What You Need To Know About Smoke Damage
A fire at any property is devastating. Even if every occupant makes it out unscathed, and the fire gets extinguished quickly, property owners are still looking at a mountain of cleanup to restore their properties to a safe and usable condition once again. How are smoke and fire damages remedied to restore a property? Every job is unique.
Not All Smoke Damages Are Created Equal
For most property owners, smoke is “smoke”, regardless of what may have caused the fire or what may have burned in the process. However, not all smoke is the same. Knowing what kind of smoke damage is present is one of the first major tasks professional teams take on in order to best begin a restoration project.
A property that is made primarily of wood will see smoke damage high in soot and organic materials. If a great deal of natural material burned in the fire, penetrating ash may be present on standing surfaces and belongings. On a property that contains a lot of plastic, the smoke damage will be accompanied by a sticky “gummy” residue attaching to all surfaces. If a fire begins in the kitchen, a home or business owner may see a great deal of greasy brown smoke stains in the area.
Knowing what kind of smoke damage is present helps restoration teams to approach cleanup in the most effective fashion. The cleanup process that works best for a protein kitchen fire will be different from the methods used to clean up after a fire in a log cabin.
What Does Smoke Damage Do?
If a home has a fire in the kitchen, homeowners may be surprised to find that belongings in their bedrooms on the other side of the home are affected. Walls, furnishings, personal belongings, carpeting – nothing in a property is immune from the damage that smoke can cause.
Even within the first minutes to hours after a fire has been extinguished, soot can cause permanent staining. While some belongings may be able to be wiped down and cleaned fairly easily, others will be more challenging, and some property may not be able to be recovered at all. The longer a property owner waits for restoration after a fire, the more property is likely to be lost.
If a property sits for several days to a week with smoke damage, irreversible damage begins to set in on a wide scale. Linens, drapery, and upholstery may not be able to be recovered at this point. If more than a week goes by without restoration, permanent damage may set in on surfaces like windows, mirrors, grout, and other hard surfaces. At this point, the damage will go beyond soot staining, and corrosive debris will begin to create pits or dimpling even on tough areas like tile or glass.
Smoke damage restoration requires specialized equipment, careful processes, and a knowledge of different types of smoke damage and how they need to be addressed individually for the best possible results.