Fire Damage in Crestview-Area

4/12/2020 (Permalink)

For answers, contact SERVPRO of Crestview, Defuniak Springs, and Chipley (850) 267-0746.

When to get professional fire restoration services in the Crestview Area?

At any fire loss site, you have the opportunity to recover large amounts of possessions or to risk losing them permanently. Contacting SERVPRO can help to ensure that your contents and structure return to a preloss condition.

While the structure of your home is unlikely to become permanently harmed by fire damage, there are numerous ways that a housefire can affect your home. Soots, as well as smokes releasing into indoor spaces, can result in heavy soiling, unpleasant odors as well as harming surfaces or paintwork. An excellent way to test whether you need professional assistance to recover the property is to perform light vacuuming of any soiling spots and surfaces. You can also ventilate the space thoroughly by opening windows.

If, after performing vacuuming and ventilation, there is still persistent soiling and odor, you should consider contacting your insurance provider as well as a professional restorer for fire damage in Crestview, Defuniak Springs, and Chipley. Avoid introducing moisture or cleaning products to affected areas yourself as these can easily cause further harm by driving smoke particles into surfaces or spreading wet smoke further around. SERVPRO technicians undergo years of training to understand when, how, and why to apply products with minimal damage.

What types of damage can I expect after a fire?
There are several types of harm that can befall a property with fire loss. The factors that inform these issues are variable. Heat, temperature, pressure, and time are all influential factors in a fire loss scenario. Equally, the source of the fire can change the type of soot deposits as well as the type of material exposure. Below are familiar sources of fire damage that may befall your home.

Upper Wall and Ceiling Soots
Smoke rises upwards at high velocity and pressure. In a typical fire, the lion's share of soiling is likely to be on the ceiling directly above the source of the fire. Upper walls can also be adversely affected by hot smoke and ashes. The consistency of soiling on your ceiling depends on the types of material that have burned. These may be wet smoke, which is challenging to remove or dry soot deposits, which can often respond well to vacuuming or dry sponging.

Drapery Rods, Chandeliers, Curtains
Thin fabrics like curtains can often suffer such severe damage as to render them irreparable. Fortunately, these items are relatively inexpensive to replace. Drapery rods, light fittings, and chandeliers are typically dense materials but can take on significant amounts of soot. Our technicians can deconstruct any fittings in the property to making the cleaning effort more efficient. Furthermore, our external cleaning facilities can provide immersion cleaning, which is particularly useful on dense items like drapery rods or chandeliers.

What Special Cleaning Services do we offer?

    •    Ultrasonic/ Immersion Cleaning Services
    •    Suspended Mechanical Cleaning (Esporta) for Fabrics
    •    Wet/ Dry Cleaning for Fabrics
    •    Carpet Pre-cleaning and Conditioning
    •    Leather Cleaning
    •    Rotary Cleaning

Interiors of cabinets or furnishings
Hot smokes seek out cooler surfaces. Often soot deposits can be heavy inside drawers or cabinets. Assessing the impact of a fire on your furnishings requires consistent pre-testing alongside careful inspection of the interior cabinet. Often interiors feature unfinished woods that can absorb soot into the grain of the wood itself. We can make use of cleaning solvents to restore interior cabinets and, in some severe cases, may need to remove surface layers before refinishing the area of harm.


How can you tackle smoke odors in my home?
Chemicals that release from combusting materials can include odor-causing particles. Odor removal is typically tough for homeowners to tackle by themselves because these light particles can infiltrate soft furnishings, small gaps, or cavities as well as ventilation shafts. We use a variety of methods to complete effective odor control. We may also use industrial equipment like ULV fogging to ensure that deodorants can reach cavities as well as soft furnishings effectively.

What about contents with specific cleaning instructions?
We begin fire restoration with pre-testing the affected area thoroughly. Your home is full of different materials, colors, and fabrics. Sometimes contents can respond adversely to cleaning solutions that would otherwise be effective. These issues can manifest as color fade, bleaching, spots, or watermarks. To provide a comprehensive solution, we conduct tests on the type of material as well as the type of soils. By doing so, we can ensure that we do not cause any further damage to your property.

Pre-testing can help to prevent:

    •    Color Bleeding
    •    Shrinking
    •    Material Damages
    •    Color Fade
    •    Watermarks

What about special content?
Pre-testing also allows us to understand which items are possible to salvage and which need disposal. Items that do not respond to cleaning or restoration and are inexpensive to replace can typically be discarded. By working quickly through content, SERVPRO can ensure that the restoration is as efficient as possible. If items require specialist services, like document recovery or hold the specific sentimental value, you can communicate with our restorers to discuss possible restoration options.

Fire restoration presents many challenging questions for a homeowner. For answers, contact SERVPRO of Crestview, Defuniak Springs, and Chipley (850) 267-0746.