Project: Grey Water, Metro Print Shop

Client:  Nashville's Metropolitan General Services

Summary:  This project consisted of water removal and document restoration from Metro Nashville's Print Shop Storage Building preceding a 12" water main rupture inside the building. The Print Shop Building is Metro's picture archive facility. When the line ruptured under the Print Shop Building slab, the pressure raised the 6" slab three inches breaking the epoxy seal. This aloud the water to enter the building and flood the office and picture archive area.

Over five thousand gallons were recovered. The basement area collected most of the water. Dehumidification and force air drying techniques were utilized, and historical picture negatives were recovered, preserved, and dried.

During decontamination activities, non-porous office and architectural furnishings were HEPA vacuumed, decontaminated with an EPA D listed disinfectant, and removed for onsite storage. Effected porous office and architectural furnishings were removed, wrapped in two layers of six mil poly, and placed in a waste container for disposal. Saturated dry wall and gypsum board was removed up to one foot from the baseboard. Exposed wall support structure was decontaminated disinfected and forced air /moisture reducing techniques and dehumidification were utilizes for quick drying.

Poly containments were erected and environmental controls were introduced for the picture negative recovery. Humidity and dust was controlled to prevent the negatives from deteriorating. Picture negatives were placed in sleeves and chronologically ordered according to date and political events. When the pictures were removed from their sleeves, they were doused in a picture negative emulsion solution and hung to dry. The negatives were hung in chronological order and meticulously marked for tracking.

Fifty books containing hundreds of negative each were collected ranging from the early 1970's up through today. All the negatives were saved and are still able to reproduce quality pictures.

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