How Can Fire Smoke Damage Affect My Holmdel Home?

4/19/2020 (Permalink)

Call SERVPRO to handle the smoke damage in your home to make it seem, “Like it never even happened.”

Fire Smoke Damage Can Cause Discoloration and Etching of Affected Surfaces and Unpleasant Odors in Holmdel

A fire can ruin some building materials and contents of your property, causing irreversible destruction. The flames can move from one item to another, burning them down. The heat a fire produces can radiate and cause nearby items to crack, melt, or even shutter. Once firefighters extinguish the fire, you have to deal with smoke damage.

How can fire smoke damage affect my home?
If you do not attend to fire smoke damage in your Holmdel residence, it can devastate its contents and the structures. That’s the reason why you need to clean up smoke and soot fast after a fire. Smoke may act as an acid and eat away at different materials if you do not clean it up.

One way that smoke can ruin your home is getting into small crevices and cracks because the particles are so fine. Smoke particles can remain undetected for a long time, and they can leave a lingering smoke odor that lasts for months. Structural destruction in the affected areas involves burned materials like countertops, cabinets, and furnishings. If the fire burned for a lengthy period or many materials burned, odor problems are more significant. Hot air rises, and for that reason, smoke damage commonly occurs in the following places:

    •    The areas above where the fire blazed – If no strong currents flowed through the house, the most significant smoke residue usually concentrates on the ceiling above where the fire started.
    •    Outside windows and walls – Cold air usually sinks below the warmer air, and this opens up a path for the smoke to travel to exterior walls and windows. Even though a fire concentrated in the middle of a room, it is common to find a lot of smoke residue on exterior walls.
    •    Surrounding environment – Your house has enclosed spaces, decorations, carpets, furniture, walls, and other features that interact with smoke. Smoke damage can occur in the seemingly enclosed spaces like closed closets, dresser drawers, and wall cavities, which seem closed off. These areas might have more soot than the areas where the fire blazed.
    •    On blinds and behind drapes – A considerable difference in temperature usually occurs between an affected room and the space behind drapes. Naturally, smoke moves to cooler areas, and it is not unusual to find more smoke residue behind drapes than on surfaces facing the room. Similarly, pull shades and Venetian blinds usually attract smoke residue more than surrounding surfaces.

After a fire strikes your house, it is best to call a professional smoke damage restoration firm such as SERVPRO to assess the destruction and come up with a mitigation plan to handle the fire-related damage.

Is it possible to salvage some items?
Yes, you may be able to salvage some items if they are not severely burned. One of the things we consider is cost since some items cost more to salvage, and it is better to replace them. Our restorers can determine which items to clean, replace, or discard.

How do restorers eliminate smoke damage?
Our team locates smoke residues by scrutinizing the affected area. We begin the inspection close to the source of the fire and determine how far smoke traveled through the building.

Our SERVPRO team can ventilate your home thoroughly and properly to allow some smoke particles to leave and prevent them from settling into other items. We can also remove most of the debris and clean all surfaces or areas where the destruction took place.

Our restorers can also use order neutralizing products to remove smoke orders from the house. We can eliminate the smell from your home by removing and cleaning affected items. We can also use suitable products to clean the building materials of your house to eradicate the smell.

Cleaning items with smoke odor

Curtains and upholstery
Our crew can use specialized tools and techniques to eliminate smoke particles from curtains and upholstery. Our specialists can decide which materials are cost-effective to clean. Regular vacuum cleaners can cause more destruction by pushing soot and smoke particles deeper into the material.

Wooden furniture
It is tricky to clean wood furniture. If you do not use suitable cleaning agents, you may end up stripping the varnish and stain. Some cleaning products can also cause the metal frame to rust. Our team knows which cleaning agents are suitable for each material.

Hardwood flooring
Hardwood flooring is porous, and this means that smoke particles can get nestled in it easily. In severe cases, it might be necessary to refinish or replace the floor. If the damage is not critical, our team can mop and deodorize the hardwood floor.

Household textiles
Smoke odor can remain in carpets, clothing, and drapes unless it is deodorized properly. Our SERVPRO team can use deodorizing processes that break up the smoke molecules to eradicate the smells.

Removing smoke odor from your home
The heat of a fire can cause the pores in the walls to expand, and they can fill with smoke. Once the fire is extinguished, the home cools, and the pores close, trapping the smoke smell in between the walls of your house. When the weather is warm, the pores open and release the trapped smoke smell. We can eliminate this odor by using thermal fogging equipment. Thermal foggers heat the deodorizer and spray it in the form of a fog. The deodorizer can reach even the spots that are tough to reach. It attaches to the smoke particles and absorbs them, therefore neutralizing the odors. We may also spray an odor counteractant on structural surfaces or use a duct sealer to seal exposed structural timber.

Saving time is vital when dealing with fire smoke damage. By acting fast, you can prevent permanent destruction. Call SERVPRO of Aberdeen / Holmdel at (732) 290-3170 to handle the smoke damage in your home to make it seem, “Like it never even happened.”

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