Fire Restoration
Fire Remediation with Ozone
Dealing with the smell of smoke following a fire can be an extremely frustrating experience to go through. The dense smoky aroma seems to be impossible to get rid of, and you may think that it will never quit lingering. While the odor is very strong and tricky to get rid of, ozone has been seen to be an amazing tool for remediating the stench. One aspect of smoke’s odor is its ability to stick to virtually anything, which increases the difficulty in completely getting rid of the smell. Whether you’re trying to get the smoke smell out of an area, or out of individual items, ozone is going to be your best bet to get rid of the smell. Unfortunately, there many different instances where you may end up dealing with this problem
Where Fire Remediation is Commonly Needed:
Fire remediation is the process of cleaning and getting rid of the smells that have been caused by fires. One of the most common instances of this would be getting the smoke smell out of your clothes after being around a bonfire. Sometimes running the clothes through a washing machine may not be enough to rid the clothes of the smoke’s odor. In more serious cases like house fires, rooms or even entire buildings will need to be ozonated to completely get rid of the smell. Other instances would include larger fires (local company, forests, cars) that occur close to you or your place of business where the smoke carries and risks ruining your belongings.
Individually | Commercially |
-Kitchen Fires | -Warehouse Fires |
-Bonfires | -Rental Property Fires |
-Nearby Fires that Carry Smoke | -Inventory Caught in a Fire |
Proper Fire Remediation:
As stated above, the odor caused by fires is extremely tricky to get rid of and could require high concentrations of ozone to properly be destroyed. If you are ozonating a room that has been subjected to fire damage, be sure to remove all products from the room that have also been damaged. If there are items that cannot be removed, they should have a sealer applied so they do not continue to emit the bad odor. Items that have been removed from the structure should be shocked at a high level of ozone in a confined space. For the highest efficiency, be sure to confine the space you are trying to ozonate, and make sure that no one is in the immediate presence of high ozone concentrations.
It is difficult to try and determine exactly how long it will take for this process to be complete. However, there are a couple main factors that should give you a general idea. The strength of the odor and size of the area you’re deodorizing will be the best guide for predicting how long it will take to eliminate the odor. As a general rule for fire remediation, you should expect the process to take at least 2 days but it may take up to 2 weeks in extreme circumstances.
Cautions:
It is extremely important to note that ozone, while indoors, at high levels, can become harmful to breathe in. It is also probable that to properly get rid of an odor with ozone (in smaller spaces) you are going to need ozone levels above the safety concentration (according to OSHA: workers should not be exposed to an average concentration of more than 0.10 ppm of ozone for 8 hours). Because of this, please make sure that there are no people or animals in an area where high concentrations of ozone are going to be present. For tracking ozone concentrations while you eliminate fire odors, we recommend using a handheld ozone monitor which you can find here.