How We Protect Unaffected Areas
We seal off the work area from the rest of your property. Physical barriers, plastic sheeting, negative air pressure containment, floor protection, and clean entry and exit routes keep damage from spreading into areas that weren’t affected.
If your property has been damaged and you’re worried about protecting the rest of it, call 303-816-0068 right now. We’re available 24/7. The sooner we get containment in place, the less of your home or business gets affected.
Your insurance company requires you to prevent further damage. That applies to spreading contamination just as much as it applies to stopping active water flow. If mold, smoke, soot, or contaminated water spreads into clean areas because proper containment wasn’t established, that additional damage becomes a problem for your claim. Fast containment protects both your property and your coverage.
I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. What I’ve seen happen more than once is a homeowner assume we’d just get to work, and then be surprised that the first hour is setup. Containment isn’t delay. It’s protection.
Why Containment Matters
Restoration work creates conditions that spread damage if you’re not careful about it.
Demolition creates dust that travels through your HVAC system and coats everything in the house. Mold spores disturbed during remediation become airborne and can colonize clean areas if they’re not captured and exhausted. Smoke residue tracked on boots moves through a building quickly. Contaminated water carries bacteria and pathogens that you do not want in your living room.
The work area is already damaged. Everything outside it doesn’t have to be.
Professional containment means your bedroom stays clean while we tear out a wet bathroom. Your living room stays dust-free while we gut a water-damaged kitchen. Your office keeps operating while we remediate mold in the storage room next door. That’s not always possible given the scope of some jobs, but that’s the goal.
Physical Barriers and Plastic Sheeting
The foundation of containment is physical separation between the work area and the rest of the structure.
We use heavy contractor-grade plastic sheeting — not the thin stuff from a hardware store — secured with zip walls or tape that holds against air pressure changes. These barriers go floor to ceiling and get sealed at every edge. Doorways get double barriers with overlapping entry flaps so workers can pass through without breaking containment. Vents and returns in the work area get covered so the HVAC system can’t carry particles to the rest of the house.
Floor protection goes down before any work starts. Ram Board or similar products on hardwood, tile, and other finished floors. Plastic sheeting on carpet if we’re moving through it with equipment. Entry mats at the work area entrance to knock debris off boots.
What can happen is workers getting focused on the job and skipping the setup steps. That’s not how we work. The setup is part of the job.
Negative Air Pressure Containment
For mold remediation and contaminated water situations, standard barriers aren’t enough. We use negative air pressure containment.
Here’s how it works. We seal the work area completely, then run an air scrubber or negative air machine that exhausts air out of the containment zone to the exterior of the building. This creates lower air pressure inside the containment than outside. When pressure is lower inside, air flows inward from the clean areas rather than outward into them. Any particles that become airborne inside the containment get pulled toward the exhaust, not pushed out into your home.
The air scrubbers running this system use HEPA filtration. HEPA captures 99.97% of particles down to 0.3 microns, which is well below the size of mold spores, most bacteria, and construction dust particles. Air that exhausts outside is cleaned. Air that might infiltrate from outside the containment can’t carry contamination inward.
Lee Wallender, writing on renovation and restoration techniques, describes negative pressure containment as the industry standard for any work involving biological contamination. It’s not optional on mold jobs. It’s what separates professional remediation from someone pulling out drywall without protection.
Containment for Mold Remediation
Mold remediation requires the strictest containment because disturbing mold colonies releases enormous numbers of spores.
A single square foot of mold-colonized drywall can release millions of spores when disturbed. Without containment, those spores travel through your home and land on surfaces where they can establish new colonies given moisture and time. We’ve seen homeowners try to address small mold areas themselves and end up with mold in multiple rooms because the original area wasn’t properly contained.
Our mold containment process starts before any demolition. Full poly sheeting barriers. Negative air machines running and tested before the first piece of affected material comes out. Workers in Tyvek suits and respirators. Clean room protocols for entering and exiting containment — workers decontaminate before leaving the work zone so they don’t carry spores out on their clothing or equipment.
Remediated materials get double-bagged in heavy plastic inside the containment before being moved through the building to disposal. The bags seal before they leave the work area. That’s not overkill — that’s the IICRC standard for mold remediation work.
Containment for Contaminated Water
Category 2 and Category 3 water — also called gray water and black water — carry contaminants that make containment critical.
Category 2 water comes from sources like washing machine overflow, toilet overflow without feces, or dishwasher backup. It contains bacteria and other microorganisms that can cause illness if contacted or inhaled.
Category 3 water is the serious category. Sewage backup. Flood water from outside. Water that has been sitting long enough to support significant bacterial growth. Category 3 water carries pathogens that cause real illness, and contaminated materials can’t simply be dried — they need to be removed.
Working with contaminated water without proper containment spreads that contamination through the structure. Contaminated water wicks through porous materials quickly. It gets tracked on boots and equipment. It runs along floor systems and wall cavities. Containment barriers, combined with proper PPE for our workers, keep contamination from moving beyond the affected zone during work.
HEPA Filtration and Air Quality
Air quality inside your home during and after restoration work matters.
We run commercial-grade HEPA air scrubbers in and near work areas throughout the job. These units pull high volumes of air through multi-stage filtration — typically a pre-filter for large particles, then a HEPA filter for fine particles, sometimes an activated carbon stage for odors. They run continuously, not just when we’re actively working.
Before we pack up on any job involving mold or contaminated materials, we do a final air scrub. We let the machines run after the work is complete to bring airborne particle counts back down to normal before we remove containment. That’s the right sequence. Tear down containment before air is clean and you undo the work you just did.
Tim Carter, the builder and contractor known for his Ask the Builder resources, emphasizes that air quality management is one of the most overlooked parts of restoration and renovation work. The visual damage is obvious. The airborne contamination is invisible and gets ignored. We don’t ignore it.
Protecting Your Contents
Containment protects structure. Content protection is a separate concern.
Furniture, electronics, clothing, art, documents, and personal items in or near work areas need either removal or protection. Before work starts in any area, we assess what’s there and what needs to happen with it.
Content that needs to move:
Items directly in the work zone get moved to another area of the home. We document what we move and where it goes. Items with potential contamination exposure get assessed — some can be cleaned, some may be a total loss, and your insurance adjuster will want documentation either way.
Content that stays:
Items in adjacent areas that will remain in place get covered. Furniture gets wrapped or covered with moving blankets and poly sheeting. Electronics get particular attention because dust and moisture damage electronics even in small amounts.
Pack-out situations:
For major jobs, sometimes the right answer is a professional pack-out — removing contents from the home entirely for storage while work is done. We coordinate with pack-out companies when that’s the appropriate choice. This is common with fire and smoke jobs where smoke odor and residue make the entire home’s contents a concern.
Entry and Exit Routes
Clean entry and exit routes keep contamination from moving through your home on workers’ boots and equipment.
We establish a designated path from the exterior of the home to the work area. That path gets floor protection. Workers use that path, not other routes through the house. Equipment comes in and goes out that way.
Before entering the work area, workers change into work clothing or Tyvek suits. Before exiting containment, workers remove outer PPE inside the containment so any contamination on that clothing stays inside. Decon procedures aren’t theatrical — they work when followed properly.
Shoes or boot covers are a real issue on job sites. What can happen is a worker wearing the same boots from a moldy basement to the clean upstairs without thinking about it. We have clear protocols and we follow them. Fresh boot covers or shoe changes at the containment entrance aren’t optional on contaminated water or mold jobs.
What to Expect When We Set Up Containment
Setup takes time. On a mold job or significant water damage situation, containment establishment can take an hour or more before actual remediation work begins.
That’s not wasted time. It’s an investment that protects everything outside the work area.
You’ll see our crew bringing in poly sheeting, zip walls, tape, and machines before tools come out. That sequence is correct. Containment goes up before demolition starts, not during or after.
Once containment is established, the work inside it produces noise and sometimes smells — adhesive from tape, cleaning products, or just the smell of wet damaged materials. Negative air machines are loud. They run continuously. These are temporary conditions that go away when the job is done.
Throughout the work, you can see what we’re doing and ask questions. The containment barrier doesn’t mean we’re doing something you can’t see. We’ll show you what we’re finding and explain what we’re doing as the job progresses.
The End of the Job
When work is complete, containment comes down in the right sequence.
Final air scrub runs to bring particle counts down. Contained materials and debris have already been bagged and removed through the designated route. We do a final inspection of the contained area before barriers come down. Then we take down poly sheeting, remove floor protection, and clean the work area.
The area we worked in should be clean — not pristine, because reconstruction may still be needed, but free of debris and contamination from the restoration work itself.
Areas outside the containment should look like we were never there. That’s the goal of proper containment. When we do this right, you notice the work area and you don’t notice anything else.
Call 303-816-0068 if your property has been damaged. We’ll establish proper containment from the start and protect everything we don’t need to touch.
303-816-0068 — American Restoration — Protecting What’s Already Safe
