Document Drying and Records Recovery in the United States

On the way back to normal, nationally, vacuum freeze drying runs about $20 to $40 per cubic foot, which is roughly $25 to $50 for a standard file box.

To put this behind you, because freezing stops the clock. For a clean slate, below freezing, paper stops swelling, ink stops migrating, and microbial growth stops advancing.

As the home starts over, no, and the speed is the reason. To put this behind you, rapid blast freezing forms very small ice crystals, while slow freezing in a domestic freezer grows large ones that distort the fiber.

To put this behind you, frozen records go into a sealed chamber and the air pressure is lowered a long way. For a clean slate, at that low pressure ice turns straight into vapor instead of melting first, which is called sublimation.

As the home starts over, freezing happens the same day in most cases. As the home starts over, a chamber cycle usually runs one to three weeks, and large volumes take longer.

As the home starts over, a few damp folders can be air dried with interleaving and dry moving air, and we will tell you honestly when that is enough.

On the way back to normal, plain paper files, ledgers, bound volumes and most office records come back well.