I had an apartment building fire with extensive smoke damage affecting many apartments with smoke damage only. I have been told by many contractors that when it is near 90f outside and humid the smoke smell will re occur if it is not removed now. It can get to 100f, 85% humidity here, and there is no central air so I have prime weather for re activating the dormant smoke smell. I have been told the high heat periods are when the tenants will complain and move.
My question is does smoke that travels through the walls come back into the next apartments through the openings, and outlets , walls? Do any of you have direct fire , smoke damage experiance, and have any ideas on to how far a rebuild has to go? Are there any Fire Pro guys out there? . The job keeps looking worse!
I dont want the insurance co to cut me short!! Does anyone have actual fire- apartment- smoke - experiance here, With the building open now, it will be July 2012 before I know if this years work was enough to combat the smoke damage.
I had some personal experience, but that was over 50 years ago. Yes, the smell can come back. Cleaning technology has improved though, and they should be able to make it undetectable.
You also need a good insurance adjuster. They get 5% of your total claim, but can get you a lot more money that you can negotiate yourself. I know of two examples where the insurance company offered little, but the adjuster got lots for detail work, such as the cleaning you will need. Restaurant fire: offer $24,000 adjuster settlement $120,000 Industrial fire: Ins Co offer $1.2 million adjuster settlement $3 million+
Helped gut a friends fire damaged home. Its really impossible to scrub out the smell of smoke, tobacco smoke or urine it aalways comes back in moist weather.
All you can do is seal it in!
In the fire damaged areas gut and clean seal EVERYTHING with bin or kilz primer sealer. Studs, framing the works. New insulation.
Then do the drywall work etc. Prime walls with that same bin or kilz.
Sand and refinish floors use OUTDOOR POLYURETHANE, seal odors in, cant scrub out odors.
You basicaly do the kilz bin thing thru entire building.
Insurance should pay for bring fire damaged areas up to code, GFCIs, insulation etc, you can make out on these.
The fire restoration companies are a rip off, they charge unreal prices for nothing.
Toss all clothe covered furnishings they arent worth the effort! The smell will never leave, unless you get them totally reupholstered. For most modern sofas etc its cheaper to buy new
And they're sneaky MFs. I wrecked my bike. Took it in for estimates, which were around $600. Adjuster sent me a check for $180. I wrote VOID on it, and sent it back. They ended up paying the $600. Once you endorse that check, it's case closed. Period.
As ransley is the LANDLORD he and his insurance coverage is only concerned with rebuilding and restoring the structure to its legally required condition to be used as rental property...
Tenants are responsible for insuring the contents of their units (their furniture, clothing, small appliances, etc.) which are not provided by the landlord...
The tenant's claims to their insurers for any damages to their property is totally separate from ransley's loss and damage claims for the building itself...
Well ransley the question here is whether you want the work done right so you will never have any complaints in the future, or you choose to go along with only what your insurance will cover and deal with any issues that come up later on by yourself out-of-pocket once the claim has been settled...
Umm... As far as my fire damage experience goes, it is limited to commercial buildings... Complete stripping of any sheetrock in the fire/heavy smoke damaged areas and any carpeting which had contact with the odor and/or run off water from the fire fighting efforts spoil it...
How many units in the building ? How many effected by the damage ?
If you are opening up the walls, that might open up a can of worms... Would the electrical be up to current code ? Plumbing ? Would you have to install sprinkler protection (not sure what your local codes are)...
I assume your occupancy certificate was revoked due to the fire damage for at least several of the worst damaged units if not the entire building...
The questions you should be asking your local AHJ is "What do I need to do to pass inspection and get new certificates of occupancy?" rather than what you should be going back and forth with your insurance company over... Prioritize the work by repairing the less damaged units so you can get some rental revenue back ASAP, but in order to do that you need to know what the scope of your work will be as far as what the AHJ is going to require, not what your insurance company proposes you should be compensated for...
You are either going to be spending your own money to get the project going and battling with your insurer via an adjuster to get compensated or you will be getting payouts in increments for work specifically approved by the insurance company... Fighting to include work being required by the AHJ that the insurance company debates whether or not it should be covered by the loss because the building has not been upgraded over the years prudently to keep up with the changes in the code requirements...
As far as the smoke smell coming back -- what are the floors made of ? Wood should be sanded and resealed with exterior polyurethane like others have suggested... Carpets and padding should be discarded and replaced, the sub-floor surface under any carpeting should be sealed...
The concept is encapsulation the same with mold/water damage issues...
If you are concerned about the smells which are trapped inside the walls the only way to prevent that from being an issue is to gut the walls, paint anything structural which you will not remove and replace to encapsulate any odors which have been deposited and then rebuild the walls...
If the building is very old, this will give you an unprecedented opportunity to upgrade things which you would never have done under normal circumstances -- if you are able to access any capital to reinvest in your apartment building now is the time to upgrade electrical, rewire rooms so you can control wall outlets via a switch loop, install better telephone, cable and internet facilities which your tenants can utilize... Does each individual unit have its own water shut off valves so you can do work in one unit without shutting down the water to the entire building ? You can add sprinkler protection if your building doesn't have it now, every wall cavity can be insulated with mineral wool insulation adding more passive fire protection and sound deadening between the units and even rooms within the same unit... Through this disaster you are being given an opportunity to do a lot of things to bring your building into the modern era that most property owners would never dream of doing to a fully rented apartment house... It all depends on whether you can access funds and how thorough you want to be in making sure there will be no further issues down the road... I mean if your tenants are displaced and rent elsewhere during the repair work, would you be informing the new tenants that there was fire damage and that the building wasn't gutted and fully repaired to ensure no smells or mold would occur in the future from that disaster ? How long do you want to keep making that disclosure before you can say you fully rebuilt the interiors of the effected units ? It isn't something you can just paint Kilz over and walk away from especially if it is an older building...
How could you know how every insurance company will] handle damage claims to all real estate. They certainly could just offer a single check as settlement for the whole thing, especially for damage that is well defined and limited to one area.
Yes, they may, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a vaild point in being careful before you cash any check or sign anything and understand what it means.
Assume every unit that got smoke will need to be completely repainted, carpet replaced, wood floors resealed. The sooner you have someone start ventilating them the better. And get the fire damaged materials out as soon as possible.
*The short answer is yes. Smoke will travel through all penetrations and openings. Many many years ago I did a short stint with an electrical contractor who specialized in insurance work. It was almost all fire jobs and I think that smell still lingers in my nose. The good news is that after a complete cleanup and everything is replaced or sealed, you would never know that a fire took place. I don't know how you would get the smell out of insulation except for replacement. Wood and drywall can be painted, but even the wall switches and electrical outlets will smell of smoke. I'm thinking that you would need to open up one side of a wall, remove and dispose of the insulation, paint the inside of the wall studs and drywall, install new insulation and close up the one side with new drywall.
In the meantime, I know it's cold outside, but open the windows a little and start airing the place out. It will be better to work in if some of the smell is gone.
Unless you plan on washing and painting the inside of all your duct work (or replacing), there will always be a "possibility" for a smoke- like smell to return.
From a financial standpoint, Seal as much as you can like the electrical outlets, woodwork and etc., clean and paint everything you can. There are Fire Restoration companies that can give you more advice and what to use.
Umm... Because, with damages to a building quite a lot of damage can be concealed within walls where it is not immediately visible to inspectors -- the settlement offer on a car or vehicle is take it or leave it -- you can keep your vehicle with a salvage title but that is determined by the insurance company...
Buildings are worth much more and unless it is was a total loss incident you wouldn't have one final settlement amount offered in the beginning...
In order to engage contractors to begin repairs to the building they need a down payment for retainer -- unlike with auto damage repair which is payable on delivery of the repaired vehicle...
So you would get an initial payment to get you started with the repair work with a real estate property damage claim... That is an insurance industry standard practice... What, did you think they would send out a check for $500,000 a few weeks after the fire to cover your claim in full ?
Only a trifle. And the fire was elsewhere so this is just how long the wood smelled.
Long ago, I came across a 6' wide, 6' high booksshelf that was badly buurned on one side and someone burned on the other (on the backboard
80 square inches of iirc perforated masonite and one side 40 square inches of 1" wood.) I went into the hardware store a few feet away, bought a saw, cut it in half and took the good half home. It smelled of smoke for 3 to 9 months**, the best I can recall, but less and less of course, and after it stopped smelling hot and humid weather didn't bring the small back.
**I'm sure it would have been longer if I had put my nose up to the burnt wood, but I'm only going by what I noticed when I came in the house.
Maybe I should add that I did nothing to the burnt wood that was left to get rid of the smell. I didn't expect it to last so long, and I don't think I wanted to spend time scraping off the ash and charcoal.
It depends on whose fault the fire was. I doubt it was the fault of all the tenants or a group of them. More likely one of them, or lightning, or much to the disgrace of this newsgroup, possibly Mr. ransley.
If they have insurance but the insurance company may well go after whoever is at fault, especially if it is the owner of the building.
The insurance company likely won't settle for his assumption. Either they have to say it, or he has to get someone else to say it, or he has to get one of those insurance adjuters to negotiate it.
And they may pay only the cost of depreciated carpeting, which is less than what he'll likely have to pay for replacement. They'll probably send an adjuster quickly, but he should talk to the adjuster. If he rips up carpeting he could have kept, he'll have to come up with part or all of the money to replace it.
I agree about the adjuster, the co I am using is doing that. Im just worried about how the smoke traveled inside the walls and floors to different apartments and if it can come back through the walls and outlets etc.
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