Fire Damage Q & A: Can I Clean the Damage on My Own?

12/7/2018 (Permalink)

One of our employees uses specialized cleaning chemicals to remove soot from a soot-covered door!

After a fire, you’ll want to clean your home and get your life back to normal. While your insurance and others may advise you to get a professional disaster restoration company (such as us) to restore your home, you may have some reservations. In fact, you may think that it would be best if you just cleaned it yourself. But that’s not always the case.

Can I Clean Up Fire Damage on My Own?

The short answer is that we highly advise against it. Though in some cases—depending on the type and extent of the damage—we may instruct you on how to clean the damage yourself, it’s incredibly unlikely. The soot produced by a fire is sticky and tends to slip into porous materials. If you attempt to clean your walls or furniture on your own, you are likely to make the damage worse; in some cases, we won’t even be able to fully restore the areas or materials you attempted to clean yourself.

If you have smoke or soot damage, we highly encourage you to refrain from touching anything until we’ve arrived and begun the cleaning process.

Faster to Any Size Disaster

At SERVPRO of Alexander & Caldwell Counties, we have helped many homes and businesses recover from fire damage over the last nearly 10 years. Our staff is qualified, and we use numerous techniques and chemicals to make it “Like it never even happened!”