Hey Fellas!
I’ve been asked to clean up a mobile home that’s been inhabited by smokers for 3 years. It’s a great 3 bedroom, 2 bath unit, built in 2003 but it STINKS!
How do I get rid of the smoke smell that permeates everything? The freakin’ nicotine is on everything. Wash it? Sure, but every porous surface holds the smells.
Do I run an ozone generator in the home? Re-paint it? Surely some of the guys who read this have dealt with problems like this before? Thanks for any suggestions! Cough! Gag!
Cheers,
Ken
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I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.
Replies
The last firejob we did, the cleanup crew went in and soda blasted everthing...maybe you need that too LOL!
Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
TSP
Tri-Sodium-Phosphate works wonders. I've used it in rental apts after smokers vacated and the paint comes so clean, you almost don't need to re-paint! Wear gloves, TSP is tough on exposed skin.
Thanks, PAH. Do I just dilute it with water and start washing everything? Do the surfaces need to be rinsed after? I'll definitely give it a try. Take care.Cheers!
KenYou live and learn. At any rate, you live.
I deal with cat odors alot. Sometimes areas of sheetrock or flooring actually need to be replaced (that's if they're peed on). I never go with rugs, mostly for that reason, but also because hardwood floors are more desirable in this neck of the woods (NY). The ozone machines do work, but I currently have an air purifier from Sharper Image. Brookstone makes one also. They're around $300 and works in one room at a time. Don't forget to shampoo rugs, wash curtains or anything like that that can be cleaned.http://www.reclaimedhome.com
reclaimedhome,
next time instead of replacing the sheetrock flooring whatever give it a coat of shellac.. Shellac dries in about 15 minutes and will completely seal odors in. You can then paint over it the same as if it were new..
Edited 1/16/2008 5:21 pm ET by frenchy
next time instead of replacing the sheetrock flooring whatever give it a coat of shellac.. Shellac dries in about 15 minutes and will completely seal odors in.
*****************I tried this & it didn't completely work. Is there a certain kind or something else I need to know, please ? After the hurricane when I still had doors & windows missing I had some kitty visitors :-(Bobbi
TSP will say how to use it for various purposes right on the container. Yes, you should rinse it afterwards. I usually have two five gallon buckets of clear water--take sponge or mop or whatever and put it in bucket "A" and ring it out and rinse the wall. Then put it in bucket "B" and rinse the sponge out, letting the dirt go into bucket "B." Take wrung out spnge back to bucket "A" to get it wet and so on. When bucket "B" is really nasty, empty it and use the relatively clean water from bucket "A" as your bucket "B" and refill the empty bucket and it is now bucket "A." That keeps the rinse water cleaner a bit longer than just working out of one bucket.
And, as someone else said, BIN or other pigmented shellac will seal in odors, but I still like to wash what I can with TSP. There are also odor absorbers, like newspaper crumpled up, charcaol briquettes, baking soda, Zeolite, etc. Was a recent discussion about those that you may be able to find by doing a search on words like "odor absorbing."
Thanks, Danno. Good tip about the two pails. I'll definitely try that. I also worked on a fire restoration job once where they sandblasted all the charred wood in the attic, then spray everything with KILZ or something like that. However, on damp or rainy days the smell kept coming back. I hope that cig smoke is easier to get rid of than wood smoke.
I'll do a search for odor absorbing too. I tried some other search terms before but nothing came back. Cheers,
KenYou live and learn. At any rate, you live.
I found the discussion--it was titled "It's BIN months now..." and here's the number of it--I'm hoping I did this right and you can just click on the number and the discussion will pop up. http://forums.taunton.com/tp-breaktime/messages?msg=99249.1
I had a a garbanzo-bean fire in my open-plan house; the smell from that actually got worse day by day. When it got to a skanky-bar-during-the-daytime level of awfulness about a week later, i called the disaster-abatement folks who wanted $1000 to set off some sort of bomb to alleviate the odors.
Not having a spare $1000 to spend on this, i rigged up my dryer vent to blow over a pot of Febreze, evaporating it. A gallon of the stuff later, the house smelled great, the odor never returned, and all my laundry was done. The $990 i saved was spent on buying microwavable frozen entrees.
Thanks, Frenchy. I only had to do that in the case of some really bad pee spots. Over the years if the cats were peeing in the same corner, the sheetrock and floor actually soaked it up and got damaged from the moisture. Don't anybody say it! My cats are more important than my homes. ;)
_____________________________http://www.reclaimedhome.com
.....a skanky-bar-during-the-daytime level of awfulness...
I think that may be the pinacle of awefulness. 9 AM on a Sungday morning....ugh.
I have had to stop visiting some of my favorite dives during daylight hours. I have found that I lose the desire to return at night.
J. D. ReynoldsHome Improvements