As many homeowners are well aware, it is exceptionally difficult to remove certain persistent odours from your home such as cigarette smoke or the odour of smoke that remains after a fire should occur. Attempting to remove these types of deeply embedded odours yourself using DIY methods such as baking soda, vinegar or charcoal, results in very little success in lessening the problem to any significant degree.
An odour is a volatilized compound that is perceptible by our sense of smell and can build up over time and become embedded in materials and surfaces in your home. Odour removal becomes a priority when smells become continual or intolerable. While improper ventilation can contribute to these types of stubborn odours developing, there are other factors that contribute to the problem, such as the type of materials and components your carpets and other interior textiles are made of—some materials absorb odours more than others.
Cigarette Smoke Odour
Walking into a home where cigarette smoking is ongoing or where it has occurred in the recent or even the distant past, is for most people a very unpleasant experience—the stench of old stale tobacco smoke indoors can be offensive even for smokers.
When trying to sell a home, lingering cigarette odour has a very negative effect on prospective buyers. Most real estate agents know from experience that it is a substantial hindrance in the sale of a home. It can turn buyers off immediately and can be used as a negotiation tool to force home sellers to drop their prices, sometimes for as much as 10%.
Cigarette smoke poses a particularly persistent and challenging odour problem for indoor environments. Not only does it adhere to surfaces such as walls, carpets, and furniture, but it can also seep into the HVAC system and ductwork, which spreads the odour throughout the entire house. The chemical components in cigarette smoke also pose health risks, as they are known to contain many toxic chemicals, including carcinogens.
Eliminating the smell of cigarette smoke from your home requires specialized cleaning methods and thorough ventilation to ensure a fresh-smelling and healthy indoor environment.
Fire Smoke and Soot Odour
In the event a fire occurs in your home, smoke, soot and other associated odours can linger long after the flames are extinguished. In addition to the disagreeable and pervasive odour, you could also be breathing in harmful smoke particles that can remain in the air for surprisingly long periods of time. In the event of wildfires occurring near your home, smoke and soot residue from these fires can also seep into your house and permeate drywall, wood, carpet and textiles, and cause long-lasting odour that requires professional smoke odour removal services to eliminate.
Professional Odour Removal Methods
Professional odour removal technicians have the experience, knowledge and resources to use a range of advanced techniques and products, depending on the source of the odour, to eliminate embedded and persistent offensive smells from your home. These may include:
Air Scrubbers
The use of high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters to remove odour-causing particles from the air, which results in improved indoor air quality.
Thermal Fog
Thermal fogging neutralizes odours, by using an effective deodorizer that penetrates wherever the smoke has traveled.
Ozone
Produced by a portable ozone generator, zone is an oxidizing agent that is very effective in reducing or eliminating certain persistent odours.
Hydroxyl Generators
Hydroxyl generator machines use hydroxyl radicals to eliminate offensive odours from indoor environments.
Absorption Agents
Absorption agents are substances or materials employed by odour removal specialists to trap and remove odour molecules from the air and surfaces in the home that have been affected.
If the indoor air quality in your home has been contaminated with persistent, offensive odour caused by cigarette smoke or fire, the odour removal experts at ServiceMaster Restore have the expertise and solutions to eradicate the problem and restore the indoor air quality in your home to a fresh, pleasant and healthy environment. Contact a ServiceMaster Restore for a complimentary assessment to remove cigarette and smoke odour from your home… and restore your peace of mind.