Crested Butte's Fire Damage Experts Discuss Soot Cleaning Methods

5/11/2022 (Permalink)

Fire damage in your home requires quick steps to remediate. Contact SERVPRO right after the firefighters leave.

Team SERVPRO Understands That Each Type of Material Requires an Appropriate Cleaning Method

If a fire starts inside a building in Crested Butte, heat is not the only thing that causes damage. Flames can torch building materials and contents entirely or partially. Smoke coming from the different burnt materials can spread throughout the entire structure. 

Smoke created by the blaze can travel throughout your house and leave behind soot residues. When mitigating fire damage in Crested Butte, there are various methods used to remove soot and soils left behind by smoke. The cleaning chemicals and techniques that work best vary depending on what type of materials got burned and what surfaces are present inside the home. 

Smoke moves upward as the heat from the fire rises and pushes it up. Smoke then attaches to colder surfaces first, which are usually the ceiling. Soot residues can concentrate on the ceiling and then move down the walls starting from the top. 

Depending on the wall surface, cleaning soot and soil off walls can be easy or extremely difficult. Some walls have coverings on them, and cleaning the cover material is easier if the material is non-porous and more challenging if it is porous. The best way to clean a wall covering depends on how well the material resists heat and smoke. Some cleaning methods work better on certain types of surfaces than others do. 

If the walls contain wallpaper, cleaning with wet chemicals is not a good solution since the paper is porous. Wet chemicals can soak the soot further into the wallpaper, sometimes forcing it to get removed. Dry sponges that attract soils work best when cleaning soot residues from paper surfaces. 

Some wall coverings are coated with a non-porous layer of vinyl. Vinyl wall coverings can be cleaned with wet chemicals because the vinyl resists the moisture. When cleaning vinyl surfaces, our SERVPRO technicians use a specialized chemical to clean the surface, then another gets applied to rinse the walls. 

When using wet chemicals, the ceiling gets cleaned first then the walls are wiped from the top down. Extra care is taken to ensure that more damage is caused due to the chemicals streaking down the walls. If you ever need help removing soot residues, call SERVPRO of Montrose / Telluride at (970) 240-6970, 24 hours a day.