Why Cleaning Smoke Damage Is So Difficult
If you have experienced smoke or fire damage in your Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill / Cary home contact us today. In addition to being restoration specialists, we are North Carolina licensed general contractors who can tackle any job.
Following a fire, there is a lot of cleanup and rebuilding to be done. Anything that is sufficiently damaged by flames obviously needs to be replaced outright. But many items and surfaces in the home may not appear to be very damages at all. It’s easy to assume that they can be ignored, or simply treated with a mild cleaning.
Unfortunately, this could not be further from the truth. After a fire, nearly every exposed surface through the entire house needs to be treated a cleaned thoroughly in order to prevent continuing damage, as well as the persistent smell of smoke that seems to linger forever.
The are many reasons for this process, beginning with the chemical makeup of smoke and ash. Once they mix with water they become very acidic. Not enough to instantly melt your metal appliances, but enough to slowly corrode just about every surface in your home that comes in contact with the caustic mix.
Not only does this need to be cleaned up quickly, but it needs to be cleaned up properly. Soap and water, or any other grocery store cleaner aren’t going to do the job correctly. Much of the obvious stain may disappear with enough scrubbing, the chemicals that will do the most damage will seep deep down into the floors, walls, ceilings, and any other porous surface where it will continue to eat away for weeks or months.
Once they are soaked in, they will also cause nauseating odors to fill the home. Air fresheners won’t be able to cover the smell, and opening a window only blows away the small temporarily. To fix the issues, the source of the odor needs to be eliminated, which is just as difficult as cleaning the smoke damage.
Smoke damage cleaning is, perhaps, the most complicated form of treatment for a homeowner to accomplish them. Not only does it take a thorough approach and deep remediation of nearly every surface in the building, it can only be done effectively if the areas behind the building’s walls receive treatment as well. This is a massive challenge to anyone but certified professionals, as these experts have the know-how, manpower, and equipment to complete the task properly.
In some ways smoke is a lot of dust, as it’s incredibly fine particles of ash suspended in the air, waiting to settle onto any surface it touches. But unlike dust, smoke can permanently stain surfaces, and can’t be easily wiped away with a damp cloth. It may be tempting to cover these stains with a coat of paint, but that just buries the problem, it doesn’t eliminate it.
The technicians at PRS are trained professionals that work around the clock to fix these types of issues quickly and permanently. We’ll show up fast and begin working, not just on repairing your home, but with your insurance company, too. It’s our goal to make sure that insurance will cover as much of the work as possible and to keep the homeowners out of pocket costs to a minimum.
