Winter Season Puffbacks/Smoke Damage

3/21/2019 (Permalink)

In the photo, you can see where we tested the ceiling for soot.

Damages in a home may not cause physical damage to the structure but could create smoke or soot to go all over the house in every nook and cranny possible. These losses are better known as Puff Backs. This type of damage caused by a malfunction in a furnace that produced smoke and soot to go throughout the home through all the vents or baseboard heat. There are times that this type of loss could be worse than small fire damage. Since most houses have vents and/or baseboard heat in every room, the soot gets to every area. 

In certain cases, puff backs can happen over some time and are not even noticed for months. Most of the time this is still covered through your insurance company due to you not being aware of what was happening. We also fully check everywhere in the home. Checking insures that every where they have soot is cleaned properly with proper products and put back to preloss condition. 

These are severe cases where the need for painting or full pack out of houses from a puff back is necessary. Puff backs at this severity are visibly extremely dark soot. 

SERVPRO is always ready to help with these types of losses as well.