I have a big fire issue, smoke damage in many units of an apt, O3 generators are known but out put a poison 03, what types of soaps help that you wash walls with, as I have heard some soaps clean but dont help for smoke, Im just talking about cleaning minor areas now and leaving the big stuff to pros.
In Chicago , maybe 200,000 damage
And that is all I know...
Jeff
Nearly ten years ago I smoke damaged a house, my own house.
Meant to turn off a simmering pot of split pea soup but instead turned it up full blast on the way out the door with arms filled with stuff to put in the car.
Dropped the stuff in the car & went to 1-1/2 hour walk.
As we approached the house..... "yum! something means good!" As we got closer, "something smells burnt!"
When I got to front door I realized that the source of the smell was our house. I opened the front door to find a house filled with smoke, well actually only the top 2'. From ceiling down 2' was a thick acrid smoke, charred ham hock & split peas. I held my breath, ran in, stove off the stove & brought out the covered pan.
Ventilated the house with box fan in the front door with the backside sliders open. The next day, all the drapes got taken away by Coit & the walls (at least the topmost 2') got cleaned with TSP.
After the initial ventilation the smell was bearable but still sickeningly sweet. Getting the drapes out, cleaned & not reinstalled solved a great deal of the smoke issue. The TSP wash down got rid of a bunch more of the smell. At this point the smell was, not gone, but pretty.
The two things that finished the job; Fabreeze & time. I sprayed surfaces (mostly the ceiling & furniture) every day for about a week. After two weeks there was barely a trace of the smell.
This happen in SoCal so airing the place out every day was doable & it didn't have to be kept closed up due to cold weather.
cheers Bob
ransley wrote the following:
There are cleaning companies to do that sort of cleanup in addition to cleaning up bloody crime scenes. Your insurance company probably covers that. Check the phone book or google - chicago fire scene cleanup
What the pros do, is remove and clean all soft stuff, like sofas clothes, carpeting etc. Much wouldnt be worth the work of cleaning, overstuffed furtiture is a waste, the smoke permates the entire thing.
Then demo anything damaged by the smoke or fire, like walls floors etc.
Then scrub EVERYTHING with REAL TSP!!!
Now the odor will be less but still there:(
seal all painted surfaces with bin or kilz oil based primer. you actually seal the odor in, since it cant be washed off.
then paint normally.
by the way this is the exact same procedure used to mitigate pet and human urine, and all sorts of other nasties. it works but must be done totally and completely.....
like if you have a wall open you must seal all the underlying surfaces, studs etc. of course toss all contaminated insulation.
i suggest you wait for the insurance adjuestor to see things before doing much of anything and hopefully your insured,, the fire restoration company gets paid by the hour, they tend to do a metelcious job......
if your insured and a fire damaged area needs renovated, insurance will likely HAVE to pay for code issues like GFCIs
yeah i went thru this with some friends, 140K damage to their home.
They have techno-gizmos available for laptops, purses, convicts, and little kids, whereby if the item is more than 'X' feet from the person or droid with the controller, an alarm goes off. I wonder how hard that would be to implement on a stove? If the person who turned it on (and has the gizmo in their pocket) wanders more than 'Y' feet away, the stove turns itself off, 'failing safe' in risk analysis terms. A virtual deadman switch.
If one of you out there markets this and makes money, I get 2% of the profits. All the regulars here on AHR are witnesses.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.