post water damage moisture testing

I have a client who had contractors flood portions of her home during a remediation project. They have been running dehumidifiers for over a week. I need to do a moisture test of various areas of her house to determine if it is sufficiently dry to turn off the dehumidifiers. I will also be cutting into the walls and testing the insulation in the finished basement. Does anyone have a report format they use? I am not doing the mold testing, just determining if the wood, drywall/insulation, have dried to the point where the dehumidifiers can be shut off. Then a new company is coming in to clean up the mess from the last remediation company. Mold tests will be taken at the end of the entire job, so I just need to confirm this intermediary stage. Any additional advice? I am going to work out from the initial source until I get consistent <15% readings, then go an additional distance to confirm, then put that info into some sort of report…

ANSI/ICRC S500 says less than 16 percent moisture in wood.
Try to keep drywall removal to a minimum due to the risk of spreading mold spores.
Really need to test before remediation, especially areas not affected. That way if the air in the unaffected areas contain high mold spores, the remediator will have to clean those area for free. A mold remediation protocol should be written so the remediator has something to go by then just guessing.
Use a Word doc to put your finding in, such as show moisture meter with high readings.

The stud bays should have already been opened up (behind baseboard area) for the drying process. The entire work area should be under containment. Find a known dry area and test the drywall for a control reading. Base your affected area readings off that. A good IR camera is helpful. You can document all of this on a letterhead, if you don’t have software for structural drying.

If you don’t know what you are doing with this…you shouldn’t do it. The remediation companies usually take on this responsibility. Do you carry pollution insurance? You also need to know the business end of a hygrometer and understand how to interpret the data, log it and track it. That will also prove that you have effectively dried the property. It isn’t just about using a moisture meter. There are a lot of things here that you really can’t learn in this thread.

Knowing the dry lumber standard for your area is key. For me here in the Northeast, it is 9 to 12%.