
- Antimicrobial product
- Applied strictly according to its label, an antimicrobial product serves one narrow microbial-control purpose. Using it does not replace removing the actual contamination or correcting the moisture behind it.
- Assignment of benefits
- A document that hands the policyholder's insurance rights over to a contractor.
B
- Backwater valve
- A sewer backup during heavy rain is a plumbing problem waiting to happen. A backwater valve, fitted to the building drain and closed by the direction of the flow itself rather than by any switch or sensor, exists to stop that backup from ever reaching the property in the first place.
- Balloon framing
- Balloon framing runs the wall studs continuously from sill to roof. Those uninterrupted cavities are exactly how water travels between floors once it gets in.
- Base plate
- The base plate sits at the very bottom of a wall, where trouble collects. It is commonly the last part of the assembly to dry, and a frequent site of concealed decay.
- Blower door
- A blower door is a diagnostic fan, not a repair tool. It measures a building's air leakage, which matters wherever moving air is carrying moisture into an assembly.
- Board-up
- A broken window or door left open invites weather and trespass. Board-up is the temporary closure, plywood, fasteners, sometimes plastic sheeting over a roof gap, that protects a damaged property until permanent repair happens.
- Brine
- Brine is the salt solution water-treatment equipment uses. A leak that releases it leaves behind a residue drying alone will not remove.
C
- Category 1 water
- Category 1 water starts clean, from a source like a supply line, and stays that way. Time and contact have not materially contaminated it.
- Category 2 water
- Category 2 water already carries meaningful contamination. Contact with it, or consuming it, can cause real discomfort or illness.
- Category 3 water
- Category 3 water is grossly contaminated: sewage and most outside floodwater fall here. Work practices assume contamination throughout, and porous materials that touched it are generally removed, not dried.
- Class of water loss
- Class is a different question from category, and the two get confused constantly. The IICRC framework behind class describes the approximate amount and distribution of water and the evaporation load it creates for the drying equipment, while category describes only how contaminated that water actually is.
- Clean-to-dirty workflow
- Workers, tools and debris all move in one direction on a real jobsite. A clean-to-dirty workflow plans that movement so unaffected areas stay protected from contamination in the work zone.
- Condensate
- Cooling equipment produces condensate as it pulls humidity out of the air. A blocked condensate drain is a routine, and often overlooked, source of ceiling damage.
- Containment
- Containment is a boundary, not a room. A physical barrier combined with controlled airflow separates the work area from occupied or unaffected space.
- Contents
- Furniture, clothing, electronics, documents and inventory: contents are everything movable inside the building, as distinct from the building itself.
- Controlled demolition
- Some materials cannot be restored, and some just block the access a crew needs. Controlled demolition removes them selectively, inside a defined scope and work zone, without opening up more than the job requires.
D
- Daily monitoring
- A drying plan is a guess until it's checked. Daily monitoring is the repeat inspection of material moisture and environmental conditions used to confirm it, or adjust it.
- Deductible
- The fixed amount a policyholder covers before insurance proceeds apply at all.
- Dehumidifier
- A dehumidifier pulls water vapor out of the air. With less vapor around, moisture can keep leaving the wet building materials.
- Delamination
- Plywood and OSB are built from bonded layers glued under pressure, and delamination is those layers coming apart once water gets between them. A delaminated panel gets replaced, not dried, because the bond itself is gone, not just the moisture.
- Deodorization
- Odor treatment comes last, not first. Deodorization happens only after the odor sources and residues are actually cleaned or removed, and it never substitutes for that source work.
- Desiccant dehumidifier
- A desiccant dehumidifier draws moisture out using a material that attracts it directly. Cold rooms and low-humidity conditions are where a standard dehumidifier struggles and this one earns its keep.
- Drying chamber
- Some rooms are too big or too open to dry efficiently as-is. A drying chamber is a deliberately bounded area built to concentrate air movement and dehumidification around the affected materials.
- Drying goal
- Drying doesn't stop on a schedule. The drying goal is the documented moisture level a material has to reach, set by comparing it against an unaffected area of the same material.
E
- Efflorescence
- Efflorescence is the white mineral deposit water leaves on masonry as it passes through and evaporates. Seeing it is a sign water has been moving through that material, not just sitting on top of it.
- Emergency mitigation
- The first hours matter most. Emergency mitigation is the immediate work, extraction, temporary protection, selective removal, drying setup, that limits how much worse the damage gets.
- Extraction
- Standing water has to leave before drying can start. Extraction removes it with pumps, vacuums or specialized floor tools, whichever the volume and the surface actually call for.
F
- Float switch
- A float switch shuts cooling equipment down the moment a condensate pan fills. That single move prevents an overflow into the assembly below.
- Frost-free hose bib
- A frost-free hose bib is designed to drain back into heated space on its own. Leave a hose connected to it, though, and that protection fails completely.
H
- HEPA
- HEPA is a filtration standard, not a brand name. Properly operated, a complete HEPA system captures at least 99.97 percent of particles at the standard test size.
- Hydrostatic pressure
- Groundwater pushes against a foundation with real force, and that force is hydrostatic pressure. No interior sealant resolves it, because the problem sits outside the wall in the soil pressing against it, not on the interior surface anyone can actually reach and paint over.
- Hydroxyl treatment
- Hydroxyl treatment is an odor-treatment method used under project-specific controls. Like any odor treatment, it comes after the residue and odor sources are already addressed.
I
- Ice dam
- Heat escaping into the attic melts snow on the roof above, and an ice dam is the ridge of ice that refreezes at the cold eave once that meltwater reaches the unheated overhang. Water backs up behind it, under the roof covering, looking for anywhere else to go, which is how a roof problem shows up as a stain on a second-floor ceiling instead of a leak anyone can see from outside.
L
- Lath
- Lath is thin wood strips fixed to framing as a plaster base in older construction, and it is an organic layer buried inside a wall that most people assume is entirely masonry. That means it holds moisture, and can hold mold, for far longer than the hard plaster surface in front of it ever lets on to a moisture meter run across the wall alone.
- Lead-safe work practices
- Buildings built before 1978 may hold lead paint under later layers. Disturbing painted surfaces in one requires lead-safe work practices by law, not by preference.
- LGR dehumidifier
- LGR stands for low-grain refrigerant, and it is one of the workhorse dehumidifier types on a jobsite because it keeps working efficiently across a wide range of structural-drying conditions where a simpler unit loses capacity as the room dries out and the humidity drops.
M
- Material moisture content
- A single moisture reading means little on its own. Material moisture content has to be read against the material type, the instrument used and a dry comparison.
- Mitigation
- Mitigation stabilizes a loss and slows further damage, and nothing more. Source repair and reconstruction are separate work that usually comes later.
- Moisture map
- A moisture map is a room- or zone-labeled record of where moisture was measured. Tracked over time it shows how the affected boundary changes, and it doubles as the record that demonstrates drying progress.
N
- Negative air
- Negative air is a pressure relationship, set up on purpose, so air moves into the contained work area instead of carrying particles back out of it.
- Nominal moisture content
- What a material reads in its normal, unaffected state. The number every drying goal gets set against.
O
- Ozone treatment
- Ozone treatment carries real occupancy and material constraints. A suitable controlled protocol governs its use, and only after residue and odor sources are handled.
P
- Pack-out
- A pack-out moves contents out of the property entirely, for cleaning, storage or disposal. Every item gets inventoried and its custody recorded at each step, so nothing goes missing along the way.
- Post-remediation verification
- This confirms the work actually met its defined completion standard, and ideally the person confirming it is independent of the contractor who did the remediation work in the first place, not the same company checking its own results.
- Psychrometry
- Psychrometry is the measurement side of drying, built on air temperature, relative humidity and moisture relationships. A drying plan gets built from those readings, not guessed at.
R
- Reconstruction
- Reconstruction comes after mitigation or remediation finishes. Damaged building components and finishes get replaced or repaired so the space is usable again.
- Recoverable depreciation
- An initial insurance settlement usually holds back some money for the age and wear on whatever was damaged, and that held-back amount is recoverable depreciation. It gets released once the repair or replacement work is actually completed and documented, not on the promise that it will be, which is why keeping receipts and completion records matters as much as the repair itself.
- Reference area
- The unaffected part of a building, used purely as a comparison point.
- Relative humidity
- Relative humidity compares the water vapor actually in the air to what that air could hold at the same temperature. Warmer air can hold more, which is why the same vapor level reads differently from room to room.
- Remediation
- Remediation addresses a specific contaminant or condition, mold being the common example. What it actually requires depends entirely on the project.
- Restoration
- Restoration is the whole arc, not one step in it: stabilizing, cleaning, drying, repairing and returning the damaged property to its intended use.
S
- Salvageable
- Not everything wet is a loss. A salvageable item or material is one that can reasonably be cleaned, dried and retained, given its condition, contamination and the project's own criteria.
- Secondary damage
- Water rarely stops at the first surface it touches. Secondary damage, swelling, corrosion, microbial growth, comes from the moisture that lingers afterward, not from the original event itself.
- Selective opening
- A small, deliberate cut into a finish surface, made so a technician can inspect a concealed assembly.
- Smoke residue
- Smoke residue changes with what burned and how hot it got. The particles and films it leaves behind vary with fuel and combustion, and each surface needs its own cleaning decision.
- Soot
- Soot is fine, carbon-rich fire residue. Dry, oily or mixed, it can smear badly across a wall, a ceiling or an air register if someone reaches for the wrong cleaning method before it is identified.
- Source control
- Fixing symptoms first is a wasted trip. Source control repairs, isolates or temporarily protects whatever is actually causing the damage: a pipe, a roof, a drain, an appliance, fire, or ongoing moisture.
- Structural drying
- Structural drying is measured, not guessed at. It combines extraction, air movement, dehumidification and monitoring to pull moisture out of building assemblies.
- Sub-limit
- A cap on one specific category of loss inside a policy, sitting lower than the overall limit: mold remediation is the common example.
- Subrogation
- After paying its own policyholder, an insurer can still go after whichever party was actually responsible for the loss, and recovering that money from them is what subrogation means.
- Supplemental claim
- Opening up an assembly often finds more damage than the first estimate assumed. A supplemental claim is the additional claim filed for exactly that: damage discovered after the original estimate.
T
- Thermal imaging
- A thermal camera reads surface temperature, nothing more. It guides where to inspect, but it does not directly measure moisture and should be confirmed with other evidence.
U
- Unaffected comparison area
- A reader needs a baseline to know when drying is actually done. An unaffected comparison area is a similar material or room the loss never reached, used to interpret readings and set the project's goals.
V
- Vapor pressure
- Vapor pressure is the pressure water vapor itself exerts. Differences in that pressure between a wet material and the surrounding air are what actually drive moisture out of the material, across the surface and into the drier air a dehumidifier or an air mover keeps moving past it.
- Vapour barrier
- A material limiting how much moisture can move into an assembly. In a crawl space, sealed ground cover does most of that work.
W
- Wicking
- Water climbs through a porous material against gravity, and that upward pull is wicking. Drywall, plaster and some flooring materials all wick, which is why the wet area on a wall commonly extends well above the visible waterline anyone can see just by looking at where the water actually sat.
- Work authorisation
- A work authorisation is the contract that lets a company start work and obliges the owner to pay for it. It is a different document from an assignment of benefits, and it protects different things.