How Can Soot Damage Your Wilmington Home?

1/18/2020 (Permalink)

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Improving Air Quality While Working to Protect You and Your Wilmington Home From The Harmful Effects Of Soot

While many people hear the word soot and think of charming chimney sweeps from films of days gone by, the actual presence of soot is much more threatening to Wilmington homeowners than these nostalgic productions might have advertised. Soot is a collection of particles created by incomplete combustion, each of which is smaller than individual mold spores, dust, or dirt particulates.

As organic materials burn up in your house, this is one of the fire damages to Wilmington homes that can almost always exist. Because of its microscopic size, particles of soot are harmful if inhaled by humans and pets, and they can get deep into the lungs of the affected individual and lead to potential health effects. For this reason, it is always a priority of our SERVPRO team to focus on air quality control when we first begin mitigation services. Even our project manager, walking through the address before we start our work wears the appropriate personal protective equipment to prevent inhaling the circulating soot.

Air regulatory equipment can get deployed to trap and remove most of these circulating soot particles from the environment. For this specific purpose, one of the most common choices is our air scrubber tool. We must also remain mindful that through practices like a controlled demolition and debris removal, that soot particles could get airborne and become a threat again.

As a residue, soot can continue to be threatening to the material supporting this layer of carbon. Because soot is acidic, direct exposure to many surfaces can ultimately lead to marring and irreparable damage without the intervention of our SERVPRO professionals. We have numerous cleaning strategies for soot-damaged surfaces, including agitative pre-treatments and potent products, to dissolve residues before wiping them from the surface. One of the most important and basic pieces of equipment in our arsenal for surface cleaning of soot and other residues is a small, portable HEPA filtered vacuum. 

Because we understand how destructive that soot can be, we ensure that its management and containment are among the chief elements of mitigation tasks. Our experienced SERVPRO of Hockessin / Elsmere team can make any fire loss situation “Like it never even happened.” Give us a call today at (302) 992-0104.

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