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Salvaging Possessions from Smoke Damage?
SnowDeath asks: "My home caught on fire last Wednesday while my girlfriend and I were off watching the new Harry Potter movie and now we are pretty much left with crap. Most of our stuff didn't get damaged by fire, but rather severly smoke damaged. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting that horid smoke damage out of out clothes, furniture, and computer parts (our mobos were destroyed by smoke)?" Those who would like to donate a buck or two to SnowDeath's "Oh crap, my house caught fire and now I have nothing!" relief fund can go here.
THey have good advice on this.(You do have insurance, right? I hope) My parents had the same thing happen. I think for the clothes and stuff they were told to use either that orange clean stuff or that oxy clean you see in commercials. Ill check and post again in the nexe couple of days. Also, for things that cant be washed, they have ionization treatments or something like that, but its expensive and takes a few weeks, i believe.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I can relate. Had a fire in my apartment building last May. Started at the other end of the building, flames were stopped before they passed the walls into my living room, but the smoke and water damage was severe.
For good clothes: Find a good dry cleaner. One with experience in treating smoke damage, or who can outsource it to someone who does.
For average clothes: A few good washes with OxyClean (or similar product) works very well.
Furniture: Well, all I had was old hand-me-downs that weren't worth keeping. If you've got something worth keeping, find a professional.
Computer: This is a tough one. My computer was on when the smoke was filling the air, so the inside got pretty much coated with beads of tar. I ended up claiming it as a loss and building myself a new one. One or two of the parts were semi-salvageable with very careful cleaning, but no doubt the lifespans were shortened.
Books, small items: If it wasn't ruined by water from the firehoses, my suggestion is to put them in a large Rubbermaid-style plastic bin for a few months. Duct-tape around the edge to keep the odor in, and toss a box of baking soda in. (Arm & Hammer makes these boxes now with tear-off side panels that are great for deodorizing.) Works wonders.
Best of luck.
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
What you have is a really common problem -- smoke is nastier than fire in some ways! -- so teh good news is there is a lot of help available. Even this Heloise I recall reading in the newspaper.
:)
Search the net for info and products. The OxyClean product is a good thing, as is Simple Green, where appropriate, because they're relatively pleasant to work with. I know if you're dealing with rehabbing the house/apartment, but if you do be sure you or the contractor knows about the special challenges in concealing the damage permanently, and getting rid of the smell.
If you have insurance, talk to them about what damaged items it might be better to just declare a total loss and replace.
Condolences. I hope you enjoyed the movie more than I did.
For smoke smell try ozone. You can hire a restoration company to bring one in, buy one for several hundred dollars or rent one from a rental place. That's what the pros use to deal with flood and fire smells.
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"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
--you want one of these things, an aranizer.
They use these things to clean air and all the stuff the air touches, hospitals use them someplaces, meat markets, places with that nasty mold in the walls, etc. Also good for folks with allergies and just general "better" air. It has all the benefits of all the other ozone generators out there, without putting out the nitrous acid stuff. As far as I know they are the only company with that claim.
As an aside, I'm a serious survivalist/prepper. One of the things that this community recommends is "distributed" storage of your gear,you do it with your electronic data, just take the concept to meatworld. The simplest way is to swap with a friend, you store some of their stuff, they store some of your stuff, and now you know one of the reasons why, sorry it came the hard way. You swap a set of basic things for long term storage, food, gear,personal clothing, important papers, medkits, etc, etc, the basics you would need in just such a case as a catastrophic fire. It can get more complicated after that, such as underground cacheing, etc, but that straight mutual storage concept is a good one. It's the old "don't put all your eggs in one basket" deal.
Good luck on the rebuild!
I used to repair fire-damaged structures for a living, so I've seen this more than a few times.
The easiest, and often cheapest, thing to do is throw everything away and cash an insurance check for new stuff.
For the stuff you don't want to throw away (because it is sentimental or otherwise irreplaceable), try Formula 409, Simple Green, or another general-purpose detergent. Use a brush, a cloth, or whatever seems appropriate.
Electronics can have a tendancy to not survive such cleaning, however. There's (at least) a thousand types of glue used to hold the bits that comprise them together, and no telling how they'll react to chemical treatment.
Water, of course, is generally harmless, but has limited application on smoke residue.
A friend of mine's house burned a few years ago, and the fire department vented the ceiling of his computer room...which is to say that vast amounts of smoke and steam went flying past his gear. I found a number of CDs in that room with their jewel cases melted off of them.
Most of it is still working justfine today without any cleaning, though the CDs did require some special care to come back to life.
You'll also do well to hire a company who specializes in such cleaning projects, if you want to try salvaging stuff. I used to contract with Serv-Pro (they've got offices all over - check the phone book), and they were often able to restore things to new.
Plus, they had a fleet of athletic 18-24 girls to do the work, which always brightened up my workday.
Once you're ready to start painting and carpeting, make sure you coat everything with a good primer. I usually rented a fairly serious airless paint sprayer, and used Killz, or Pro-Block from Sherwin Williams. Killz does a somewhat better job, being shellac, but the alcohol base will kill you dead if you're not extremely careful with your respirator. Plus, there's probably flash hazards with spraying alcohol everywhere... Pro-Block works very nearly as well, is oil-based (thus possible to coexist with) and is a great deal less expensive.
Cover the walls, ceiling, any exposed studs, the floorboards, and everything else you want to never smell of smoke again.
Kid-proof tablet..
Several days? Heh, I always thought it was several minutes.
Remember to take the battery out of the mobo before starting this risky sounding procedure. Remember that if you fire up the gear and there's -any- liquid at all there, it's toast. Also, instead of 409, you might try Greased Lightning, or better yet, Quik Solv. Quik Solv will cause cigarette smoke residue to run off a TV, and will get any sort of crap out of a microwave.