How does one clean up a home that has suffered smoke damage? This is a problem that many have tried to solve by just opening up windows and airing the house out. Carrying out a thorough smoke damage repair, however, entails much more than airing the rooms out. 

Cleaning Out A Smoke Damaged Home

To clean out a home that has been adversely affected by smoke, you’ll need to follow these steps:

• Step 1: Ventilation

Open all your windows in order to get as much air as you can into your home. Use fans to encourage airflow. This step eliminates as much of the smoke as you can before the proper cleaning procedure begins.

Put off your HVAC system so it doesn’t spread smoke and soot to other unaffected parts of your home.

• Step 2: Safety Precautions

Safety measures should apply to both you and your property. You’d need to put on respirators if the smoke damages are severe. This eliminates the health risk that you might face for inhaling smoke. You will also need to put on gloves and goggles. 

For your property, you might want to empty the room you are cleaning so as to avoid staining your furniture with the soot you cleanout. You should also cover the floor with plastic if you don’t want to give yourself a double cleaning job.

PS: if the room you are cleaning is small, you might not need to empty it. Just ensure you cover all undamaged materials and furniture with plastic.

• Step 3: Vacuum

If the smoke damage is severe, there are bound to be loose soot particles lying around. Use a vacuum with strong suction power to pick up these loose soot particles efficiently without causing further damage.

• Step 4: Dry-Cleaning Sponge

The dry-cleaning sponge is equipped with chemicals specifically designed to clean up stains from walls. While using a dry-cleaning sponge, always employ a wiping motion and not a scrubbing motion. Cleaning up soot with a scrubbing motion tends to be counterproductive as it would spread the soot and drive it deeper into the wall surface rather than clean it.

• Step 5: Alcohol or Paint Thinners

After eliminating the risk of spreading the soot with the dry-clean sponge, you can now use a liquid cleaner. To do this, grab a clean rag and dip it in either rubbing alcohol or paint thinner and then wipe the soot-stained walls and every other affected non-porous material.

• Step 6: The Degreaser and Hot Water

Now, create a mixture of degreaser and hot water. An appropriate mixture would be 4 or 5 tablespoons in a gallon of water. Dip a clean rag into the mixture and wipe down the room with it. If the rag gets too dirty, rinse it in the mixture and continue. It the mixture gets too dirty or begins to smell of smoke, throw it away, and create another mixture.

After this step, you can then wipe the room again with fresh water and a clean rag. Next, you clean again with a dry rag to remove excess moisture. Use fans to accelerate the drying process.

Even after all these, you might still smell smoke. This smell might take a couple of weeks to disappear. If you want to it eliminated sooner however, you might have to call on the professionals to render you smoke damage repair services.