Hey readers, welcome back to our blog. Our last post on how dry ice blasting is profiting the restoration industry was a huge hit on social media. Thank you for sharing it, for those of you who did! We received a ton of feedback from contractors, and today we want to answer their most pressing questions! Specifically, how this all works, what materials dry ice blasting can clean, and a ballpark estimate of what it costs.
If you’re a Contractor in the Remediation game, your jobs typically consist of mould removal, asbestos abatement, fire restoration, and lead decontamination. As you already know, every job presents a different set of challenges and constraints and it’s up to you to work your problem-solving magic to make it work! This is where Dry Ice Blasting makes your life incredibly easy, so keep reading.
The Workflow Process
Whether it’s asbestos, mould, fire damage, or lead – each job has the same 3 step process.
The first step is site preparation. Your team comes to section the space off. The area is encapsulated as you normally would, is placed under negative air pressure, with the air scrubbers running. As this takes place, the dry ice blasting team you are subcontracting with is arriving at the site to set up their equipment. A seamless transition is when your preparation is completed at the same time as their setup. Special note: If this was for fire restoration, you would already have the site gutted before the blasting team arrived, and you probably don’t have to encapsulate the area.
The second step is the blasting team begins cleaning. You get to stand back and enjoy the show or send your team to the next job. The advantage of dry ice blasting as a service is it compresses your time. Depending on the space, the material being remediated, and the square footage – dry ice blasting can clean an entire 2000 sq.ft. space in as little as half a day. Dry ice blasting has different nozzles and hose lengths which enables the technicians to easily clean hard to reach areas with ease. Dry ice blasting cleans to government regulatory standards. The before and after results are obvious once the team has completed their work.
The third and final step – which can sometimes commence the same day your team sets up, is the final clean up. The team will sweep and vacuum up the debris that was blasted off the walls, ceiling, nooks and crannies, then decommission their equipment. Depending on the material that had to be blasted, you just saved days of manual labour. Instead of having your team bottle-necked, you were able to have them on other job sites for set up or final clean up. This is a much more efficient process. Freeing up your time and labour allows you to take on more work without more burden.
In some instances the dry ice team will use drop cloths to capture falling debris, making it easy to dispose of later. For instance, on one job we did where we blasted Lead paint off the exterior of a Church, we rolled up the drop cloth that captured the paint particles and had it safely disposed of. Similarly, in every Fire Restoration job, after we finish blasting we typically apply a smoke seal which further speeds up the job’s completion.
“All that sounds good, but what materials can you clean?”
Every job is basically the same – we blast up high and work our way down low. The dry ice “sublimates” which basically means it turns to gas and leaves no trace. The only thing remaining on the floor is the debris of the material being remediated. Here’s a quick rundown of the 4 major abatement jobs:
- Dry Ice blasting has unique abilities for asbestos abatement. It is best suited for the textured walls and ceilings; cement, vinyl tiles, adhesives, sealants, and caulking. We can easily and quickly break up solid asbestos. Dry ice blasting also efficiently removes asbestos fibres and asbestos dust from high up and in hard to reach areas.
- Mould removal is one of the fastest and easiest jobs. Dry ice blasting expedites your project completion time. We’ve worked with contractors facing impossible deadlines, and enabled them to get the job done on time. We’ve worked with one company that was quoted 6 weeks to clean up mold, and Carmad completed it within 6 days.
- Fire damage jobs are fairly quick and simple, but as you already know, the difference is within the extent of damage present. Additionally, some substrates require a little more time than others, but dry ice can clean char, soot, and smoke damage off of wood, concrete, and steel, plus it doesn’t matter if it’s in the joists or in the attic – we can get it just as easy.
- Lead paint removal is typically a fast and easy job. Due to the dry ice leaving zero secondary waste, lead paint chips are easy to clean up. As mentioned before, lead chips land on a drop cloth where the disposal costs are minimal.
In conclusion, subcontracting to a dry ice blasting service will enable you to complete jobs up to 80% faster. Ballpark estimates for Dry ice blasting start at $1750 for a half-day of work. If you don’t know the timeframe to expect dry ice blasting to take, then give us a call for a free estimate. We are Carmad Industrial, this is our 20th year in business, and we service all of western Canada – British Columbia to Manitoba, plus the territories. Thank you for reading! We’ll chat soon.