Step 1: Know What You’re Dealing With
- Identify the type of fire: Every fire has a personality and damage typeof its own. High oxygen fires tend to leave behind drier smoke residue that is easier to remove than the wet, smoky residue that a low oxygen fire gives off.
- Safety first: Smoke is highly corrosive and can ruin anything with enough time and strength. In most cases, smoke from a home or commercial fire is not coming just from burnt wood, but other items like plastics, leathers and other chemicals.
3.Time is of the Essence: The sooner you start the restoration process, the lower the level of damage to the property will be.
Understanding this, we are always prepared to begin cleanup immediately upon being called out to a new smoke damaged property.
Step 2: The Removal Process
How you clean is as important as how fast you clean. There is a wrong way and a right way to clean smoke damage and, if done incorrectly, a structure can be tainted with unpleasant odors forever.
1.Get rid of the source of the odor: Items deemed to be total loss or cleaned and deodorized offsite should be removed from the building as soon as possible. This step alone will mitigate a significant amount of the smoke odor.
2.Clean everything left behind: Once all non-salvageable building materials are removed, clean! We will use a wet sponge for hard, porous materials and a dry sponge for hard, less porous materials.
3.Use an odor counteractant. We always use both a thermal fogger and a hydroxyl treatment, even if insurance doesn’t cover it. We’ve learned the hard (i.e. expensive) way not to cut corners when it comes to smoke cleanup.
4.Seal salvageable surfaces that are scorched but not being removed, like framing. Between thermal fogging and ozone treatment, we seal all smoke damaged framing that is not being removed.
