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.

Comments

Talk to the insurance company.

[Unknown Poltroon]

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.

Ouch.

[Dannon]

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.

Re:Ozone

[shaper]

Definitely, Ozone. Talk to your insurance agent/adjuster on how to do it. I had a significant fire where almost nothing except some of my roof was actually burnt. Everything else was smoke and water damage. Anyhow, my adjuster got all of our clothes, electronics, furniture, anything that was smoke damaged and had it all carted away in a truck. There are special fire cleaning services that take smoke damaged stuff and put them in big sealed rooms with some kind of ozone generation. This works very well for clothes and some furniture.

Eletronics on the other hand are another problem. Although the smell mostly goes away, electronics stink again when they heat up under normal operation. This is a hit-or-miss thing. As soon as possible, get the equipment back, plug it in and run it for a while and see if any smells come out. If so, the smell will probably never go away.

Anything with any significant plastic content, throw away, try to get replacement costs from your adjuster. Don't even bother trying to clean it, you will NOT be able to get the smell out.

Trust your nose, if it smells even after cleaning or treatment by cleaners, don't bother trying to save it. You will have a LOT of stuff to go through and the smallest items can produce an amazing stink that is hard to locate once all of your stuff is back together. It's much easier to diagnose before it is put away.

Throw it all out.

[adolf]

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.