house fire restoration vs demolition and closed cell foam
I had a grease fire that quickly turned into an uncontrollable blaze.
the doggies and I made it out ok.
the fire department took 75 minutes to extinguish. 35 minutes to arrive.
very intense heat damage. severe smoke damage, the flame damage was contained to the west rooms.
my fire restoration guy wants to replace what’s burned, take the structure down to bare studs. soda blast what’s salvageable and seal/ treat framing. I don’t know how effective this will be for remediation and guaranteeing that the smoke smell will never come back. or dry out the lumber excessively.
my thoughts were if going this route to follow up with spray foam insulation to encapsulate the framing. ?
GBA Detail Library
A collection of one thousand construction details organized by climate and house part
Replies
You don’t have to worry about “drying out the lumber excessively”.
You don’t necessarily need to use spray foam to encapsulate things. Good oil-based primers like BIN can do the job too. Sometimes cheaper primers like Cover Stain will do the job. You do generally need oil base primers to really seal in a lot of the nasty smells though. If you do go with spray foam, you’ll probably want to use closed cell for better sealing properties, but you won’t need a super thick layer of the stuff.
I would try primer first. Put several good coats on, let it dry, and see if that does the job.
If you have any engineered wood structural members (OSB and LSL especially) BE SURE someone QUALIFIED checks those. The one big issue with those products is that the glue releases above a certain temperature and you lose structural integrity. I was talking with a fire marshal who said TJI joists are like fuses in a fire and give no warning before collapse so they are dangerous for fire fighters. Conventional sawed lumber makes noises prior to failure so they get some warning from those.
Bi
That looks like a tear down to me. My sister had an extensive fire at her house. Only the kitchen and garage were burned but smoke was everywhere. They did keep the framing but it was difficult to kill the smoke smell. You can get the surface of the framing with the primer but you can't get between framing members and plates. I think they sprayed 3 coats.
That was my point exactly talkin to the estimator adjuster and fire remediation company, two-by-fours have six sides to them, and when we build a house we put the subfloor down then the walls get built on top and up and up and so forth. How do you get that damaged subfloor treated or removed you just can't... All three of them said it will get sealed unless you're running a bead of silicone across the bottom plate and top plates and around two-by-fours it's never going to be sealed
I'm sorry for your loss there. That looks like a nightmare.
Looks pretty rough, I'm surprised both are trying to keep the structure. I'd rather just tear it down and start new. As Bill mentioned, I suggest once they clean everything out, see if you can get in a structural engineer to do an assessment. For peace of mind but also might say it needs to come done if that's what you prefer.
Colin, sorry about your house!
Just wanted to add that, if I had just survived a house fire, then I would exclude the spray foam idea from your plans. I seriously worry about the survivability of fires in home with spray foam after watching this video (see link).
The video does include open cell spray foam rather than closed cell. perhaps closed cell would have been less horrible? Also, these tests exclude gypsum board which might otherwise help. Stick with cellulose, blown in fiberglass, or mineral wool.
https://youtu.be/snlhECzj1E8