How Suffern Restorers Choose Products to Fight Fire Damage

7/6/2022 (Permalink)

Residues and soot can affect every part of your home after fire damage in your Suffern home. Contact our experienced team to assess and remediate.

Convenience Guides SERVPRO in Suffern Fire Restoration

The chemical and physical processes involved in combusting materials soils and changing them necessitate action to restore a home to its preloss state. That means cleaning the surfaces or contents affected by fire damage in most cases. Other measures like replacing or resurfacing some materials may be necessary if cleaning is deemed unfeasible. Choosing the products to use may be more challenging than you expect, so finding a Suffern professional to help manage the process is ideal.

The products used in Suffern properties for fire damage cleanup dissolve, precipitate or lubricate soils, thus eliminating them from surfaces. Soils can also change in other ways when specialized cleaning products are applied. When remedial actions are optimized, the cleaning process can be faster or more thorough. For example, if lubricating a surface to get rid of soils, the chosen chemical agents should remain potent throughout the cleanup process. Otherwise, soils removed from one section of materials may be lodged in a different area. SERVPRO evaluates cleaning products carefully before deciding to use them for a specific cleaning task.

Factors influencing product choice:

• Chemical composition 
• Whether solvent or water-based
• Equipment necessary for dispensation

Cleaning products vary in many ways apart from having different brand names. The pH level is one of the main variations, with some products being highly alkaline, neutral, or acidic. Products with pH levels slightly above or below the neutral range are sufficient for light soiling. However, highly alkaline products strip away easily heavy or oily fire deposits. Acidic products may be necessary, especially in dealing with stained materials. For instance, after removing soot from a tiled backsplash, the grout lines may not regain their preloss shade or be stained. Such outcomes occur because some soot molecules are minute and thus penetrate beyond the surface. When our SERVPRO IICRC FSRT-Certified technicians use a highly acidic product, it etches the grout surface, restoring the change triggered by soot "Like it never even happened."

Product Composition Impacts Convenience

Fire is characteristically inconvenient. Apart from occurring when least expected, it creates many problems, including hazards, strong odors, and piles of debris. Removing waste materials and cleaning soiled areas is crucial in restoring preloss conditions. The equipment or products used should address the issues you face without creating new ones. For instance, since smoke residues tend to be pungent, it would be ideal to find cleaning agents that do not leave smells after cleaning is over. Our SERVPRO crews choose products with minimal VOCs ensuring no unpleasant odors remain on your property after removing the offending fire residues. 

Other beneficial properties include:

• Buffered products that maintain specific pH levels
• Products that work well over a range of pH levels
• Biodegradable products

Whenever a cleaning solution is used on a surface or fabric, it changes the soils, thus removing them. The change happens both ways since soils like soot also affect the cleaning solution, as indicated by the color alterations as the process goes on. Chemical changes also occur, one being an alteration of the pH levels limiting the product's effectiveness. A buffer is a chemical that keeps the pH constant no matter how soiled the cleaning solution becomes. Our SERVPRO technicians can complete the process faster and save costs with such a product. Another alternative is to use products that retain potency even as the pH levels change.

SERVPRO of Southern Rockland County makes relevant choices that ease fire damage management. Call us at (845) 400-4888. We're Faster To Any Size Disaster.