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Salvaging Possessions from Smoke Damage? 66

Posted by Cliff from the this-may-happen-to-you-someday dept.
SnowDeath asks: "My home caught on fire last Wednesday while my girlfriend and I were off watching the new Harry Potter movie and now we are pretty much left with crap. Most of our stuff didn't get damaged by fire, but rather severly smoke damaged. Does anyone have any suggestions for getting that horid smoke damage out of out clothes, furniture, and computer parts (our mobos were destroyed by smoke)?" Those who would like to donate a buck or two to SnowDeath's "Oh crap, my house caught fire and now I have nothing!" relief fund can go here.
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Salvaging Possessions from Smoke Damage? More

Salvaging Possessions from Smoke Damage?

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  • Never meddle with the affairs of wizards.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @11:11PM (#4764720)
    Oh, wrong movie.
  • This is a job for a pro. They can do it right and you'll never get it out yourself. Please don't muck with it and make it worse.

  • Talk to the insurance company. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Unknown Poltroon ( 31628 ) <unknown_poltroon1sp@myahoo.com> on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @11:17PM (#4764748)
    THey have good advice on this.(You do have insurance, right? I hope) My parents had the same thing happen. I think for the clothes and stuff they were told to use either that orange clean stuff or that oxy clean you see in commercials. Ill check and post again in the nexe couple of days. Also, for things that cant be washed, they have ionization treatments or something like that, but its expensive and takes a few weeks, i believe.
    • This is the correct option. A friend of mine had her house burn down and they gave them $60,000 to live on while their house got fixed, as well as replaced everything in the house, and they had enough money to get nicer stuff, do an addon to their house, and rent a nicer house to live in while everything was being fixed.
    • Yeah I just bought a house and I couldn't get the mortgage without a Home Owners. If you don't have insurance PayPal isn't going to help you.

      You should be fine with insurance.
    • More to the point, the ins. co. will call the restoration company and they will be there in a jiffy with their magic stuff. Take pictures first so that you can file a claim. If for some reason you didn't have fire insurance, hard to imagine if you have a mortgage, call an insurance agent and ask for a recommendation for a good fire restoration company. Then ask him how much is a fire insurance policy.
    • I know this guy, its actually a rented home, and no insurance. So the house isn't his problem, but just trying to get the smoke outta everything is. He wants suggestions and the thought maybe he might get luckly on the begging part too. He was VERY suprised that this got posted at all, but I guess getting smoke outta stuff may be something everyone should know.
    • Still have the mobo and hard drive out of their computer. HAvent had a poersupply to test the mobo, hard drive worked briefly, and the cdrom worked briefly also. If you can get the hard drive running, i would back it up IMMEDIATELY, most important data first.

  • Can I beg on slashdot too? ;) (Score:4, Funny)

    by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @11:21PM (#4764760) Journal
    My roof is kinda leaky and I have no money to pay someone to fix it. I dont have paypal (no credit card) but if you want to contribute to my keep-eggy-from-waking-up-at-4am-with-freezing-rain water-falling-on-his-head fund, email me at eggstasy@clix.pt :)
    Will also take random computer-related tasks such as web development and other programming things.
    I'm a portuguese C.S. student and I know most of the right buzzwords and have had some professional web-dev experience too.
    Check out some (paid) projects i've been working on:
    http://mco.edunau.net [edunau.net]
    http://porao.edunau.net [edunau.net]
    http://www.telespot.pt [telespot.pt]

    I can also do translations. I've had some prof. exp. translating stuff from english to portuguese and back. Can do other languages such as french and spanish. Any takers? :)

  • Ouch. (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dannon ( 142147 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @11:35PM (#4764823) Journal
    I can relate. Had a fire in my apartment building last May. Started at the other end of the building, flames were stopped before they passed the walls into my living room, but the smoke and water damage was severe.

    For good clothes: Find a good dry cleaner. One with experience in treating smoke damage, or who can outsource it to someone who does.

    For average clothes: A few good washes with OxyClean (or similar product) works very well.

    Furniture: Well, all I had was old hand-me-downs that weren't worth keeping. If you've got something worth keeping, find a professional.

    Computer: This is a tough one. My computer was on when the smoke was filling the air, so the inside got pretty much coated with beads of tar. I ended up claiming it as a loss and building myself a new one. One or two of the parts were semi-salvageable with very careful cleaning, but no doubt the lifespans were shortened.

    Books, small items: If it wasn't ruined by water from the firehoses, my suggestion is to put them in a large Rubbermaid-style plastic bin for a few months. Duct-tape around the edge to keep the odor in, and toss a box of baking soda in. (Arm & Hammer makes these boxes now with tear-off side panels that are great for deodorizing.) Works wonders.

    Best of luck.
    • I haven't had any experience with fire before, so maybe I'm way off base, but why would you want to seal off something that smells? I know that the baking soda might help, but I'd think airing stuff out (granted, not in the middle of winter) would do good too.

      • Re:Ouch. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Dannon ( 142147 )
        My roommates and I aired everything out for a few days, true, as we were sorting between 'recoverable' and 'disposable'. But the fumes were very, very powerful, and the airing out didn't near do the whole job, even with air filters and fresheners galore at hand. We couldn't sleep in the same place as our stuff because of the smoke fumes.

        The objective was to take stuff we wouldn't need and contain the fumes so that our new place wouldn't be tainted by it. And, since our bookshelves were gone, we needed another place to store stuff anyway. The plastic bin/baking soda solution served the purposes of both containing and absorbing the fumes.

        By now (again, it's been since May), when I want a book out of that bin, I can take it out and it's fine. I keep the books in there still now because I don't have any bookshelves yet.

    • Computer's easy! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by itwerx ( 165526 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @03:17AM (#4765614) Homepage
      Throw it in the shower. (Hey, keep reading dammit!)
      Use the hottest water you can and/or 409 on everything, open up the power supply so it gets rinsed really well, take the shell off the monitor as well. (This is the only dangerous part, the caps can store a charge for several days!).
      Then when everything's totally drenched and you're thinking WTF am I doing, shake as much water off as you can. Then grab your handy spray bottle of WD-40 (you can buy the stuff at the hardware store by the gallon). Use the WD40 to drive the water off and to dissolve the remaining crud. Note - do not use WD-40 on the internals of the kbd or mouse!! (You can never get the residue out of the sensors on the mouse and the kbd contacts will actually soak it up! Both bad...)
      Then use a gallon or two of isopropyl alcohol (the purer the better) to clean off the WD-40 residue and to finish the kbd/mouse.
      Then let everything sit with a fan blowing on it for a few hours to get the alcohol evaporated.
      And for about $30 of household chemicals and a couble hours of your time it'll all be clean!
      You can also use 100% evaporating electronic cleaner/degreaser instead of all the above but it'll cost 5 times as much and may not get it as clean.

      • Re:Computer's easy! (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Several days? Heh, I always thought it was several minutes.

        Remember to take the battery out of the mobo before starting this risky sounding procedure. Remember that if you fire up the gear and there's -any- liquid at all there, it's toast. Also, instead of 409, you might try Greased Lightning, or better yet, Quik Solv. Quik Solv will cause cigarette smoke residue to run off a TV, and will get any sort of crap out of a microwave.
        • Our motherboards are shot, I decided to do a quick test on them before trying to clean and they are pretty much DOA. One of the has health indicator lights on it and...well...code blue anyone? Our monitors were crappy 15 inchers from State Surplus, so I am not too worried about them. Any ideas for getting our Video cards cleaned? Somehow, those managed to survice, along with one AMD cpu and a DIMM of DDR.
          • Clean the mbd's (and other stuff) anyway and see what happens.
            Smoke is only slightly conductive. I.e. just enough to totally trash the high-frequency signals a mbd operates at but not enough to actually fry anything....

  • Smoke damage (Score:3, Informative)

    by MacAndrew ( 463832 ) on Tuesday November 26, 2002 @11:48PM (#4764874) Homepage
    What you have is a really common problem -- smoke is nastier than fire in some ways! -- so teh good news is there is a lot of help available. Even this Heloise [ivillage.com] I recall reading in the newspaper.

    Search the net for info and products. The OxyClean product is a good thing, as is Simple Green, where appropriate, because they're relatively pleasant to work with. I know if you're dealing with rehabbing the house/apartment, but if you do be sure you or the contractor knows about the special challenges in concealing the damage permanently, and getting rid of the smell.

    If you have insurance, talk to them about what damaged items it might be better to just declare a total loss and replace.

    Condolences. I hope you enjoyed the movie more than I did. :)
    • Thanks for the link. I did enjoy the movie more than the first one, we waited a few days after opening so we could avoid all of the kids that like to recited every line of the movie during the movie. But, I did not enjoy it enough to wish I never had gone to see it that night :/
      • Hey, maybe you could have somehow been injured in the fire, if it had happened later at night or you'd gone to bed early or passed out in a drunken stupor instead of seeing Potter (kidding) or something.

        Not consolation, I know. I fear fire in our house, and you've reminded me we're short a smoke detector or two. May I ask how the fire started?
  • I hope you aren't still sensitive about this because the hounds are going to tear this story apart.

  • Ozone (Score:3, Informative)

    by linuxwrangler ( 582055 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @12:19AM (#4765002)
    For smoke smell try ozone. You can hire a restoration company to bring one in, buy one for several hundred dollars or rent one from a rental place. That's what the pros use to deal with flood and fire smells.

    • Re:Ozone (Score:5, Informative)

      by shaper ( 88544 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @12:58AM (#4765142) Homepage

      Definitely, Ozone. Talk to your insurance agent/adjuster on how to do it. I had a significant fire where almost nothing except some of my roof was actually burnt. Everything else was smoke and water damage. Anyhow, my adjuster got all of our clothes, electronics, furniture, anything that was smoke damaged and had it all carted away in a truck. There are special fire cleaning services that take smoke damaged stuff and put them in big sealed rooms with some kind of ozone generation. This works very well for clothes and some furniture.

      Eletronics on the other hand are another problem. Although the smell mostly goes away, electronics stink again when they heat up under normal operation. This is a hit-or-miss thing. As soon as possible, get the equipment back, plug it in and run it for a while and see if any smells come out. If so, the smell will probably never go away.

      Anything with any significant plastic content, throw away, try to get replacement costs from your adjuster. Don't even bother trying to clean it, you will NOT be able to get the smell out.

      Trust your nose, if it smells even after cleaning or treatment by cleaners, don't bother trying to save it. You will have a LOT of stuff to go through and the smallest items can produce an amazing stink that is hard to locate once all of your stuff is back together. It's much easier to diagnose before it is put away.

      • Forgot: the ozone treatment takes weeks, for my stuff it was 2 weeks. Be sure to get itemized signed receipts for everything that they take away to be cleaned or fixed. Yeah, it's a pain and hassle, but do it anyway. There's probably some other stuff I'm forgetting, just talk a lot with your insurance adjuster, don't be afraid to argue and ask lots of questions. Good luck.

  • Ask Hemos? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chris Hiner ( 4273 )
    Maybe Hemos [slashdot.org] has some suggestions.
  • I don't know much about smoke damage. I suspect since you were out that you didn't get a chance to use one of those home fire extinguishers. The ones that shoot yellow dust everywhere. That stuff is a bitch to get out. I had a rack of CD's that got covered. I had some limited success with 409 getting it out of the plastic but not the liner notes.

  • aranizer (Score:3, Informative)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @12:55AM (#4765129) Homepage Journal
    --you want one of these things, an aranizer [aranizer.com].

    They use these things to clean air and all the stuff the air touches, hospitals use them someplaces, meat markets, places with that nasty mold in the walls, etc. Also good for folks with allergies and just general "better" air. It has all the benefits of all the other ozone generators out there, without putting out the nitrous acid stuff. As far as I know they are the only company with that claim.

    As an aside, I'm a serious survivalist/prepper. One of the things that this community recommends is "distributed" storage of your gear,you do it with your electronic data, just take the concept to meatworld. The simplest way is to swap with a friend, you store some of their stuff, they store some of your stuff, and now you know one of the reasons why, sorry it came the hard way. You swap a set of basic things for long term storage, food, gear,personal clothing, important papers, medkits, etc, etc, the basics you would need in just such a case as a catastrophic fire. It can get more complicated after that, such as underground cacheing, etc, but that straight mutual storage concept is a good one. It's the old "don't put all your eggs in one basket" deal.

    Good luck on the rebuild!
    • I'm not saying that the product doesn't work but I must say that the guy who runs the business should stop smoking his own ozone.

      All From http://www.aranizer.com/producti.asp

      Our government, through the FDA and EPA, have set "guidelines" which made the presence of Ozone acceptable in industry and public areas. Yet, there has not been one documented incident related to a death caused by Ozone anywhere in the government's extensive research!

      Furthermore, it is clear that cigarettes cause cancer, and that secondary smoke can be more harmful to a non- smoker than first hand smoke may be to a smoker. Yet, the government is not too quick to "outlaw" cigarettes or to restrict smoking to "SMOKING ROOMS ONLY" areas.

      Er, it appears that this webpage hasn't been updated since, um, 1968 ?

      As my father's patent was searched by the Patent Office and granted a patent in 1965, the 04, 05, 06, 07, 0X, etc. created by the ARAN(TM) generator was a significant breakthrough in the Air and Water Purification Industry since ARAN(TM) was created without splitting the Nitrogen molecule.

      While there are many "experts" stating that ARAN(TM) as O4, O5, O6, OX, etc., cannot and does not exist, a Japanese physicist, Dr.Uozumi, through "balanced mathematical and chemical equations," revealed that airborne Oxygen, when exposed to dense, high velocity electron plasma (without any heat from electrode sparking), will form into higher atomic groupings like O10.

      I think you'd probably win at least one Nobel prize for creating molecules of O10 that exist for more than a thousandth of a second, as it would make a FANTASTIC oxidizer for rockets.

      Just as there are individuals that claim Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) if taken orally in very dilute amounts will help keep the human body free of bacteria and disease, the use of Ozone either taken anally or intravenously is touted by many users of Ozone as the panacea for most human ailments.

      Since Nick Trikilis was the National Sales Manager for Automatic Electrical Devices from 1946 to 1950, his sale of Ozone producing machines under the Trademark "HomOzone"

      This shouldn't be funny, but what would the sales pitch be:
      Salesman 'Would you like a homozone in your home?'
      Customer 'How do I use it?'
      Salesman 'well you could try sticking it up your ass.'

      • ---as has been pointed out by other posters, ozone is used by a host of industrial clean up companies. It's not "junk science". The main problems found with these various devices is along with the combined oxygen macro molecules, you get the nitrous stuff which is corrosive. As to the duration of the combined molecules, again, no idea really. they seem to last long enough to do the job though, how this occurs is not my forte. Aranizer has developed a way-your patent reference from their site- to have the ozone without the corrosive nitrous oxides. How they do it and how this actually works, I honestly can't tell you. The smell from the machines I have tried is quite pleasant,similar-kinda-to that nice smell after a thunderstorm or say like at the beach. I have used two different large household sized ozone machines (different company though) and they work as advertised, they eliminate molds and wood smoke smell, etc. This is just personal anecdotal, I can't "prove" it on the internet obviously, but I state that it occurred. that's the best I can do on a forum post. I think they are a good idea. As to the quality of their website, oh well, it's the machines that are important. They also have upgraded machines manufactured in the past by them, at no additional charge beyond shipping I believe, something very few other manufacturers of anything do.
  • that this Internet begging stuff can be quite fruitful. One woman raised something like $27,000 just begging it from people.

    I guess getting a story of hardship posted on Slashdot and then begging makes good fiscal sense.

    (Yes, I'm being harsh...but....really.....lots of us have hardship and aren't tacky enough to resort to asking for cash on Slashdot!).

    -psy
  • just take up smoking, in a week, you won't know the difference ;)

    just kidding, my teacher many years ago had all of her stuff subject to heavy airconditioner-on-fire type smoke, never did get over the smell of her room.. so many books lost (i hated her anyways, though)

  • Throw it all out. (Score:5, Informative)

    by adolf ( 21054 ) <flodadolf@gmail.com> on Wednesday November 27, 2002 @03:08AM (#4765593) Journal
    I used to repair fire-damaged structures for a living, so I've seen this more than a few times.

    The easiest, and often cheapest, thing to do is throw everything away and cash an insurance check for new stuff.

    For the stuff you don't want to throw away (because it is sentimental or otherwise irreplaceable), try Formula 409, Simple Green, or another general-purpose detergent. Use a brush, a cloth, or whatever seems appropriate.

    Electronics can have a tendancy to not survive such cleaning, however. There's (at least) a thousand types of glue used to hold the bits that comprise them together, and no telling how they'll react to chemical treatment.

    Water, of course, is generally harmless, but has limited application on smoke residue.

    A friend of mine's house burned a few years ago, and the fire department vented the ceiling of his computer room...which is to say that vast amounts of smoke and steam went flying past his gear. I found a number of CDs in that room with their jewel cases melted off of them.

    Most of it is still working justfine today without any cleaning, though the CDs did require some special care to come back to life.

    You'll also do well to hire a company who specializes in such cleaning projects, if you want to try salvaging stuff. I used to contract with Serv-Pro (they've got offices all over - check the phone book), and they were often able to restore things to new.

    Plus, they had a fleet of athletic 18-24 girls to do the work, which always brightened up my workday.

    Once you're ready to start painting and carpeting, make sure you coat everything with a good primer. I usually rented a fairly serious airless paint sprayer, and used Killz, or Pro-Block from Sherwin Williams. Killz does a somewhat better job, being shellac, but the alcohol base will kill you dead if you're not extremely careful with your respirator. Plus, there's probably flash hazards with spraying alcohol everywhere... Pro-Block works very nearly as well, is oil-based (thus possible to coexist with) and is a great deal less expensive.

    Cover the walls, ceiling, any exposed studs, the floorboards, and everything else you want to never smell of smoke again.

  • When my house caught fire, my computer face melted, but the hard drive still worked.
  • I have a Tandy 1000SL and a Tandy Sensation ][ that were both in a house that was completely destroyed by fire, except for the bathroom. The computers were not in said bathroom. The casings, I threw away, but the computers themselves work just fine. I've played a lot of old DOS games on the 1000SL (Many games back in the day supported "CGA" or "Tandy CGA" which the SL has... 16 color CGA, basically.. almost as good as a C= 64... but not quite. ) and the Sensation is my LAN's web/email/mp3 server and router. The monitor that came with the Sensation was so fucked up with smoke that it took me almost a month of every day spraying the thing with "Scrubbing Bubbles" and Windex, but I was finally able to use it. i ended up making it headless, and throwing out the Tandy VGM monitor that the previous owner supplied. The casing of the monitor was so tarnished, that even after applying "Bleche-White" (a tire bleaching chemical) for months, it didn't turn anything but dull yellow.

    The computers themselves, have never really been cleaned. The motherboards are still smoked black. it's been probably 8-10 years now, and they all still operate just fine. So what's your issue?

  • Have everything done by a professional. The best treatment for removing the smoke smell is an Ozone treatment. The do this professionally and I had all my posessions returned to me clean and fresh smelling. Try looking in your local phone book for cleaning services that specialize in water and smoke restoration. A local shop did wonders to clean up my computers and laptops that were damaged by the smoke. To treat the actual color left on object, 409 works well, as mentioned above.
    • I forgot to mention that some losses due to fire are tax deductible from your federal income tax. Keep the receipts of the money you spend for repairing or replacing damaged property and for covering your living expenses. These receipts will be helpful in calculating the total loss for your yearly tax return. Check with your local Internal Revenue Service office for Publication 547 - TAX INFORMATION ON DISASTERS, CASUALTY LOSSES, AND THEFTS. A quick refund is possible if you file Form 1045 APPLICATION FOR TENTATIVE REFUND.

      If you are insured, document all posessions that were effected by the fire. Make a list and take lots of pictures. A description of loss of 1000 books doesn't always convey what a picture of those books layed out in the front lawn in front of the burned house does.
      • A description of loss of 1000 books doesn't always convey what a picture of those books layed out in the front lawn in front of the burned house does.

        Unfortunately that won't help you if the fire was bad enough. The best way to deal with an insurance company is to have all of your belongings photographed and cataloged *before* anything happens. Take your digital camera (or borrow one) and take a weekend phtographing every single thing. Also make an itemized list (database, spreadsheet, flat text file, etc.) with all of the serial numbers, etc. Burn (bad pun, I know...) everything to CDs and put it in a safety deposit box. Repeat every six months.

        There are lots of items that insurance can NEVER replace, but arguing with an insurance company is really the last thing you want to do while standing on the porch of your wrecked life.

        Been there, done that.

  • Lord Voldemort is ALIVE

  • No. Seriously!
    Dishwasher detergent is magnificent at dislodging creosote like contaminants such as one would experience in a fire.
    I used to work at a small electronics manufacturer that would, as a matter of routine, run all of their nice shiny newly soldered boards through a big ol' Kitchenaid to get the excess flux off. Worked great.
  • Shortly after I moved to Oz,
    I met a guy who was making money
    "hand-over-fist" in the carpet-
    cleaning business... not from
    carpet cleaninhg alone, however.

    He imported some US smoke-eating
    technology: put the smoke-damaged
    items into his sealed room, which
    gets filled with a (reportedly)
    safe gas, which does all the work.

    Insurance companies were his biggest
    customers... instead of replacing,
    they paid for "smoke-removal" service.

    More I do not know...
  • Essentially they make little machines that take some sort of dry product, and kick out ozone.

    The ozone permiates everything and takes the smell out nicely.

    But I will reiterate what someone above said: Hire a professional. There are people that organize this whole process. You will use several different services, but there are people that know what services those will be needed.

    Some laundries specialize in the clothes and linens aspect, for instance.
    • Call the local Red Cross, if you haven't already. Most chapters deal with house fires all the time and hopefully have some cleaning advice, as well as other services.
    • Call a restoration company. If you can't afford it, still call them. They're usually willing to give free advice if you're obviously not going to hire them. Sometimes they do free jobs too. Beg.
    • Trisodium phosphate (TSP), which can be found in the paint section of Home Depot and other stores, is the heavy-duty cleaner of choice. I wouldn't soak electronics in it though. Also, search for it on the web and you'll find all sorts of sites with real information on cleaning after fires.
    • Give it time, lots of air, and keep wiping down the surfaces.
    • Get renter's insurance. It's cheaper than you think.
    • Get a smoke detector. They're often available free from your local fire department. Don't bullshit yourself by thinking you'll smell the smoke and wake up.
    • Don't smoke in bed. Don't burn candles. Get that $20 halogen lamp out of the kids room and away from the curtains. Don't cook french fries at home.

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