In this episode of The Same Day Podcast, Mat Zalk hosts the Owner of RestoPros Tulsa, Paul Dougherty, for a conversation about water damage mitigation. Paul shares the methods and tools for water damage prevention, how to convey service levels to residents, and the difference between property restoration and mitigation.
Preventing Water Damage: How You Can Save Money on Restoration Services
Paul Dougherty is the Owner of RestoPros Tulsa, which provides water, fire, smoke, and mold mitigation for residential and commercial properties. With a background in technology, real estate, and entrepreneurship, he brings a unique perspective to the home restoration industry. Paul focuses on developing unique solutions to difficult client problems.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Paul Dougherty talks about RestoPros Tulsa and his involvement in property restoration
- The difference between property restoration and mitigation
- Methods and tools for reducing the impact of water damage
- Mitigation service cost structure and insurance coverage
- How to communicate service schedules with tenants
- Avoiding property mitigation and restoration services
In this episode…
Many homeowners and property managers have experienced water and other damage to their homes, requiring some level of restoration. This can be expensive and time-consuming, especially if restoration companies cause additional damage attempting to reduce the initial issue. How can you mitigate home damage without undergoing an expensive and major overhaul to your property?
Some restoration businesses profit from total property rehabilitation and encourage homeowners to completely replace damaged areas rather than attempting to lessen the damage initially. Versatile restoration and property management specialist Paul Dougherty saves his clients money by offering minimally invasive mitigation services. When experiencing water or mold damage to your property, you can utilize alternative terms like microbial growth and plumbing failures to expand insurance coverage and lessen costs. Updating your property and performing regular maintenance and repairs reduces the chance of catastrophic disasters.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management Tulsa
- Keyrenter Property Management Oklahoma City
- Keyrenter Property Management Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- Chris Lile State Farm
- Chris Lile’s phone number: 918-878-7771
- Paul Dougherty’s phone number: 918-688-7345
- RestoPros Tulsa
- RestoPros phone number: 918-200-9884
- “Foundation Settling: Common Causes and Why It Is Crucial To Repair Damages Right Away” with Adam Sedlak on The Same Day Podcast
- “Building a Successful HVAC Company From the Ground Up” with Will Gilbrech on The Same Day Podcast
Sponsor for this episode…
Chris Lile at State Farm Insurance:
This episode is brought to you by Chris Lile at State Farm Insurance.
Chris Lile at State Farm helps you protect your most precious assets and investments, including home and auto.
To learn more about how you can save double digits on all your insurance needs, visit dialliale.com or call Chris’ office at 918-878-7771.
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is also brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company that helps clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
The team helps clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Mat Zalk 0:16
Mat Zalk Here I’m the host of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business experts and real estate leaders. Recent past guests include Will Gilbrech of Franklin Heating and Air in Northwest Arkansas, talking about all things Heating and Air including why home warranty companies are not great for homeowners or investment. Property owners really. Today’s episode is brought to you by Chris Lile State Farm Chris Lile State Farm helps you protect your most precious assets and investments whether it’s your home and auto investment rental properties or other valuables called Chris Lile State Farm for a quick and painless phone call to potentially save you double digits on all of your insurance needs. Is it diallile.com or call his office at 918-878-7771 This episode is also brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management at Keyrenter Property Management. We are a full service property management company helping our clients buy renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. That’s why no matter what rental you have single family homes, condos, townhomes apartments, we have the management solutions that you need. Today’s guest is Paul Dougherty. He’s the owner of RestoPros of Tulsa WaterFire smoke and mold mitigation company Paul brings a unique perspective to the industry planning his background in technology, real estate and entrepreneurial endeavors. He focuses on creating unique solutions for difficult problems. Paul Dougherty Welcome to the show. How are you?
Paul Dougherty 1:40
I’m great, Mat, thanks for inviting me on.
Mat Zalk 1:43
I’m so happy that you’re here. I’ve not had somebody from a restoration company on the show before. So I’m excited to kind of dig in and understand a bunch of stuff, the difference between restoration mitigation, what all is entailed in both of these services. But let’s start Will you just introduce your company and let’s talk for a second about how you got involved in, in restoration.
Paul Dougherty 2:03
Absolutely. So, Paul Dougherty, with RestoPros of Tulsa, my wife and I started down the path of looking for a business to buy and we looked at some franchises, we looked at buying some existing businesses. And the restoration industry just kind of kept rising to the top is something that we were interested in one, something that’s always necessary, it’s kind of an Amazon proof business. You know, COVID proof. So
Mat Zalk 2:33
once I prove
Paul Dougherty 2:35
AI proof, right, exactly. And it goes customer service, it’s helping somebody in a time of need. And then the the population that we work with, worked with a lot of plumbers and homeowners and just felt like a really good thing. So that’s how we got into it. Restaurant pros is a franchise that started in Charlotte, North Carolina. And we make them in business for a number of years, probably in about 50 or 60 markets right now moving east to west. And so we were lucky enough to buy the Tulsa market.
Mat Zalk 3:11
But let me ask you, so you say you like being in business with plumbers and electricians and whatever else are you a blue collar guy yourself? A decent hammer.
Paul Dougherty 3:22
Quite the opposite. So I’ve had a desk job for the last a lot of years, and am an IT manager and it may lead to a lot of technology and things like that. And you know, there’s that’s a really exciting industry, but it’s also one that there’s always the job just continues to grow and or projects continue to evolve. So it was kind of a fun industry to get involved in that. It’s, you’re kind of in and out so so i
Mat Zalk 3:51
i also love hanging out with plumbers and tradesmen in general. And I’m always kind of like looking over their backs. Just looking at what the NSA I’m really sorry, I know it’s super annoying that I’m just watching everything you do. And I joke that I’m you know, moving into learn a little bit more so I can steal their profession, which would never actually happen. But it’s fascinating to see how stuff comes together, it gets put together, how it gets fixed, how pipes get installed, how they get cut out when they need to be reinstalled, etc. Let’s talk for a second about the difference between mitigation and restoration. Because that, you know, what you’re going to cut out what you’re going to put back is it makes a huge difference in the pricing of you know, different services and how much it’s gonna cost ultimately when something goes wrong at your house. So explain to us what the difference between mitigation and restoration would be.
Paul Dougherty 4:38
Absolutely and, and a lot of times you need both. So but the mitigation is really how do we resolve the problem that’s there. So we have water infiltration, water that’s in walls, floors, things like that. We need to get that dried out. That’s really the mitigation process is really getting that property back to where it can be restored. Right? And then the restoration side is actually Building up putting the drywall back, we put the floors back in, at cetera. And what’s really interesting about the rest of the RestoPros model is we really focus on mitigation, we don’t focus on restoration. We leave that to the homeowner to choose somebody that they’re comfortable with. And the really nice thing about that model is that we actually strive to save the homeowner money and be because we, we don’t make our money on that bill back, we make our money on the dry just like everybody does. And you’re gonna pay the same amount for that those are industry standards. Insurance companies have that there’s there’s a national rate card that is said that drying components is going to cost the same no matter which company that you choose. But by focusing just on that mitigation, we’re going to try and dry in place as much as we can. And there are plenty of times you have to take materials out in order to really make sure that it’s dried, because that’s the most important part of what we do is really making sure it’s dry, making sure there’s no growth that occurs and that sort of thing. But our goal is to do it with the least damage to the property as possible, mentally minimally invasive, minimally invasive, absolutely right, and get that homeowner back in that or that that landlord back in business or whoever it is, to get them back in business and and using that space as quickly as possible.
Mat Zalk 6:20
But so you’re here to kind of say directly, but if I understand correctly reading between the lines, the idea is that some restoration companies without casting aspersion and without saying people are dishonest, but some restoration companies would potentially do more damage in in the mitigation side, because they also make money on the restoration side. So if they have to rip up hardwoods, they might come in with a bid to repair the hardwoods. And of course, he could tell the restoration company, no, I want to go with my own hardwood company or I have a cheaper bid. But the idea would be if I if I pull this sheet rock all the way out, then I’ve got to go back with kind of accepted national standard pricing for replacing the sheet rock and and and
Paul Dougherty 7:02
that’s the idea. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, it’s not saying that all these companies do that, because they certainly don’t. But there’s just more opportunity for for that in that space. And there’s just a little less motivation to, you know, use a drying method that doesn’t require any material removal.
Mat Zalk 7:23
Right. So one example is you did at my house, some drying, some mitigation of water intrusion. And essentially you set up, you took the baseboard out, or equivalents I didn’t have baseboard in my house at the time, but you it would be the exact space where the baseboard would go, you drilled a couple holes, you put a suction mechanism, and then a push mechanism from the top and you push air through the cavity, so that ultimately we don’t have to take out any sheet rock, we don’t have to repair any sheetrock, we just put the baseboard trim directly over those couple of holes, and the inside of the wall is dry. But why do you actually need to dry that interior space when it just dry on its own? Well,
Paul Dougherty 8:01
everything potentially eventually dries. But you do that, by not really getting the air in there, you face the risk of microbial growth or, you know, that can begin within 24 to 48 hours. But the end the other thing that does is it facilitates wood rot, drywall rot, wet rot. And so you think that it’s going to dry on its own, but it’s back there stuck between maybe an exterior wall and some sheetrock, it’s not going to dry anytime soon, right and then there may be concrete underneath it. And so by getting that dry in a in a quick period of time, you’re able to ensure that the integrity of that material is maintained.
Mat Zalk 8:45
And so if there is wicking, like if there’s water all over the floor and it wicks up the sheetrock, what do you guys do to dry the
Paul Dougherty 8:52
sheetrock. So she rock actually is an interesting animal, depending on how wet it is and how much damage it is there, there are times you certainly have to cut it out. Depending on how severe the water was, you may have to do a flood cut to be able to get to those to the walls to dry them. But a lot of times if there’s not a ton of water in there, you can do that through some air movement like we did to your house, right? Have those holes in there, create that vortex of of air going through that cavity and then add dehumidification to the process and some heat and then also containing the space right like we put up barriers to keep that that contained, but it’s not just a containment from the exterior space. It’s to control the drying environment,
Mat Zalk 9:40
the humidity levels and makes it easier to pull humidity out of the exact place instead of the whole house for example.
Paul Dougherty 9:45
Right. Right and there’s some other tools that we have and I think we use some of your house that there’s a we have a mat system that does injection drying and so we use it on your drywall we also use it on hardwood floors. And what that does is it it pushes heat heated air into those surfaces and allows them to dry. And if you think about drywall, it’s not a solid surface right there are pours through his air. So air will move through that drywall. Now, if it was a ceiling and it got completely saturated, you’re going to need to pull that down because there’s too much water in there that you’re going to, you’re going to have growth, it’s going to say, I guess it’s gonna fall. But a lot of times, if it’s a small leak that that impacted a wall or something like that, you can take care of that without getting too invasive.
Mat Zalk 10:35
If you put all that equipment on a wall, or on a floor, or whatever, all the stuff you just described, how long does it generally take to to to mitigate the the wetness?
Paul Dougherty 10:47
You know, typical typical drying times are anywhere from three to five days, depending on conditions, and that there’s a lot that depends on conditions, right? How well we’re able to control the conditions in that space, other weather factors, things like that. But typically, you can get get that material dry within three to five days. And we use moisture meters to do those readings. We have all kinds of different moisture meters, we have surface ones that check the moisture from the surface. And then there are other materials like wood, where you really need to use a probe meter or hammer probe to get in there to really get that the reading of that material. And what’s
Mat Zalk 11:28
the implication if you don’t do this work if you just kind of sweep it under the proverbial rug? We talked a little bit about dry wood and sorry, dry rot and wet dry, wet rot.
Paul Dougherty 11:40
If I can just speak. Who cares? Why does that even matter? Well, if you’re if you’re me, and my personal experience, it means that I ended up having to go in and replace things right? Like I’ve had it happen where I’ve had, you know, doors rot out at the bottom and we have to go in and replaces or Windows we’ve had, you know, sub floor come out from underneath the hardwood floor where there was some water intrusion that went under it. And another example at a at a rental house where we had a small leak coming out of a bathroom. And we didn’t know about it with the situation, but it got under some hardwood floors, ended up buckling those up. The challenge was, I didn’t know much about mitigation at the time. And so I didn’t know there was somebody I get hired to come in and dry that out. And it took us three months to get that sub for drying up to put new hardwood floors back over the top of
Mat Zalk 12:38
the hardwood started the sub floor even after it swelled, it kind of shrink back down and you can put hardwoods over it, you didn’t have to repair repair the subfloor,
Paul Dougherty 12:46
right, yeah, if you if you dry it correctly. And that may be we’re drawing it from underneath and from the top, like if it’s a crawlspace situation, depending on where that moisture was. And we make dry it from both sides to make sure that that’s that it’s dried well. And then that hammer probe, those probes go down into the woods. So we really can measure that that moisture content.
Mat Zalk 13:11
So speaking of crawl spaces, we’ve had various situations where there have been all sorts of stuff in crawl spaces, sometimes it’s just rainwater and the water is not running away from the house as it should be. There might not be gutters and so things are flooding into the crawlspace. And then something takes place. And we need to get out of the crawlspace. But it’s just a pool down there. So the plumber says, I can’t get down there. You know, I need it to be dry before I get there. Whatever else some we’ve even had situations where sewage raw sewage is leaking down because they didn’t plumb the house properly. It was that was a ridiculous situation where the plumber called me it was like, hey, who did this renovation? This is insane. The plumbing has just been running into the crawlspace for the last six months. Oh my god. If you have to mitigate that situation where there’s a pool of whether human waste or just rainwater under a house, what do you what do you do? How do you get that out?
Paul Dougherty 14:03
So two different situations. So let’s talk about both of them. So first of all, if it’s rainwater, or you know, I’ve had like a pipe break under a house and dropped 20,000 gallons of water, we will pump out moisture out we’ll pump the water out. And then we work to contain that crawlspace and then we’ll use heat and air to dry the crawlspace he literally
Mat Zalk 14:26
just pumped that like 20,000 gallons into the into the nearest ditch right to the street and let it run. Yeah, sure.
Paul Dougherty 14:32
Right. Yeah, some of that’ll probably naturally have evacuated down into the into the ground but what we’re going to do is go get whatever remains in there and we’re going to pump that out. And then we’re going to put a drying system in place to try it. But we have that air movement
Mat Zalk 14:51
we had Adam Sedlak on the show from Level Home Foundation level level foundation and It just that if that much water absorbs into the ground underneath your house and the shift that occurs, that what I expect would occur, you’re going to naturally see a bunch of walls cracking and a bunch of other stuff. Because footing is just not meant to be that moist. But anyway, so that’s a whole different problem if it’s about being under the ground, but Okay, so you, so you say you take it out, you suck it out, you remove it, and then you move air through that space,
Paul Dougherty 15:25
we move air and we use a crawlspace drying system to dry it.
Mat Zalk 15:31
What does that system look like?
Paul Dougherty 15:32
It’s just basically heat injected into the into the crawlspace. creates that because he creates evaporation. And, you know, that’s one thing. There’s different drying systems, there’s closed drying systems, open drying systems, and depends on what your outside atmosphere is like. So it’s gonna depend on the time of the year, how much humidity and moisture is in the air. And when we went through this, and my wife and I got certified, it’s, it sounds like a very simple thing. But there’s a lot of science to it. There’s a lot of complexity to how do you create the system that’s really going to dry that that situation correctly? Yep. I want to touch on that. But I’m going to jump back to your question about the sewage. So the sewage is a different situation, right? Still gonna have to be pumped out. But that’s what’s called a category three loss. So there are different categories of loss. So the category one is just basically clean water, you know, your toilet, supply line breaks, or a line under a sink or something like that clean water needs to be cleaned up needs to be dried, but there’s no real hazard to it. There’s a category two in which it was clean water that traveled through some things that we don’t really know that they didn’t contaminate the water. And then there are category three, which really biohazard so if sewage is leaking into an area. So one we have to help we prepare ourselves to go into that space, the equipment, the the respirators, things like that, that we use. But then also, we’ve got to treat that space, make sure that we take out everything that needs to be taken out because there’s a lot of impacted things and then treat that surface to to kill whatever
Mat Zalk 17:21
so as to avoid a regional cholera outbreak. Exactly. Okay, that’s gross. I don’t I don’t envy the guys that are getting down there into that crawlspace with their biohazard suits and cleaning that space out and making it me they’re making it suitable for the plumber. We had a situation years ago, Donna Jinx and Alison Jinx, were tenants left for Christmas came back after the holiday and their house had a pipe adverse in their house, it flooded come out from underneath the cabinet. And it just flooded all the floors and everything else. If you get water behind cabinets, for example. How can you restore How can you mitigate that, that moisture infiltration without destroying pulling out all the cabinets and like, then once you bought the cabinets, I guess you could theoretically go back with them. But you know, it’d be a mess, and up its new cabinets.
Paul Dougherty 18:13
Exactly. And it’s gonna depend on how long that water was leaking. So if you catch that pretty quick, we may be able to use a non invasive drying method, we may be able to use like mats on the back of the cabinet or the floors of the cabinets to dry them, you may be able to just take out the bottom piece, you know, the floor of that cabinet and then just replace that, if that water ran for five days, you’re probably going to have to really pull them out because it’s probably going to have gotten in all that wood, it probably going to be pretty difficult to dry. So it’s just gonna depend on on the severity of what happened and where it was,
Mat Zalk 18:51
I wonder because then theoretically, you can’t just drill holes in the back of the cabinet wood and the sheetrock because you got the studs in the way so you can’t actually you can get the vertical flow but you can’t get the horizontal flow to mitigate the
Paul Dougherty 19:00
depends if you can, depends what’s on the backside of it. So if you’re on an interior wall, you can a lot of times go from the backside to dry that so we can drive from the front like and then drive from the back so we can pull toe kegs put air in that way we can, you know in the back of the cabinet, you can put holes in there, nobody’s going to see those. It is a mat system as long as you can get to that back wall and you may do a flood cut back there. And really inflamed cuts are basically a two foot strip of drywall that you cut out. And that’s the that’s the if you’re provided the water didn’t go up any higher than that. That allows you to get the sill plates really good and dry. And it also minimizes that the what has to be done to replace that drywall right using a fixture or regular four foot wide sheets with it and it gets 16 feet out of it. But you would fly cut on the backside of that and then drive from the back as well. And if you’re able to do that, then you may be able to, to minimize what you have to tear it out like,
Mat Zalk 20:10
yeah. So all this, to be honest, sounds pretty expensive. What? What’s the what kind of money are people looking at when we start talking about mitigation services?
Paul Dougherty 20:21
Well, I think there are a number of different pieces of that. So one is this is all dictated through the this industry, right? And so the rates are the same across the United States, with the exception of the regionally adjusted actually adjusted by zip code. And a lot of that is labor rate. So they’re their materials and things like that, that are a certain cost of labor, they say berries, etc. But so there’s a standard rate system for that. And again, it’s gonna depend on on what it is what the cost is going to be. But I think the other way to think of it is, how much money can you say by doing it? Right? Because you think that oh, man, that’s a lot of money up front that somebody wants. But if three months later, my hardwood floors have a buckled up? Was it worth it? Right? If I can be back in my home in a week versus six months? Is it worth it? Right? Yeah. So there’s a lot more to if I don’t have dry rot that then, you know, two years later, I figure out that I have to have dealt with. The other thing is a lot of these things are covered by insurance. Right. And so we help that homeowner, you know, our commercial business, we talked a lot about homeowners, but we do commercial properties as well. So we help them through that claim process. So they start that claim that we work with that insurance company, we know what words to use and whatnot use right like never say leak leaks aren’t covered by insurance failures, failures are covered, right? So at a plumbing failure. So we work through that process with the insurance company to make that as successful of a process as as possible. And really, kind of help with that. Giving the homeowners
Mat Zalk 22:06
does that mean that after a homeowner starts to claim, that homeowner should avoid speaking directly to the to the adjuster and letting let you guys kind of handle all that discussion?
Paul Dougherty 22:17
I would, you know, and you you’ve worked with enough insurance companies, you’ve learned that sometimes saying less is more. Right? You know that we added a deal early on when we started this where the homeowner somehow decided to mention to the insurance company that there was mold. And then insurance that’s like, hey, it’s not covered. We don’t do mold. Well, wasn’t real dreaded M word, Ban DS, the dreaded M word mold, and we don’t say it we say microbial growth. And what’s the difference? Well, microbial growth extends far beyond what standard mold is. But the other thing is that within your policy, mold is excluded. So we mean, when you say mold to them, they think you have damage that was caused by mold. Right. And so there are some policies that cover mold. There are others that don’t, yeah, I think it’s probably a relatively commonly excluded item, that if you had a water leak today, and you call your insurance this afternoon, tomorrow, you didn’t get mold in that period of time, you didn’t get microbial growth in that period of time, right? If something happens, it’s a product of that. And, and we all there mold spores everywhere, right? But they get then when you put water on them, that starts the growth and then you add heat to it and right, that’s where that can, can. Can kind of escalate. Yeah, exactly. So. So yeah, we like to work with that homeowner really helped them through that process, so that they’re not left holding the bag trying to figure out how to navigate those waters with their insurance.
Mat Zalk 24:02
But I’m trying to think there could be a perverse incentive where somebody, you know, wants if they’re, if their deductible is $10,000. And there’s $9,000 worth of damage, they might as well say, Well, let me let me get a claim that covers the replacement of the entirety of this hardwood floor, sure, it’s gonna be disruptive, and I’m gonna be gone from the house for four months or whatever, but they might have a perverse incentive to actually get more work done through the insurance company. Now I imagine that that’s short sighted because if that’s the case, you’re going to naturally your your rates are gonna go up. Your premium is gonna go up in the insurance ultimately, but maybe you got, you know, 20 or $30,000. With the coverage in your insurance goes up just to you know,
Paul Dougherty 24:38
a hair. Yeah. Yeah, there are choices in how we deal with things right like we can, we can dry or tear things out based on different different requirements and needs. But there there are times people want to do that. They, they want to use that as the impetus to get a whole new thing but it was interesting because We worked a deal and it was actually one that you referred to us from a plumber a few weeks ago. And we talked to them, you know, like, you this probably can be categorized where we can tear it all out, and you can have all new and they were like, if we’re gonna get something on the this bathrooms, not where we want to start, right? So they’re like, We really just want to dry, we’ve got a party coming up in seven days that we need to be ready for. And so how can we get there, right? And so we went in, We dried it, we helped them find the drywall person, a painter to come in. And, you know, week later they’re back in business had 40 or 50 people at their house and nobody knew anything it happened.
Mat Zalk 25:37
Yeah. So what do you do with tenants when there’s a disruption? Obviously, from a property management perspective, oftentimes, an owner wants to minimize cost, right or not, they’re not gonna go back and look at this house, it was an investment property to begin with, potentially whatever. And tenants want the property back in, in tip top shape as soon as humanly possible. What, you know, what can you do to minimize the disruption time for a tenant? And what do you say to them when you know, they can’t use a bathroom for a couple of
Paul Dougherty 26:06
days or whatever? Well, I think, you know, one of the primary things, so I’m, I have a few properties. And my role is, please don’t talk to my tenant talk to me when I hire somebody, right? Because I want to, I want to control that message and not control it. But I want to make sure that the right decisions being made,
Mat Zalk 26:25
like this HVAC unit could catch fire at any time, right? Oh, my God. Yes.
Paul Dougherty 26:29
As every other one in the United States today. But yeah. And so then they start telling me you mean, do h back unit? Right. So. So one is we work with this property managers on that messaging, I think that, again, with our approach, we’re trying to get it dry as fast as we can, again, trying to save that, that property manager some money, we follow IICRC sort of certification standards as 500. Those are used across the world, not just in the United States, as far as what our requirements are, for how we how we manage the mitigation process, every restoration company should, there are opportunities, if there’s something that somebody doesn’t want to do, as long as they’re willing to accept that risk. And, you know, sign a waiver that doesn’t come back to us, then, you know, we can we can make decisions about and tailor those services to what is needed to to resolve that particular incident.
Mat Zalk 27:30
tenants come to us and say I need to be put in a hotel for a week because of this sort of thing it becomes these sorts of things can become nightmarish with the property. So talking to the owner and saying a tenant wants a credit for the rent, and I haven’t explained to attend and how they would be just as they would be just as displaced and discomforted if it was their house, but now they don’t also have to pay the bill. So give us a breaking the owners out a couple $1,000. So please,
Paul Dougherty 27:55
bear with us. Yeah, vendors don’t don’t seem to understand that. I was telling my wife like, nobody’s coming to picks up my air conditioner on a Sunday, but everybody expects theirs to be
Mat Zalk 28:03
yep, that’s exactly right. What what do we do? What can we avoid? Or what steps can we take to avoid having to do mitigation or restoration in the first place? Anything that you can think of? Obviously, if there’s a, you know, a plumbing failure, there’s maybe little that you could have done to prevent it. But are there do you see things where you walk into a house, you’re like, Ooh, that’s a potential disaster that needs to be changed?
Paul Dougherty 28:10
Well, I think certainly, I think one, you know, when you buy a property, make sure you’re doing your inspections that you understand the condition of what you’re purchasing. If you have deferred maintenance, if you have fixtures that are on their last leg, you know, replace, talk to a plumber about the right supply lines to you. Yeah, that’s a big, big difference, right? That uses inexpensive supply lines, and they break and then you’ve got got a big problem I that happened on a hot water heater, you know, a guy put them on and they were the cheap ones. And it’s a pinhole goes in. And so I think that’s one thing. I think the other thing is, you know, we’re coming up on winter, it’s time to make sure that you are well insulated, that when the weather gets really cold that you’re leaving your faucet strip that if you need to block off your crawlspace mats, things like that, so that you’re you’re trying to minimize the situations with your pipes because a lot of what happens is in in the winter, those pipes will freeze and sometimes they thaw and there’s never a problem but there are a lot of times those busted and caused some pretty catastrophic disasters.
Mat Zalk 29:45
Yeah. So as we said earlier in the show you guys focus on the mitigation but not necessarily the restoration. What happens when an owners like Hey, Paul, I want to turnkey service I don’t want to have to deal with any this the insurance coming He’s paying for it anyways, just fix, right? How do you guys deal with that?
Paul Dougherty 30:03
So one thing that I always think in business is important is to stay with your specialty, right? And so we don’t, we’re not staffed to manage that process of the restoration. So, you know, I would rather not make that homeowner mad, even if we don’t get their business. But really, the way that we would approach it is we would say, we have people that we know we have some people that we can refer to you. We don’t guarantee their work, we don’t manage their work. But we’ve got people have different different levels, you just need a painter, you just need somebody to come in and do some drywall, or you need somebody to come in and do a remodel, right, we’ve got some different people, and they’re continuing to vet people to put on that list. We’re picky about who we put on. But again, we can’t guarantee their services. But we do try to have a handoff to somebody else. And if that’s something that the homeowner wants,
Mat Zalk 30:59
so you have a full suite of vendors that you refer,
Paul Dougherty 31:03
we’re working on that host. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Love that.
Mat Zalk 31:07
Any other any other pushback that you get from potential clients, I guess, in the moment, you’re kind of there, and you’re the hero you find with a super capex people like, you know, I’m about to start getting microbial growth or whatever my house is flooding and leaking, whatever it’s, you’re, you’re there and kind of You’re like an ambulance, you’ve come in right at the right time. So maybe people don’t have significant pushback, but anything that you found that cause people to want to go a different direction?
Paul Dougherty 31:35
You know, I think that, that’s a great question. And I think one of the things that that you see is people are like, Well, I’m just gonna file the claim, I’m gonna take the money, I’m gonna buy a couple of pens and put them on, you know, we’ll call it good. And then I’ll tear out what I want to tear out and build it back. And so I think they, they think about that, and probably don’t realize that, like, one thing I didn’t know, before, this is, when I was putting faces on things, I was not breathing air movement, it was just pushing air onto something right. And that didn’t facilitate the drying process. But I think that’s probably the the main thing or, you know, insurance deductibles have gotten so high that a lot of people are afraid to relieve and go down the path because they, and then your insurance company kind of holds you hostage and says, Well, if you file a claim, it’s going to go on your account, whether you pay it, you know, whether you actually pay it or not. And so that’s one of the other things, but I think we need to remember, we’ve got insurance for a reason. And if we really have a catastrophe or disaster, we need to take care of it.
Mat Zalk 32:44
It’s also it’s also easy, potentially to sweep things under the rug, as I said earlier, because you may not see the extent of the damage. If you don’t pull off your sheetrock, or punch holes and put a little camera probe down there actually do a moisture reading on the wall, you don’t know and you can’t feel it unnecessarily when you touch the wall. So you don’t know what’s happening behind that wall until you actually get in there and see it. And so it’s easy to it’s easy to overlook it to say, look, the cost is too much. And then not realize that you’re stepping over dollars to pick up pennies.
Paul Dougherty 33:13
Yeah. Yeah. Right, because of the damage that that goes on underneath that. And when my wife was at training, and they were touring some of the properties in Charlotte, and they had, a lot of them had deferred maintenance issues, right. People hadn’t taken care of things. They had leaking showers that leaking windows and things like that. And then you end up with a pretty good sized remediation bill at the end of that. Yeah.
Mat Zalk 33:41
And ultimately, I guess, because, as my friend Chris Lile was fond of saying, insurance covers things that are sudden and unexpected, which is why you’d say, I guess a plumbing failure and not a like slight leak. So if you don’t do anything, and you you avoid it at the onset, after six months, or three months, or whatever, your insurance company is not going to cover it. Right,
Paul Dougherty 34:06
exactly. And that’s the real tragedy, right? Because you have the damage, and it needed to be dealt with. And now it’s on your dime, not theirs. And it’s probably more because something happened as a result of not dealing with it
Mat Zalk 34:21
right insurance companies are looking for ways to say no to your mold exclusion and bunch of other stuff. You know, the sudden unexpected they’re looking for a reason to say no, because they’re a business looking to stay in business Exactly. earn profits. So the sooner you get to it, the more you The quicker you are to hire an expert that can actually speak to the insurance company, the better you’re better off you’ll be. Absolutely. Paul Dougherty is the owner of RestoPros in Tulsa WaterFire smoke and mold mitigation company Paul brings unique perspective to the industry blending his background in tech, real estate and entrepreneurial endeavors. He focuses on creating unique solutions to difficult problems you can visit Paul at restoprotulsa.com To find out more information and connect Paul where can people reach you I want to give you
Paul Dougherty 35:01
a shout you can reach me directly at 918-688-7345 or our company numbers 918-200-9884 We’d love to help you out one of the things I like to tell people is we do pre inspections we will come out and look you know if there’s no damage there we’ll walk away. We did it the other day for somebody took a look and was like, Hey, this isn’t bad enough for us to do something you can you can handle this way but let us come out let us take a look at it and advise you and then you can make the decision of how you want to move forward.
Mat Zalk 35:35
But Paul’s number on speed dial calm calm once a week. Never know when I need him. Paul, thank you for being on the show. Appreciate all your insight.
Paul Dougherty 35:45
Thank you.
Outro 35:50
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