How To Remove Soot From Walls
Regardless of the circumstances that have led to soot finding its way into your home, it is absolutely essential to remove soot from walls and your belongings. Soot is actually acidic and will leave stains and slowly damage whatever it touches.
Besides the visual damage to your home, it can cause internal damage to your body, as it is toxic. Knowing the steps to take when you have soot in your home is the best starting point. But having professionals do the job is the most effective way to completely remove soot from your home, as they know how to remove soot from walls in an efficient and permanent way.
What Is Soot?
Soot is made up of lots of different particles that are a result of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, such as wood, coal and oil.
It looks like a fine black powder, but it’s actually sticky and will cling to any surfaces it touches. Soot also contains a lot of chemicals, dust, acids and metals that leave putrid smells and awful stains on whatever it touches.
Why Is Soot Dangerous?
Soot is not just an unsightly blight on your home, as soot stains can be detrimental to your home and your health. It can even spontaneously combust, so it should be a top priority when cleaning up after a fire in your home.
Whilst the negative impact of soot on your health isn’t always immediate, it can seriously damage your health over time. It can be lethal as the toxic particles slowly enter your system through your skin and are inhaled, causing breathing issues, including asthma, bronchitis and cancer, with children and the elderly being severely impacted.
Your home will feel the effects in the long term too, as its acidic nature will slowly damage anything soot touches.
What Supplies Do I Need To Clean Soot From Walls?
Cleaning soot from walls requires a strong degreaser, plenty of fresh sponges and dry clothes to mop up any liquid. You’ll also want some cloths to protect any belongings you can’t remove from the room.
But it’s not just cleaning supplies you’ll need, as being well protected before dealing with soot residue and removing soot from the walls is incredibly important.
Because the soot can be detrimental to your respiratory system if it’s inhaled, you should make sure you’re wearing safety goggles, a mask and gloves at the very minimum. We suggest wearing a protective suit to avoid contamination of your clothes whilst you wipe the walls, as the action can mean you end up spreading the soot around before clearing it away.
Steps To Remove Soot From Walls
Wear Protective Clothing
Protective clothing is key if you’re going to keep yourself and those around you safe. Particles can spread beyond the original soot site, often falling onto your clothing and then contaminating the rest of your home.
Instead, with protective clothing you can minimise the amount the soot being spread around and also protect your health from the toxic particles.
Ventilate Your Home
The next step is to ventilate your home by opening the windows to provide better circulation of fresh air throughout the rooms. You can boost this circulation by adding in some fans to help draw out as many of the soot particulates from the room and out of your home.
Make sure you wash these fans and any filters within them after the ventilation is complete, as you’ll need to remove soot particles to keep them safe for use.
Empty The Space
As you begin to remove soot from the walls, you will unsettle soot particles that can end up falling on your furniture and belongings. These belongings may not be as easily cleaned as the walls, so removing them from the space before you begin cleaning is incredibly important.
If you can’t easily move the belongings, use cloths or a tarp or any covering you can spare to protect anything in the room that you want to keep.
Keep Your Floor Clean
Having a cloth placed down over the floor is the best way to avoid further soot particles from being distributed around your home. It’s easy to accidentally smear soot onto the floor as particles fall from the walls when removing soot.
Once your shoes pick up the soot, it can be difficult to clear it away, making the job much harder. Instead, focus on keeping fresh shoes to change into outside of the room and dedicate time to scrubbing your floor clean after you’re done.
Vacuum Loose Soot
Soot can smear on surfaces when you’re trying to clean them, so using a vacuum to suck up any loose soot particles is a great way to stop smears from covering your walls and surfaces.
This can be a little bit difficult, so we recommend starting at the top of the wall and holding the vacuum brush at least one-half inch from the wall or ceiling surface to capture loose soot particles and dust. This method means you won’t make contact with the soot, and you’ll avoid smearing it around.
Use Dry Cleaning Sponges
Using dry cleaning sponges is an extremely effective way of grabbing and clinging onto soot to lift it from hard surfaces. These types of sponges are often called soot sponges, but you can also find them under the name a dry cleaning sponge and a chemical sponge. They’re made of vulcanised rubber, so they will quickly absorb soot as you clean.
Keep Your Sponge Clean & Fresh
Using clean utensils to remove soot from the walls is the only way to get the best results. If you’re using a wet sponge, then ensure you clean it thoroughly to avoid any smears.
However, if you’re using a dry sponge, do not use water to clean this type of sponge. Instead, to keep your sponge clean and fresh, cut away sections that have become black and unusable.
Wipe The Walls With Degreaser
To remove any residual staining or smears of soot that are stuck to the walls, a wet cleaning method with a degreaser is a good solution.
All you need to do is create a cleaning mixture of water and a dishwashing liquid that is made of a degreaser, grab a sponge and get cleaning. If it’s not cleaning up as much as you’d like, refresh your liquid and try adding some more degreaser.
Rinse! Rinse! Rinse!
Constantly refreshing your cleaning utensils, including sponges and water, is the only way to make sure that soot particles and smears are cleaned off of surfaces instead of being spread around.
Wring your cloth out in fresh, running water regularly, and cutaway used pieces of dry sponge to keep your cleaning efforts fruitful. Once you begin drying, you should also be refreshing the cloths you’re using too.
Leave To Air-Dry
Continuing with the ventilation from the beginning of the process, leave any surfaces and walls that have soot removed from them to air dry. Allowing the circulation of fresh air to dry the walls means you are more likely to have a smear-free result and cleaner walls.
Rely On Rainbow Restoration To Remove Soot From Your Home
Once you’re ready to tackle the soot that is stuck to your walls, you can begin looking for extra help to make sure no detail is missed.
Using Rainbow Restoration’s professional soot removal services, you can be sure that our detailed routine will make your home safe and enjoyable to return to.
Our experts have access to a variety of tools and products that mean your home won’t be damaged and will have as much soot removed as possible, along with any smoke damage.
Don’t worry about moving the appliances or providing materials either. Our team has a professional kit and the muscles needed to be able to shift anything in the way carefully, and eradicate any remaining soot.
Get In Touch With Rainbow Restoration Today
Our team of experts can give you the best soot removal service, taking away the stress from you and leaving you with a sparkling clean home for you to get back to enjoying. Simply get in touch to enlist their help and have your home returned to you in its best condition.