How to prepare a property for disinfection

General — for every method

The point of preparation is simple: we have to be able to reach what needs treating, and nothing that cannot withstand the treatment should be left in the room. In practice it takes 15–30 minutes.

• Take out open food and medicines, or seal them airtight.
• Take out house plants — they are sensitive to ozone and to disinfectants.
• Provide access to the areas to be treated — pull furniture away from walls where necessary.
• Clear unnecessary items off surfaces: papers, cosmetics, chargers, toys.
• Cover or remove electronics if fogging is planned.
• Plan where you will be during the treatment and the airing that follows.

If something does not get done, it is not a disaster — we do part of it on site. But it lengthens the work, and you will have to wait longer before you can go back in.

By method

Note the last row: counter-intuitively, for ozone treatment soft furnishings, mattresses and textiles should stay in the room. Those are exactly what hold the smell, and the ozone treats them. Take them out and you treat an empty room, then the smell comes back in with the sofa.

The same goes for wardrobes and drawers: during ozone treatment they should be left open, not shut. Ozone is a gas and gets everywhere there is air — but not through a closed door. That ability to reach clothes in a wardrobe, bed linen and the gaps behind furniture is the main reason ozone is used against odours.

A simple test: anything that absorbs smells stays in the room during treatment. Anything people eat, or anything alive, comes out.

Pets and plants

• Pets must not be in the room during treatment. That includes small animals in cages.
• An aquarium must be sealed and the air pump switched off — the pump draws room air into the water and delivers it straight to the fish.
• Birds are more sensitive than other animals — their respiratory system registers changes in the air more quickly. Take them out of the flat entirely, not just out of one room.
• Take house plants out — they are more sensitive than people, and leaf damage usually shows up the next day, when it is already too late.
• After treatment and airing, pets can come back at the same time as people. We give you the exact time on site.

If there is nowhere to move the animals to, say so in your enquiry. A flat can usually be treated zone by zone — one part one day, the rest another — or we can choose a method that does not require the property to be empty all day. More on the safety side: is disinfection safe.

Access, keys and timing

A large share of our work happens while the client is out — people are at work, and that is the most convenient arrangement for both sides. For it to work, a few things have to be agreed beforehand.

Airing is the part most often left unagreed. If nobody airs the property at the right time after treatment, you come back to a room where you still have to wait. The simplest solution is to agree that we open the windows as we leave, or that a neighbour or the property manager's representative does it.

Offices, shops and other premises

In commercial premises the logic of preparation is the same, only on a larger scale and with one extra question — when the work will not get in the way.

• Office. Clear the desks: documents, keyboards and other peripherals should be put away or covered. Server rooms and equipment cabinets are usually skipped or treated separately.
• Shop. Food products have to be removed or sealed. We plan the work for the night between closing and opening so the shelves are usable in the morning.
• Restaurant kitchen. Preparation is the longest part — open food, crockery, work surfaces. After fogging, all food contact surfaces have to be rinsed.
• Nursery or school. Toys and soft equipment stay if the treatment is aimed at them, and come out if it is not. We agree that beforehand, not on the day.
• Warehouse. The key question is the type of goods: packaged stock can usually stay, open stock cannot.

Common mistakes in preparation

• Forgetting an aquarium or small animals in another room.
• Leaving open food in the kitchen, assuming no treatment will happen there.
• Removing exactly the textiles the ozone treatment was meant to treat.
• Closing the wardrobes that hold the smell, right before ozone treatment.
• Not planning the airing time and then waiting at the door.
• Not mentioning someone with asthma or an allergy in the household — it affects the choice of method.
• Not mentioning that there has been a leak — the treatment then gets planned wrongly.

What to do once the work is finished is covered separately: what to do after disinfection.