House Fires, and Cleaning.

7/23/2018 (Permalink)

Just hearing the words ‘house fire’ causes Dover and Middletown owners and residents to fear the worst for their homes. Few homes are completely or even massively destroyed by heat and flames.

Most physical house fire damage is localized. If a fire starts in a kitchen, then scorching and melted metal or plastics is only in that room. Smoke, soot, and odor damage can spread to other rooms, with smoke usually finding its way throughout the home. SERVPRO Restoration uses five services to secure each home to prevent additional damage, clean structural and personal property, and then restore it to its pre-fire condition. 

Our personnel begins with Mitigation Services. The goal here is to prevent further deterioration and new damage from factors like vandalism and weather intrusion. They board up windows and doors and then seal off openings into the home caused by the fire using plywood panels and thick plastic sheeting. If there is standing water from firefighting efforts, our teams start removing it. As part of the team finishes mitigation, other members begin cleaning. 

Contents Cleaning involves personal property. Usually, this is appliances, furniture, and clothing. Our primary task for technicians is to remove smoke and soot residues. For larger items, they can clean most of them on site after moving them outside or to another location if needed. 

Structural Cleaning applies to walls, ceilings, and floors, to include carpets. Here, the technicians’ primary concerns are typically cleaning smoke residues off surfaces and eliminating odors. In both Structural and Contents Cleaning, SERVPRO team leaders work with the residents and insurance companies to make the best choices of cleaning versus replacement regarding cost and efficiency. 

Specialty Cleaning is for items that are fragile or need special care like artwork and electronics. If residues and odors affected the surface of a portrait or got inside an electronic device, team leaders recommend bringing in a specialist for those pieces. 

For minor repairs and replacement, our teams work to reconstruct damaged homes. Our personnel can provide any and all replacement, plumbing, contracting etc.

If you have any questions about this or other aspects of fire damage to your home, contact SERVPRO of Dover Middletown. We are here to help.