One of the most common places to have fire and smoke damage in Sarasota is in the garage. Especially if the area is cluttered and full of chemicals and combustibles. Gasoline, kerosene, spray cans, fertilizer, and many other household cleaning products are quite flammable and when not properly stored can be a inferno waiting to happen. Another danger zone commonly found in garages is your electrical box. When not properly maintained every few years wires can become loose and cause sparks and fire. Another problem with the way many newer homes are built is the air handler for the air conditioning is commonly found in the garage. This causes fire and smoke damage in the rest of the house and can even spread the embers to other parts of the residence. When this happens even if it’s only smoke, everything in the home will end up covered in soot. Of course the larger risk is having the fire spread throughout the home by embers that get sucked into the duct work and distributed through the vents. Maintaining a clean and uncluttered garage can greatly diminish your risk when it comes to fire and smoke damage.
One person this very thing happened to was a long time friend of ServiceMaster SRQ. He and his family had a fire in their garage and along with personal items all of his equipment for work was destroyed as well. It’s believed that the fire started due to a garage door opener, but due to the amount of flammable materials in the area the fire burned away most of the tell tale signs. The fire also burned into the roof and caused charring of the trusses. Smoke entered the a/c system and spread soot onto just about everything in the home. Needless to say this was a huge mess and to top it off they had let their insurance lapse when the house was paid for. When we arrived onsite they had already started moving their most precious items to a temporary place to live. We quickly realized that every square inch of the residence would need to be vacuumed and wiped with a special chemical made to remove soot. This maybe putting it lightly, every single thing in the home needed the same treatment. We quickly set up a cleaning area in the front yard and a storage area on the back porch. As items were brought out they were vacuumed, wiped down, dried, and then carried around to be stored. It took the better part of a week just to clean all of the contents in the home. Everything from televisions to action figures that his kids played with had to brought out cleaned, sorted, and then stored until the rest of the home could be taken care of. Every piece of cloth and clothing in the house had to be washed and treated for the smell of smoke. Finally, when all of the contents were cleaned or in some cases disposed of we started removing the fire and smoke damage to the home itself. In many cases the ceilings had to be removed to get to the duct work and insulation that had soaked in the smell of smoke. In some areas there were only a couple feet of clearance for our people to maneuver around and collect the ruined materials. The ceilings, duct work, and insulation alone pretty much filled a 30 yard dumpster. All of the carpets and padding were torn out and thrown on top of the dumpster and then we needed a new one.
The next step in the process was cleaning all of the walls and surfaces that could be saved. We started in the bedrooms, washing the walls by hand removing soot laced with chemicals and plastics. The hardest part about washing walls is how quickly the water and chemical you are using gets dirty. Even a 12 ft. by 8 ft. wall can take three five gallon bucket fulls of water and chemical to clean if the soot is thick enough. This was a major headache due too the fact the fire department had shut off the water lines to the house. So just to get water we had to run a hose from the neighbor’s home almost 350 ft away from the front yard. We quickly realized that having 3 buckets for every worker ready at all times was the only way to make the process go as fast as we wanted it to. That way one person could constantly be worrying about fresh water and chemical while the rest of the crew would just clean. This process took almost two days to clean every wall and surface in the residence.
For our last task we had to deal with the smell of smoke. We had the ceiling checked by an engineer to determine it was still structurally sound and that we could treat and encapsulate the wood. After we got the thumbs up that the wood could be treated we fogged the attic area with an oil based chemical to cut down on the odor. We then sprayed down all of the ceiling trusses and plywood with Kilzs 2 primer to seal any odor inside. This process took several days as well, due to the lack of room in some areas and the height of almost 20 ft. in others. The final step in the process was to prime all of the walls, ceilings, and baseboards with kilz 2 as well. We then cleaned the tile floors and sealed the concrete in the bedrooms where the carpet had been. Over all we spent three weeks working to restore our friends home to conditions they would be able to live in. Due to their lack of insurance, we did all of this on a shoestring budget working nonstop day and night. We were there so much that we eventually bought a couple of tents and stayed in the back yard. To say we went above and beyond for our customer isn’t really necessary. We do this for all of our customers, old friends or new. The most important thing for ServiceMaster SRQ is restoring not only peace of mind, but restoring a piece of your life as well.