Smoke Damage to Log Home

Sorry for you troubles.

When I was a kid we had a fire at our house. The fire department recommended some crew that cleaned up the place and got rid of the smoke smell, but my folks had insurance.

I saw a show on HGTV once where dry ice was used to sand-blast black stuff (old mold I think) from attic rafters. It worked really well, though it sounded expensive.

Otoh, it's a log home. A bit of smokiness would just add to the ambience, right?

After a thorough airing out first with forced air fans open doors and windows for several days...I would spray it down with this stuff or some other mixture....then buy or make an ozone generator for each room....repeating treatment as needed...

Yea Lyn I was hoping to remove surface 1/32" to 1/16" it is so bad. The logs are also covered in soot. When I do the outside of the house with a pressure washer it will peal the surface, but many say to stay away from water. Went through many articles and the dry ice was the most recommended for a log home.

Are the logs burned or just coated in soot...? Some pictures would help....You could also sand blast the surface lightly, depending on your resources...

"Fire restoration is one of the most difficult DIY fixes. Getting a structure to look and smell like it did pre-fire is a daunting task. Plus, trying to determine if a wood structure is sound can be almost impossible if it is heavily charred. One technique that can remove char while maintaining the substrate is called dry-ice blasting. It can only be done by professionals. To do this, they use recycled-industrial carbon-dioxide (known as RICE) pellets that are kept at a constant 115-degrees Fahrenheit. The pellets are fed into a hopper then an air compressor pushes the pellets out of a long barrel onto the damaged sections. The force of the pellets is similar to sand blasting. As the pellets hit the burnt areas they sublimate, turning from a solid to a gas and expanding about 800 times in volume acting like thousands of micro-explosions on the surface. This strips away the char while salvaging the underlying substrate.

After dry ice blasting, the burnt area can be evaluated and determined if it needs to be replaced or can be repaired. If it can be repaired, a fire restoration expert will paint the area with a primer/sealant. This will encapsulate and seal the smoke smell, while simultaneously acting as a primer that will allow new paint to be applied. An alternative to dry-ice blasting is sanding the damaged wood down to remove the char and then proceeding with a primer/sealant. However, sanding can be very time consuming and the structure still may need to be replaced."

http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/maintenance-and-repair/repairing/dry-ice-blasting-to-restore-fire-damage

This is a very bad shot but it shows size and color, should be light in color.

Keep in mind that ozone is harmful to the lungs. A small amount is ok; I once had an electronic air filter that generated a tiny amount of ozone that made the air in my house smell clean. But in the amounts of ozone you'd need for this you could risk lung damage. You wouldn't want to run the ozone generators and be in the same room.

Are the logs burned or just coated in soot...?

The logs and ceiling are mostly just HEAVY soot. Any char to beams I will take off with chainsaw.

Its up to you and that might leave you with some interesting grain patters afterwards.

Keep in mind the wood is porous... and as far as the pine.... it may be difficult to totally remove the smell.

Don't know where you live, but a call to a professional may at the very least get you some ideas.

https://www.servpro.com/fire-smoke-damage-restoration

I'll second that. Call any professionals in the area, get written quotes and be there during the quote inspection. Ask lots of questions. They may talk about using their "proprietary product" or they may talk about the actual chemicals/processes that they would use.

It is possibly a bit in the ethical gray area to ask for quotes when you don't intend to use their services but as you put time and money into a DIY solution (that might not work) you will start to wish you had quotes to consider.

That's what quotes are for. And the company expects it... they may not like it, but they expect it. Especially to get quotes from 2-3 different suppliers for a job.

I had RFQ's (Request for Quote) when I'm working on something at home or at work I'm not familiar with. Only to find out the work required to it is unskilled and its the procedure that's important, (Which is available,... normally right from the supplier you buy the materials from.) and end up doing it myself or in-house.

Its a standard project management tool to decide to buy it (hire to have it done) or make it yourself.

I wonder how many times, this happened only after consulting CR4, one realizes they can do it themselves and do.

On the other hand, I'm installing new carpeting in my house in (2) rooms) ... I had all intentions of doing it myself, only to get a RFQ with the cost and the time they could do it, to deciding to let a professional do it.

Its not unethical, its being smart and watching out for yourself. not to be taken, (because those are the real butt heads).

Just 2 words of warning:

1. CO2 is heavier than air, and you can't breathe just CO2, so make sure you have good ventilation if you use dry ice.

2. If you use ozone make sure you won't cause another problem: Ozone will damage some materials like rubber used for window seals (don't know about the chinking). http://www.ozoneapplications.com/info/ozone_compatible_materials.htm

As other have said... about the burned look may be appealing... something to consider. You could then seal it with a polyurethane sealer.

may be expensive, just putting it out there.

Don't know about dry ice blasting, I used to make cleaning chemicals and some of our clients were restoration contractors.

Pressure washing will not make the smell worse in and of itself. If it is the cheapest option and the water is not an issue here's my recommendation:

1. Get or make a foaming device (a pump up tank sprayer is probably too small for this).
2. You need a strong cleaner/ degreaser- I would look for a high phosphate content, but not too high caustic as this will damage the wood more
3. foam the cleaner on at a proper dilution (you may need to experiment, but will likely find around 1:1 or 2:1) and give it dwell time. Then rinse, hot water is best.
4. You may want to repeat once the soot is removed.

I would do this before using ozone, which will get right into the pores of the wood.

For what it's worth there are a lot of old stinky industrial buildings in Chicago that have been transformed into incredible spaces after the wood posts, joists and ceilings have been blasted with dry ice or other media. In my opinion it does leave a wonderful graining that people can and do pay extra for.

Very sorry that you have to go through this ordeal.

Given the choice between soda and dry ice, I think dry ice wins hands down. Less to clean up.

I've used soda blasting (contractors) for removing graffiti and it leaves lots all of the residue to clean up. Dry ice just leaves the wood dust.

(Disclaimer) Never used dry ice blasting.

I have to admit, this could be much easier for Cowboy to apply at his location, depending on the availability of dry ice (and the chipper for it) in his area. Soda can easily be had in 50 # bags, even shipped in it is not prohibitive in cost. Soda will help neutralize some of the char and soot odors, and leaves plenty of clues where additional cleanup is needed.

Cowboy also should consider this a hazardous waste operation (not for regulatory purposes) for the sake of his family. Exercise due caution. Tape off everything not in the "safe" zone (in other words where carcinogen hazards remain), keep kiddos out (or HAZWOPR train them and put them to work), keep pets out, and also tape off the "hot" zone. Clearly set up a detox/cleaning station, wear protective suits when in the hot and warm zones, and vapor masks, not just particle masks. Wash thoroughly all gear with soap and water, and rinse off before leaving the clean up (just inside the warm zone).

Sorry to be so complicated, but you do not want to track this stuff back to the nest.

I'm in the car business and we use an ozone machine to get rid of cigarette smells. It works great, but I have to be careful not to have the machine set too high, because it will damage the plastics and rubber in the car. I've heard a story of a man who cranked up his ozone machine and left it in the house way too long. When he got back, he would touch the walls and they would crumble. Not sure if it's true or an urban legend - I don't want to be the one to prove it's true.

Per the claim below, you don't want to use an ozone machine when pine oil is around. They say it will create formaldehyde, which you don't want to be breathing.

Ozone does not remove chemical contaminants from the air, but in fact, increases chemical air pollution by combining with chemicals typically found in the home, office, or school, such as ordinary household cleaners, plug-in type air fresheners, and personal hygiene products. Many of these products contain a class of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) called terpenes, which are the fragrance component of pine and citrus oils. Ozone combines with terpenes to form dangerous reaction products (including formaldehyde, [a known human carcinogen and respiratory tract irritant]) which may be even more irritating than the parent chemicals.

Talk to a insurance company.

They will recommend methods and maybe companies to do the work. Probably at no cost to you.

At least, it sounds as though nobody was injured, thats very good....

I would guess that the smoke will make your wood affected free of any possible worm attacks for the next 100 years or so. I read somewhere that such "damaged" wood is a good prevention/cure. Something positive.....

What about painting over, with several coats, once the loose smoke particles have been removed? Probably several coats of a good sealer.....remove a part and test different sealers?

I personally would clean well using a strong vacuum cleaner and then paint!!

Or maybe something like this, best of luck:-

i-tried-a-vanilla-scented-paint-additive-yum-or-yuck?

Yes, the Railroads used to set fire to, and heavily "char" wooden train trestles to prevent future boring insect damage (but not enough to structurally compromise). Have seen many of them in California. Used to have a salvaged wood furniture company, and we would often use torches to char the furniture and wire brush , as mentioned earlier, for effect. Rotary powered wirebrushing seemed also to remove much of the smell.. Also, fine to medium grit regular sandblasting of "burnt " outdoor trellises and large post and beam structures gave great texture and prelief patterns. Maybe turning some " lemons" into a little lemon aid.. Good luck, and please let us know what direction you have gone into...

Use some ionizing fans and run them 24/7 and the smoke smell will be remove. It may take a few days. Dry ice is going to be harsh on the wood. But it will work, and not create that dampness that water would create.

The smallest trace of soot will smell the place up so ensure you clean all corners and nooks and leave the inonizer fans running.

Ionizers are wonderful and SAFE after the source of the smell is removed. I've used them in many difficult cleanup situations. First remove the offensive material.. Ozone generators don't do that. After that you can get rid of the smell that nothing else will remove with the ionizer/ozone generators that are on the market. Don't pay several hundred dollars for an "Alpine" brand generator. The one hundred dollar ones on the market are every bit as good. Running them on full blast for a long time could theoretically cause damage and is surely annoying. (Think weeks or months) So don't do that. They don't remove material on the walls, you do that first. But they are often the only thing that will keep new people in your home from asking if you had a fire. When you don't smell it at all. You will need to run them a long time, so if you plan to live with it, set it low enough so you don't notice it and visitors just think it smells fresh not like ozone. At the proper setting they are equally as damaging as fresh air from outside.

I have read a lot of the comments but for this problem the soda may be best even considering the cleanup. Soda it self will help get rid of odors. The other odor remover is Chlorine Dioxide and for this you will need a professional. Usually they tent the house and inject the chlorine dioxide it will take care of odors but I have no experience on the soot issue. This method was widely used in New Orleans after the flood to rid the buildings of mold and mildew. People in the area hung all their moldy clothes and fabrics in the house before gassing and they came out later spotless and fresh. Good Luck.

Thanks for the input.

We have decided to not ever move back in to the house, I will fix it and rent it. From now on it is a business investment. I designed and built this house myself so I know I can take it apart. (it is screwed together )

I am going to remove and disguard the shingles from the roof.
Remove and save the plywood and 3 1/2" ridged foam.
Remove and get rid of the 2x6 TG ceiling.
Take the 4x10 fir rafters and plain 3/8" of each side.
Remove 4' log knee wall.
Remove all interior wood walls.
Pressure wash and let sit to elements
Pressure wash again.
Rebuild without 1000 sq./ft. family room upstairs with no loft
Change 10 pitch roof to 6 pitch and go from 22' ceiling to 12'.

The difference between rent with family room in loft does not justify rebuilding it. This way only the log walls and subfloor will left and I would feel more confident of being able to clean and seal it.

Again Thanks

Harvey

· A cowboy always gets back up, and walks forward and don't look back.

I think you are making a good choice, just be sure you do not try renting this until you are sure you would feel safe and healthy moving your family in - otherwise and even beyond that you need to make sure you are not opening yourself up to a future tort (legal action in civil court), not that I am an attorney or a paid consultant of one.

If you have a personal friend who is an attorney, or even a local judge, ask their personal opinion over a coffee or a beer. Cheers, Cowboy.

You said you will remove 2x6 TG ceiling boards and discard. If you are careful you could either turn them over or remachine the burnt/sooted face. By the way i don't know what 2x6 means. I guess it is NOT 2 inches by 6 inches or 2cm x 6cm. So educate me, please.

BTW just try sweeping the ceiling first. A lot of the soot will just brush off. It is when you vigourously rub that the carbon leaves a permanent mark so use a soft brush/broom and gently sweep. If you have a good air compressor you could just try blowing it clean and cover the entire neighbourhood in soot. ;-). I have used a wire brush on 'natural edge' tables that are made from a single slab of wood. They are always burnt on at least some part. Wire brushing and then a coating of a 2 pack clear finish strengthens the deeply charred parts and also the rotten bits. This creates an interesting finish.

All the best wishes for the future,

Jim

Yes it is a 2"x6" with a tongue and grove edge. And yes I may try to save them and re-mill down to a 1"x 5".

Will post pictures as I go.

The joys of the Universal Imperial Metric system. Give them an inch and they will take 24.5mm!

It's not even THAT hard. Give them 0.964567 inches and they can take 24.5 millimetres.

25.4 mm = 1"

Quite correct my dear colleague. I had slight of hand and a brain pause between finger strikes to the keyboard.

I shall severely reprimand myself immediately and forthwith. Point 9 taken.

JIMRAT: Here is the states things are often stated as larger than in real life. Surely, a "2x6" is not 2" x 6" but more like 1-5/8" x 5-5/8", or something like that.

The old boy resurfacing this wood, as he states in next post, can cut it down to another size (even a non-standard one), and re-use it if he wishes. A word of caution on using charred wood as feed stock to a wood planer: Carbon char can be abrasive to the cutting blades, so be sure to reduce feed rate and/or depth of cut, and stop between sets of boards to allow things to cool down a bit.

By the way, in Texas you give them 6" and they will love you from now on. In Texas, 6" is 152.4 mm, just for future reference.

Good luck to Cowboys, and Aussies!

WOW! I have used Western Red Cedar lining boards that are nominally 6" wide but they are only 10mm ( 3/8" ) thick. WRC has a very high F rating even higher than our hardwoods. F4 for pine F11 for Jarrah and F17 for WRC. Douglass Fir is even higher. The higher the F number the further apart the joists/purlins/rafters can be. A 2x6 WRC board could span a couple of metres in my estimation. My charts don't even show this size!!

I would only remachine if turning it over is not an option. In fact i would probably only use a thicknesser and do the non chared/sooted side just to give a fresh look. Seal the freshly exposed side with a clear finish and once dry turn over and paint the burnt/sooty side. That way no extra material is needed as the width remains the same. Thickness is only reduced by a sixteenth" or so. ( 1 to 2mm ).

How the heck is it held up? The thin panelling is secret nailed with a stainless steel pin about 1.2mm thick and 25mm long. And no, i am not even going to try to state the AWG! It would just be an Awful Wayout Guess.

Jim

They sit on top of the rafters and are nailed in with a 12 penny nail ( 3" long).

The span was 32" on center and yes could of been more, the same boards were used for the ceiling / floor of the first floor.

Interesting thing about red cedar. It's is known as a carcinogen.

When I worked at the ship yard, and when we were cutting the red cedar on our CNC routers, the operators had to fully suit up in PPE clothing with respirators.

Everything is a carcinogen! It just depends on how bad you want to get cancer or not.

The same chemicals in WRD Cedar, carcinogens, are the same ones that prevent rot, and insects. Can't have it both ways--

Yes, there is a reason chests to store linen were made out of red cedar.

Sorry for your loss. I also had to deal with uninsured fire damage. fortunately, mine was very limited in the house.

For what it costs, I like Andy's thoughts, I would attempt the vacuum with a variety of brushes first. A decent shop vac with plastic sweeping broom like bristles should remove the loose soot, and carry it into the collection bag. The large paper filter bags hold a lot of dust and soot. Using a HEPA filter behind this will keep it from sending the harmful soot back into the work area.

Try a few small areas. see what the results are like. Anything sucked into the vacuum is as good as gone, and requires no additional removal.

Good luck.

I would try Aqua-Dry from Beckart. i bought it from MAASCO in Wichita, KS. It consists of two dry components you mix in water, which generates Chlorine Dioxide, which kills any living thing in a house, as well as odors. Have to use a gas mask or respirator, and leave it for at least a day before airing it out. I used it to get rid of smoking smell left in a townhome. Pay attention to instructions if using this product!

This stuff is recommended in small doses (in other words don't breathe ANY of it). I would consider this product as a final parting shot to remove any odors you can't remove by physical char removal steps and general clean up initially.

But Flyboy33 did well finding this, and it is I am sure, a useful product when taken all precautions with, and given consideration to those downwind as well.

First thing - sorry for your loss and my late reply.

Second - do not feel bad about getting estimates, even if you wind up doing some or all of the work yourself; get the most thorough estimates you can, and at least three, because come tax time you will have to document your loss, especially since the building was not insured.

Third - you don't mention how much land you have, so if the expected rental income from the building you propose to construct using reclaimed material is not a necessity (although extra income is always a nice bonus), would it be practical for you to utilize the proposed structure for storage, or as a garage, or some such accessory structure, thereby avoiding the possibility of legal entanglements as noted by an earlier poster?

I will not even attempt to offer any recommendations for rehabilitation, since I've seen and smelled what a fire does to a wooden building. About 10 years ago a frame house around the block was heavily damaged by fire. luckily most of the wood frame was left intact, and all of the interior sheeting as well much of the exterior sheathing was replaced. The 85 year old house looked, and on dry days smelled like a whole new structure; on rainy or especially humid days, the burnt wood of the structural framing that had escaped serious damage could be smelled a hundred feet away, and that was from outside!

Best of luck, whatever course of action you take.

What has worked so far.

1. I bought a 5000mg/hr. ozone machine for $108 to try, and it was a great investment.
My wife had a blanket that someone made for her, and it smelled bad of smoke.
I washed it 3 times and added odor eater type stuff to wash, no good still smelled like smoke from 1 foot away. I bought the machine and ran it for 15 min into a old cabinet with the blanket in it, WOW smell was gone. I thought "yea it will it will come back" but no it has been two weeks and still has no smell. We did the same to our mattress it had some smoke smell but after two or three half hour treatments all is good with it.

2. My wife had some pewter and glass horses that had turned black from the smoke, normal glass cleaner did not work well. But I used "Simply Green" two minutes in a container, bottle brush and rinse. Good as new.

Will post more as I go along

Harvey

Smoke is comprised of complex chemicals. Within the smoke there such things as phenols that can bind to other polymers such as may exist in your blanket...... That is a layman understanding....

I believe you've got it! Good work! Keep going, and let us know how well this ends up?

Bicarbonate of Soda is also a great safe cleaner.

I would have thought gold tongs would make a great "safe" cleaner. LOL

Sure bicarbonate will absorb in some cases, and neutralize certain other odor molecules, but it cannot really do much for porous materials that should be soaked in a BS solution.

Latest update

After looking into soda and cob blasting, I was able to get a log home restorer give me a great price to blast with cob. The blasting is working great so far 99% removal with a nice finish.

Before:

After: Not a great photo

In progress:

Good to see!

Hope it keeps going well for you.

That is really awesome! I wonder if soda blasting or cob blasting could remove the "black mold" that is apparently done (with operators in HEPA suits) now by the use of carbon dioxide bead blasting.

when i was researching they said yes soda on mold.

They are using a 2040 grit cob and the finish is better than what you get with a pressure washer, no feathering of wood and did not raise the grain.

My experience with log homes is limited to visits with some friends in PA.

Does the blasting soda, CO2 beads or cob affect the joints between the logs?

Please educate this longtime city boy.

Only if hippies have occupied the dwelling, my friend. Consider it to be a "green explosion". Talk about wacky tobacky coming out of the woodwork.

This depends on the type of design. My house is stacked and screwed with 1/2" foam tape compressed between logs, so no impact. The other type of log home uses chinking between logs, and cob is the most abrasive of the three you mentioned, and they say it bounces off a good quality chinking.

Note: there were a lot of bad reviews for cob blasting saying how bad it chews up the wood, this is where I am glad I hired a professional because they know how to do it.

Glad you found a technician who knows how to hold his mouth right.