What Does Fire Damage Restoration Entail?

8/26/2020 (Permalink)

Call our experts after you experience a fire disaster, we have training in fire & smoke restoration, odor control, upholstery & fabric cleaning.

Our SERVPRO Technicians Cover Every Corner When Dealing With Fire Damage In Your Home.

Fire Damage Remediation Services in Wilmington, Like SERVPRO, Remove Harmful Soot Residues from Various Surfaces, Neutralize Unpleasant Odors, and Reconstruct Fire-Damaged Structural Elements and Objects.

When fire impacts your Wilmington area home, it damages it in specific, predictable ways. In general, depending on the kinds of materials burned, how oxygenated the fire is, and how long it lasts, fire harms your residence in the following four primary ways:

It consumes certain materials, leaving behind soot residues.

It produces airborne particles that later settle throughout your residence.

It forms acidic waste products that discolor, causes corrosion, or otherwise damage surfaces they form or settle on.

It generates persistent unpleasant odors that negatively affect the overall air quality in your home.

After suffering fire damage, you need to contact a reliable remediation service. These experienced professionals can effectively remove odorous soot residues from around your home, helping to both prevent additional fire-related damage and neutralize annoying odors. Afterward, they can also help you reconstruct structural elements and materials harmed or destroyed in the blaze.    

How Do Soot Residues Affect Surfaces?

SERVPRO, a Wilmington fire damage restoration company, understands how soot residues affect surfaces around your home. This knowledge enables our technicians to more easily locate and effectively eliminate or treat these odor-producing fire wastes. Some ways fire residues reach, and bond to surfaces around your home are:   

Fires burn many synthetic substances, leaving hard-to-clean greasy residues where they occur.

Inefficient combustion of materials produces particle-carrying smoke that travels throughout your home, depositing odorous particles wherever it goes.

Porous surfaces and objects most readily absorb settling smell-causing smoke particles.

Fire-related heat enables odorous particles to more thoroughly bond with household items and structural elements.

As smoke rises, it covers the interior surfaces of your HVAC system with smelly particles that can later blow into other parts of your residence.

SERVPRO uses different cleaning methods to remove odorous particles and soot residues, depending on how these substances are initially bonded to particular surfaces. Sometimes our technicians have to use a combination of methods to successfully remediate affected materials.

What Does SERVPRO Do to Neutralize Odors in Your Fire-Damaged Home?      

Often, the most daunting task involved in fire damage restoration is odor neutralization. These unpleasant, challenging to remediate fire-related smells are a product of both airborne particles and surface-coating residues. Our experts, therefore, employ methods that address both sources of these persistent reminders of a fire. In doing this, they:

Use air movers and high-velocity box fans to replace particle-rich air with cleaner outdoor air.

Filter your home’s air with state-of-the-art scrubbers that eliminate odorous particles and noxious gases.

Counteract smoke particles with ozone gas machines.

Neutralize smells with natural oil-aerosolizing Vaportek devices.

Use thermal foggers to deodorize even the most difficult-to-access areas.

Clean your HVAC system with specialized cleaning systems.

Remove non-grease residues with dry sponges.

Clean up greasy fire-related deposits with cleaning solutions made of vinegar or tri-sodium phosphate (TSP).

Employ abrasive blasting, wire brushing, or scraping techniques to removing charring and tough-to-clean smoke residues.

Pressure wash non-grease deposits off of impacted structural elements.

These various measures often successfully remedy the annoying odors related to fire damage. After they have been employed, impacted homes often make a fire event smell "Like it never even happened."  

Is SERVPRO Capable of Fully Restoring My Fire-Damaged Possessions and Furnishings?

As a firm certified by the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning, and Restoration Certification (IICRC), SERVPRO professionals are specially trained in the restoration of numerous things. They can restore harmed objects and reconstruct those that have been destroyed. Some of the various things our workers are experts in restoring are hard surfaces, carpets, rugs, upholstery, leather-covered furnishings, and items made of various fabrics. Also, as members of the Association of Builders and Contractors, we are skilled at reconstructing destroyed structural elements and certain household contents.

With all that said, house fires are relatively common occurrences that often take homeowners by surprise. They can arise from any of a number of causes. Many of these blazes result from such mundane things as cooking mishaps or careless accidents around the house. Grease fires that quickly get out of control and family members falling asleep on the couch with a lit cigarette in hand are both oft-seen, unfortunate scenarios. Other times, more unusual circumstances, such as rogue lightning strikes or gas leaks, could start a house fire. Regardless of the cause, though, you certainly need trained fire damage restoration professionals after the fire has been extinguished. Quality services like SERVPRO have the right expertise and equipment to return your residence to its pre-fire condition quickly and cost-effectively.        

If you ever need help neutralizing unpleasant fire damage odors and restoring your home to its original condition, call SERVPRO of Brandywine/Wilmington at (302) 762-8080.