Structural drying
The equipment left behind in a wet house looks like a lot of fans, and that description is close enough to be misleading. Two different machines are doing two different jobs, and running one without the other moves the water around instead of removing it.
What the two machines actually do
Air movers push air across wet surfaces. That air picks up moisture from the material and carries it into the room — which is useful only if something then takes the moisture out of the room air. That something is the dehumidifier. Without it, the water leaves the floor and settles on the coldest surface it can find, which is often inside a wall cavity where nobody is looking.
This is why a homeowner who sets up household fans and opens the doors sometimes ends up with a mould problem in a room that was never wet.
Drying is finished when the readings say so
A dry reference is taken from the same material in the same building, somewhere the water never reached. The wet area is dried until it matches that reference. Not until the surface feels dry, and not until a given number of days have passed — those are both ways of guessing.
Readings should be written down daily, with the location noted. Closing a wall before the assembly behind it has reached the reference is the single decision that turns a water loss into a mould problem several months later, and on this coast the delay is long enough that the two events rarely get connected.
The same job is not the same length in every city on this site
A wall opened in Simi Valley in August is working with hot, dry air and will reach its reference quickly. The same wall in the Sand Section of Manhattan Beach in June is working against an overnight marine layer that keeps indoor humidity high, and it will take longer — sometimes considerably longer. Redondo, Long Beach near the shoreline, El Segundo and Culver City sit between those two extremes.
A schedule quoted before anyone has been in the building is a schedule based on the average job rather than on this one. Ask what the target reading is and how it will be recorded; the answer tells you whether the plan is measured or assumed.
The rest of the work
Where this sits
What decides the size of a job, why a drying schedule runs on readings rather than on days, and what to establish before equipment arrives: water damage restoration across the Los Angeles basin.