If you’ve had a small fire recently and need help dealing with smoke odor, you’re in the right place. Regardless of what caught fire, there may be a smokey smell inside your home.

 

Depending on the severity of the fire damage, it may be more difficult to remove smoke odor from your home. 

 

Higher temperature fires can cause pores of materials to open up more and absorb more of the smoke. 

 

To properly remove smoke from our homes, we need a combination of cleaning, deodorizing, and sealing of materials. 

 

The 4 Steps
To Removing Smoke Odor
In Your Home:

 

Step 1: Remove any and all burnt materials from your home (or 

the affected area). 

 

As long as the source of the smell is present, you will have a difficult time removing the smoky odor. 

 

Also…

 

If burnt areas or items can’t be removed (structural materials), you may need to apply a sealant to the area to lock in odors. 

 

Step 2: Install an AFD unit with carbon activated filters. 

 

An AFD unit with a HEPA filter is not enough, and will not be efficient at removing smoke odors.

 

 

Make sure to equip the AFD unit with carbon filters to absorb and trap gasses and odors.

 

Step 3: Clean all affected areas. 

 

Clean all areas near and around the fire damage, including the area of the fire. 

 

and…

 

Make sure to refrain from using water or wet cleaning, it will just smear the soot and smoke residue. 

 

In this process, you want to get rid of all surface soot and dust. 

 

Depending on the type of fire, a vacuum can be an effective cleaning method. 

 

After you’ve tried vacuuming larger particles…

 

 use a dry chem sponge (from your local hardware store) and continue to clean the area. 

 

The sponge can absorb remaining soot and smoke instead of smearing. 

 

Step 4: Spray deodorizers to all smoke affected areas. 

 

This helps re-penetrate surface pores of affected areas to reduce the odor. 

 

Make sure you find a deodorizing agent specific to smoke damage. 

 

One common product in the property restoration industry is…..

 

Odor X Double O formula 

 

which can be found at your local hardware store. 

 

Once you’ve found the solution, follow the instructions on the bottle and start spraying it on all affected surfaces. 

 

Let the solution sit and soak, and dry. 

 

Once it has dried, reassess the situation and check to see if the smell is gone. 

 

If the fire was larger or had a higher temperature, this might not be extremely effective. 

 

If this is the case, contact a professional for a thermal fogging treatment. 

 

Thermal fogging treatments can replicate the heat of the fire and open up the pores of building materials for cleaning. 

If you’ve completed all these steps and still have smoke odors and residue in your home, contact a reputable property restoration company to help get your home back to normal.