Four Ways Smoke Can Damage Your Home in Shafter

The damage that can be done to your home from a fire is significant. Fortunately, with smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, and well-trained fire departments your home is much less likely to be totally destroyed by a fire. Even if the fire is small, though, the smoke resulting from the fire can quickly spread throughout your home and lead to serious damage. After a fire, you?ll immediately want to get in contact with qualified smoke restoration contractors near you. In the Shafter, California area, Alert Disaster Restoration is one such company qualified in smoke restoration that can restore your home after a fire. Here are four common ways that smoke damage can affect your home.

Discoloration

Shortly after a fire, the effects of the smoke damage are visible on your walls and ceilings as dark stains. After a few days, the dark smoke stains may cause your walls, ceilings, and flooring to turn yellow. Plastic surfaces and appliances can also become discolored and warped. This is not all. Metal hardware in your home may start to show signs of rust and corrosion several days after the fire has ended. Along with that, countertops, tiles, or other surfaces containing porous stone like marble and granite will most likely become permanently discolored from the acidic residue found in soot.

Odor

The terrible, pungent odor left from smoke is its most noticeable quality. The smoky smell is likely to get trapped in clothing, carpets, drapes, and upholstered furniture. Unless items like these are cleaned properly by a restoration contractor such as Alert Disaster Restoration the odor will linger for a long time.

Interior Damage

The visible damages caused by smoke damage are not the only issues it causes. Smoke can cause significant problems in the interior of your home as well. Since the particles in soot are so small, they can travel through the walls of your home spreading out everywhere. That’s why this can be such an issue. It can cause damage to your homes framing, wall studs, and most importantly your air ducts. If your air ducts are not properly cleaned the smoke and soot inside them will continue being spread throughout your home anytime you use them. This can result in the development of mild to serious respiratory problems for you.

Electrical Damage

Not just fire, but smoke, may cause your electrical system to be compromised. The smoke can corrode the wires away over time or simply just cause your system to short out. This doesn’t happen every time, but you still want to have things looked at by an electrician after a fire.

Smoke damage, just like fire damage is no joke. While the damage from the fire is immediate and violent, the damage caused by smoke is much subtle and gradual. That’s why it is all the more important that you involve cleaning restoration professionals as soon as possible. If you live in the Shafter area and find yourself requiring smoke damage cleanup, look no further than Alert Disaster Restoration.