St. Petersburg Fire Damage Causing Foul Smells

3/27/2023 (Permalink)

Call SERVPRO to eliminate house fire odors and soot from your St. Petersburg residence.

SERVPRO Can Eliminate Odors in Fire-Damaged St. Petersburg Homes

Residents of St. Petersburg fire-damaged homes might wonder why their house smells so awful after the fire. Everybody knows that smoke smells terrible, but the malodors can be especially strong after a house fire.

SERVPRO understands the difficulties in restoring a St. Petersburg fire damaged home. It is hard to enjoy your home if it still smells smoky. Your residence's initial inspection and scoping provide an action plan to mitigate the fire damage and eliminate pungent odors.

Why is the Smell so Strong After a Blaze?

During a fire, the heat interacts with the surfaces that the flames contact. If the material burns away completely, this is known as complete combustion. But if the material only burns away partially, that is known as incomplete combustion. Incomplete combustion results in soot and smoke particles that enter the air, cling to surfaces, and cause bad smells.

Many surfaces in your home can become coated with soot and be the source of unpleasant smells:

• Wood furniture such as tables and dining chairs
• All paper products, including wallpaper
• Soft materials and fabrics like bedding or curtains
• Plastics such as electronics or children's toys
• Proteins from a kitchen fire

How can SERVPRO Help with Smoky Smells?

We follow a series of steps that can work well for removing odors.

We discard soot-damaged materials whenever we can. Sometimes a fire leaves behind debris such as building materials, wood, and drywall. Our teams safely clear up the trash. Clean-up makes the site safer and also removes a source of sooty smells.

We check for hidden sources of odors that may include:

• Ventilation systems
• Behind furniture or appliances
• Cooker hoods or fans
• Crawl spaces
• Wall cavities

Once we have removed fire-damaged materials and found other sources of odors, we can contain and deodorize the smells.

How Does SERVPRO Contain Odors?

Containing sooty smells is vital because it prevents them from spreading further throughout your home. We use portable, pump-up sprayers to apply counteractants directly to smoke damaged surfaces and prevent molecules from escaping.

Odor molecules are released into the air as soon as a surface burns. That means that by the time our team arrives, some smells are already in the air. We use deodorant products to counteract airborne odors. One of the most effective products for this is neutralizing gel beads.

We also use thermal fogging to combat smoke scents. A good rule of thumb is "like to like." That means that we use deodorizing fog to tackle the problem in the case of smoke damage. Thermal fogging means using a fogging machine to distribute odor-fighting compounds. These compounds bond to the odor-causing molecules and change their composition. This neutralizes the smell. Hydroxyl generators can be placed to neutralize airborne compounds while our SERVPRO IICRC-certified team continues with the cleanup. Air scrubbers outfitted with HEPA filters can also capture airborne particulates. Negative pressure can be set up to port the circulating air to the exterior, further relieving the ambient air of odors.

What About Cleaning Smoke Damaged Surfaces?

SERVPRO teams can also help by cleaning smoke-damaged surfaces. We thoroughly train our FRST fire and smoke restoration technicians to decide which surfaces are suitable for cleaning and which surfaces we cannot salvage. We use various cleaning techniques to dislodge smoke particles, including dry scrubbing, wet wiping, and UV cleaning.

Our combination of odor containment, cleaning, deodorizing, and ventilation means that before long, your home can smell fresh, "Like it never even happened."

If you are concerned about malodors after a house fire, we can help. Call SERVPRO of NE St. Petersburg at (727) 522-0000.