Expert Water Damage Protection Tips with Fabio Silva

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE:
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally Real Estate Show home of the guaranteed sold program, or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio. If you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596, or check us out online at Team lally.com

ATTILIO:
Our guest today is from Hawaii Water Damage Restoration, formerly known as Oahu Extraction. With over 21 years of experience in water extraction and mold remediation, he and his team have been trusted name in whole Oahu serving homeowners, property managers, insurance agents and more,

ADRIENNE:
as one of our newest business partners and an expert we trust. He’s here to share his insights on protecting your property from water damage and mold and how his team delivers top notch service across the island. Please welcome our guest, Fabio Silva,

ATTILIO:
hello, Fabio.

FABIO:
Hello. How are you guys?

ADRIENNE:
Great? Thanks for Well, welcome back. I know we’ve had you on before, and we’re excited to remind our listeners about all of the services that you guys offer. Yeah,

ATTILIO:
so go ahead.

FABIO:
We are full one stop shop for emergency services, water mitigation, water damage, mold remediation and fire restoration. We also do asbestos removal.

ATTILIO:
Do you guys do rotten teenager remediation? Like, if the they have an entitled attitude they don’t like, get off their phone. They really talking back. Will you come in remediate the teenagers? No, sorry. Parents just got to live with it. They’re going to take care of the mold and the water damage, but they’re gonna leave the teenagers behind.

ADRIENNE:
Well, let’s talk about the response time. And why is that so super, super important? Yeah, why is that being so responsive? Fabio, well,

FABIO:
first is to minimize damage, yeah, yeah, especially on the water side. As fast as you can extract the water, when you have, like, the water supply burst on your refrigerator, or you have your dishwasher overflowed so. Something like that. So the first thing to do is like, call our emergency service company if you have your living living room flooded or any other room of your house, yeah, and get the water extracted and immediately set up equipment to dry, yeah.

ADRIENNE:
So what happens Fabio, if, like, the water sits or you don’t act on it right away. What’s, what’s some examples that you guys have seen or come across? Yeah, how

ATTILIO:
does it get worse the longer they wait? Well,

FABIO:
with, yeah, with the weather in Hawaii, you know, it’s easy. You know, you have hot, you have, you know, heat, a lot of heat, humidity. Yeah, some it rains. It rains a little, it rains a lot. You have a lot of, you know, vegetation, everything you know, affects the, you know, and the mold growth. Yeah, I was actually water and, yeah, right. The insurance request that the be taking the issue being taken care of within 72 hours maximum. Otherwise they will, you know, they will say you’re neglecting the property. Yeah, you deny, yeah, they will deny your claim,

ADRIENNE:
right? So, so Fabio, what if, like, have you come across any kind of situations where maybe, like, the homeowner was on vacation and it was sitting for more than the 72 hours? Will they

ATTILIO:
make an exception if they were in Belize or something, or Costa Rica for like, two weeks? Oh, make sure your friend, you know what? Get a house sitter, then, yeah, just someone to check in, right? Nothing, not somebody, not some teenager falling asleep on the couch eating up all your snacks, but somebody that actually go walk around, by the way,

FABIO:
or left the bathtub running water. Yeah, yeah, when you come home, the water is all over, yeah? We encounter some Yeah. Sorry, I

ADRIENNE:
was gonna say that that’s that’s good to know, because I did not know that. That you know, if 72 hours, you got to get it taken care of within 72 hours, otherwise you cannot do the insurance claim, regardless of what you know you were doing. If you’re on vacation, obviously you weren’t on purpose. You weren’t being negligent on purpose. It just, you know that circumstance, you can,

ATTILIO:
you can, it’s Fabio. They kind of call the insurance company, and then you’re like, oh, yeah, how about a leak on my house and all this mold and stuff and all this water damage, then they’re gonna say, Oh, when did the leak start? Oh, 1984 I just haven’t gotten around. Well,

FABIO:
there’s, yeah, there is exceptions to this rule, okay, this is in case of you have a lot of water, yeah, you know it’s visible. You’re it’s coming out of the garage door, yeah, things like that. And sometimes they’re not home, there’s nothing that your neighbor can do Sure. No, if you don’t, never left your phone number with him when you went on a trip, how he’s going to contact you? Yeah, that’s, that’s good things to do, but, you know, there’s, there’s leaks that you don’t notice, like, let’s see, it’s intermittent leak. Yeah, that’s, it’s a small leak, you know, just dripping, you know, a little bit every day. But that water is, is if you’re trading on your drywall, on your flooring, and you didn’t see, you know, and after, like, visible, yeah, three or four years, you decided to take your refrigerator or for, you know, appliance, or you move your refrigerator for a deep clean and then that’s so in those cases, they will open exception because, you know, there’s no way that you can see water. Yeah, is that exactly? That’s why we sometimes people smell a rotten smell, or, you know, like, I use gym towel and but they don’t know. They don’t know. And then, you know, that’s we use infrared cameras to detect the moisture. Yes, inside the drywall or in your ceiling or in your flooring, it will show if it’s it’s humid more than normal or not.

ATTILIO:
Yeah, because typically, people are seeing like the drywall is swelling, the mold, the baseboards are swelling little bit, but maybe you don’t see any of that, and you’re like, Wow, this smells like the men’s locker room at 24 hour fitness. What’s going on? Not as well. Have you guys come with the infrared gun

FABIO:
Exactly, exactly. And then when you, when you scan with the infrared, you see you have a photo behind the wall. You can see that awesome.

ADRIENNE:
So Fabio, it sounds like you know you you know a thing or two about dealing with insurance claims and insurance companies. Maybe. Yeah, talk about, talk about navigating that. And how are you guys? Yeah, how your company assists with those insurance companies?

FABIO:
Yeah, we assist our customer in filing a claim with their own insurance company, and we provide 100% of the serve the water mitigation up front, and we submit our estimates to the insurance company directly. So we do direct a bill, so we take care of our customer from start to finish. On the repair side, you know when the customers receive the whatever is damaged, like see, for instance, you need to replace your flooring, your living room flooring. So they will, there’s a separate, it’s a separate building on that one. So in that we will bill also to the insurers for the repair side. They usually pay, you know, they pay fast your claim so you’ll be able to get your

ATTILIO:
house restored, and the contractor wants to get paid right away to like, oh, do that, yeah? We

FABIO:
always, we all. We are very flexible, yeah, and we work with our customer, you know, because it’s not a situation that you you’re like for your scheduling. You know, you don’t schedule a disaster. How are you going to schedule that? And so at

ATTILIO:
2pm I wish you could do that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

FABIO:
So you know, like, we we understand the situation in the stressful time, you know, in the life of the owner, yeah, and we are very cooperative. We understandable. So we have experience. You know how it works? Yeah, sometimes. Well, take a little bit longer, but we know how it works. Well, we

ATTILIO:
have only 13 more questions. I’m just kidding. We only got two more.

ADRIENNE:
Well, no, I mean, I want to also touch on too. So yeah, we’ve been talking a lot about water, water, but you guys also deal with other situations, like fire, fire. So tell us a little bit about that. How do you how do you mitigate that situation? Yeah,

FABIO:
well, yeah, that’s, that’s the that’s a hard one. It’s the deal with fire. It’s always, you know, trauma. So people lost their properties. It’s more complicated. Sometimes there’s more part of the house, sometimes, you know, only a section of your cabinets, things like that. But it’s still situation, but we are you guys being able to navigate the rough waters. You guys

ATTILIO:
have solutions so that their house doesn’t smell like a burnt hot dog for the next five years, right?

FABIO:
Exactly? Oh, 100% Yeah. So

ADRIENNE:
just for our listeners, we are. We’re live streaming on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and playing some of the videos that are on Fabio’s website. Yes, and it’s just highlighting all the different things that they do to how many years of experience to bring back your home, especially after the fire that it’s like there’s a lot of different things that needs to be addressed when bringing restoring your property. So, yeah, you can tune in there and see some of the pictures and the restoration journey.

ATTILIO:
Last question for you, Fabio, mold remediation, Fire Restoration Are you know, it’s critical services that in Hawaii’s climate. What are some preventative measures homeowners can take to avoid needing your services? Let’s talk about like, just, just like flooding and mold. What are some preventative things that homeowners can

FABIO:
do? Yeah, well, it’s always check your, you know, check your shut off valves, make sure they’re working. Once in a while, you know, gotta grab a fresh a flashlight. Go under your kitchen sink under, you know, check under your refrigerator. You know, check your attic, check your ceiling for, you know, any mushrooms growing, or you have any water stains, or anything like that. You know, once in a while, you know, check your house for these possible things, yes,

ATTILIO:
yep. And you guys, what’s been some of the more significant advancements or changes in your industry that have improved the way you serve your clients? And that’s our last question, I promise.

FABIO:
Well, technology, yeah, technology, technology, it’s able, we’re able to monitor our moisture readings from the shop after we service like a multiple unit. Of the building, we were able to or house. We were able to check on our drivers for the ETA on the emergency call through GPS. Yeah,

ATTILIO:
you

FABIO:
know, there are many, you know, many it’s like. It’s not like used to be when I started. You have to go and buy the book or the map on the 711 remember that quick nightmare to find you know address? Yeah, it was like, today it’s like, it’s easier, thanks, God. I used to

ATTILIO:
work construction from Uncle, and I know you guys still use the voice system. You suppose Adrienne, what’s the boy system?

ADRIENNE:
What’s the boy system? Hey,

ATTILIO:
boy, get over there. Clean that up. Girl, girl, get over there. Clean that up. No, I know that. You guys, safety is, is always number one with your team. You know, a lot of the stuff in motor remediation and all of that, you can’t You’re not just you have to be certified. You got to follow EPA guidelines. You cannot be just doing stuff, whatever. And so we recommend for you homeowners, either in this situation, get it done right. Don’t do it right away. Don’t shortcut it with your your cousin’s uncle, who when you know just gonna come through and play beach, bring in the professionals, because it could, you know, going cheap could cost you big time money down the road. And

ADRIENNE:
Fabio, I know that. You know, we talked about like, getting it done immediately. Yeah, so late. Let’s see that this disaster happens at one in the morning. Do you guys have you guys come on team that can come out and take care of things

FABIO:
for yes, we are 24/7 365, nice. Yeah, like we do after hours and weekends. 24/7 Yeah,

ATTILIO:
yes, even when Janet Jackson concert was in town, they still went. So you guys are gonna forget the name, but just remember Hawaii Water Damage Restoration. Hawaii Water Damage Restoration, you guys can Google it. I’m sure it’ll take you right to their website. Fabio Silva is the owner, and with years and years of experience, the website

ADRIENNE:
Hawaii Water Damage restoration.com Hawaii

ATTILIO:
Water Damage restoration.com but I’m sure if you Google it, Hawaii Water Damage Restoration, you guys should come up. And you guys have been doing this for a long time. Yeah. How long have you personally been doing this? Fabio,

FABIO:
20 years. A little bit more from what I remember. Yeah, I started as a cleaning carpet section.

ATTILIO: 
I thought you were gonna say I started as a model for the cover books of romance novels. You know who? Fabio? Fabio, romance starring Water Restoration, alrighty.

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you, Fabio, for for being on the show and sharing with our listeners a little bit about your company and everything that you guys provide. And let’s give his phone number real quick to you guys write this down. In case you have any kind of disaster, you can give Fabio a call at 3306212,

ATTILIO: 
say that one more one more time. 3306212, just write down water emergency. Put it on the sticky note. Now save it in your phone. That means like, oh, I don’t know what a bathroom is, not that kind of water emergency. That means like, leak,

ADRIENNE: 
yes, or fire, leaks. Fire, blood, mold.

ATTILIO: 
He’s working on an updated technology, though, on Rotten teenagers, but that’s gonna come out next year. Work in Progress. Work in Progress. Alrighty, thank you, Fabio, thank you. All right, thank

FABIO: 
you guys for having me.

ADRIENNE: 
We’ll

ATTILIO: 
have you on again. Thank you. Thank you. Alrighty. Aloha. Bye, bye.

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