Measurement boxes save valuable time for Ocab and customers

Published 2022-08-11

Ocab has been around since 1964 and is a nationwide company with broad expertise in remediation, moisture and the built environment. Since its inception, the business concept has been to help customers save value in the event of damage caused mainly by fire and water. Ocab is constantly exploring new technologies and methods. For some time now, around 100 measuring boxes from the Celsicom Easy Connect monitoring system have been tested in the Stockholm area.

The opportunities that come with the product are fully in line with Ocab’s strategic focus on digitalization and sustainability.

– We see great potential in the new meters. They can contribute to savings in terms of time, costs and the environment, which is of course very interesting for us and our clients,” says Thomas Karhu, production manager in dehumidification at Ocab in Stockholm.

What are the main clients and most common assignments?
– Insurance companies are our biggest customers, with fire and water damage being the most common.

Ocab’s mission is to ‘save the world’. What does it mean?
– Basically, it means that through quick and effective action we can save economic values and possessions of high personal value that cannot be replaced. But there is an additional perspective: cleaning up and dehumidifying instead of disposing or demolishing is saving existing resources, which is both sustainable and cost-effective. Preserving rather than throwing away and demolishing is in everyone’s interest and we are actively working on new and improved methods that make this increasingly possible. Specifically, we can dry the structure of a water-damaged floor at a fraction of the cost of demolishing it.

What are the most common types of moisture damage?
– The most common moisture damage today occurs in kitchens where there are usually more machines installed than in the past. In businesses, coffee machines and water machines are often the ones that start leaking. In private homes, water damage is caused by dishwashers, ice machines for freezers and poorly drained sink pipes. Waterproofing damage in bathrooms is also a major problem.

How to prevent water damage?
– Above all, it is about complying with the laws that exist. If you do this, there will be less water damage. Specifically, the sink cabinets should be made watertight by inserting a watertight base into the cabinets. This makes it easy to see if water is accumulating inside the cabinet and prevents the water from running under the cabinet and damaging the structure. Furthermore, there should be no pipe connections in walls and floor structures, only solid pipes.

What is your background in the water damage industry?
– I have been working on this since 1996. I am a trained builder and have then further educated myself in techniques for moisture measurement in new constructions and existing environments.

What makes the job interesting and exciting?
– It’s a varied job and there is always something new to develop. It never gets boring!

What are the technological developments in the sector?
– It has been rather stagnant. In recent years, there has been more environmental thinking and the production of more energy-efficient dehumidifiers. In the case of monitoring drying processes, remote sensing technology has been available but has been less effective and complicated to install.

What made you discover the Celsicom boxes?
– Stefan Carlson from Celsicom came here and showed me one of the new meters, which made me very interested. The boxes are a great fit for us and our industry. They are also easy for our technicians to install. No weirdness at all, just as it should be.

What are the 100 measurement boxes you have bought used for?
– We use them exclusively for dehumidification of water damage. We have installed all measurement boxes and are now fully testing this. If the outcome is good, we will definitely continue to use them.

What is the best thing about Celsicom Easy Connect boxes?
– It is just as the name says. They are super simple. It was just a matter of scanning and we had the measurement boxes uploaded to the server. The only thing you need to do beyond scanning the meter is to enter the damage address for each meter.

How do measurement boxes make your job easier?
– During dehumidification in a water damage, we normally need to perform so-called intermediate measurements to know the status of the drying process. We can now save that trip and time as the status is quickly checked via mobile phone. The customer gets quick feedback by sending them a screenshot. We can also check that a dehumidifier is up and running and working properly by simply following the curves of the drying process – directly on the mobile phone.

Does Celsicom Easy Connect enable you to get more business?
– Yes, I think so. If we see that the result of using the Celsicom boxes is what we want, it should free up many hours for our humidity technicians, which in turn means that we can take on more jobs with the same number of technicians.

Finally, is there any technical solution you would like to see in the future?
– Being able to “invite” customers to see the status of their items would be a good feature. It would also be an advantage to be able to control and switch off the electricity on our dehumidifiers via Celsicom Easy Connect.

– A dehumidifier that is running may give wrong values when a final measurement is made and therefore the dehumidifier should be switched off three days before the measurement. If it can be switched off remotely, we would further reduce the need for transportation, which in turn is an important aspect of our sustainability work.