Removing smoke and burnt smells

Why a burnt smell is so persistent

Combustion is never complete. Part of the fuel — wood, plastic, fabric, cooking fat — does not burn fully, and that produces fine particles carrying unburnt oily and resinous compounds. It is this oily layer that makes soot so unpleasant: it is not dry dust you can wipe away, but a sticky film that bonds to the surface.

Hot smoke rises and spreads along the ceiling, so the deposit layer is nearly always thickest on ceilings and the upper parts of walls — the opposite of what people instinctively check. As it cools, the smoke sinks and travels into rooms where there was no fire at all.

The second mechanism is thermophoresis: particles move from warmer air towards a cooler surface. That is why deposits after a fire are heavier on the coldest spots — external walls, window reveals, concrete slabs, tiles. In winter the difference is sharper still.

While the oily layer is in the room it keeps evaporating — ozone treatment before cleaning is money thrown away.

Where soot stays out of sight

People clean off the black layer they can see. The problem is usually where they cannot see it — and that is exactly where the smell comes back from after a “deep clean”.

Older pre-war buildings in Riga have a further quirk — timber partitions and floor structures with voids that smoke enters through gaps. Soviet-era panel blocks have no such voids, but they do have a shared ventilation shaft, through which smoke from one kitchen travels up the whole riser. In new builds the commonest problem is mechanical ventilation with recirculation: if it kept running, the particles are spread evenly through the entire flat.

A typical example

A 62 m² flat, an overheated pan in the kitchen, the fire out within a minute, visible damage only to the hob and a cupboard door. A week later the smell is noticeable in the bedroom, because the smoke went out along the hallway and through the ventilation, and there are deposits on the ceilings throughout the flat. Cleaning only the kitchen gives no result in a case like this.

How we remove it

The order matters critically here. Ozone treatment before cleaning is a waste of money — ozone treats the air, but the deposits remain and the smell is back within days.

In practice this means most of the time goes not on ozone treatment but on surface work. Removing oily deposits requires washing with a degreasing agent, not dry wiping: a dry cloth only smears soot into a thinner but wider layer, and the smell afterwards often becomes even more pronounced.

What can be saved and what cannot

This is worth deciding straight away, because it determines both the scope of the work and the price.

If a material has absorbed smoke through its full thickness, treatment gives a result that lasts weeks, not years. In those cases we say so directly: replacement costs less than two repeat treatments, and afterwards you do not have to come back to the same question.

A separate note on wallpaper. If the flat is due for renovation anyway, it makes sense to carry out treatment after the old finish is stripped and before the new one goes on. Painting over an untreated layer of soot often lets the smell come through the new paint, especially in the warm season when evaporation increases.

What you can do yourself before we arrive

• Air the rooms if the weather outside allows — this carries off part of what is in the air.
• Throw away food that was exposed to the smoke, including food that was in packaging film.
• Wash whatever textiles can be washed — bed linen, curtains, clothes.
• Open wardrobe doors and drawers so that treatment can later reach inside.

Prices

Ozone treatment is €1.20/m², with a minimum order of €60. If soot cleaning and surface treatment are needed, we set the price after an inspection — it depends on the affected area and the materials.