Black Forest Piano provides smoke and soot restoration of fire damaged pianos to various disaster restoration companies. When initially contacted, our goal is to remove the piano from the toxic environment as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the piano, such as left in standing water, high humidity encouraging mold or inadvertent damage caused by restoration workers.
Once the piano is safely in our shop, an inspection is immediately performed to determine if any mitigation treatment is warranted. A detailed report will be generated that includes the specifics of the piano, damage sustained, restoration process and length of time to restore. Along with this report will be the replacement value of the piano so an insurance assessment can be made if restoration is an option or to simply replace with a new piano. If the piano is deemed a loss, our only charge will have been the cost of the piano move, creating the report and disposal fee of the piano.
Smoke and soot mitigation involves essentially four steps:
- Off-gassing: Everything that smells evaporates or vaporizes odorous gasses into the air. As odors release into the atmosphere, oxygen and hydrogen become a natural neutralizer. This process has already started.
- Dry Cleaning: Dry cleaning involves visible residue removal in a dry state, alternating between vacuuming and blowing with an air compressor nozzle, manual cleaning with a dry sponge and brush.
- Preliminary Detoxification: Chemically block or restrict odor-bearing molecules from evaporating from a source into the atmosphere. This is accomplished by using specific carbon & soot destroyer chemical to eliminate and counteract odor bearing particles.
- Thermal Fogging: Thermal fogging mimics the particle size of smoke. A special Fire-Clean thermal odor resolve fogging agent nullifies odor-bearing smoke particles that are trapped in hidden areas such as the top of beams, crevices and action cavity.
Note about using Ozone Generators. These work fine for porous material such as cloth or wood but should NEVER be used with a piano as ozone will promote rust on metal. That is why we use specially formulated Cory Fire Clean products and a thermal fogger.
Here is an example of some of the work involved.
After clearing the soot that you can access easily, time to clean under the strings and hard to reach areas. A slow and detailed process, using a special sponge to ‘dry clean’. And the end result. Keep in mind, this is one specific area I’m showing, the entire piano is covered in soot. This is the ‘action’ of the piano, quite the mess. After cleaning To get under the strings to properly clean the soundboard, the bass strings have to be disconnected. Hand washing all wood parts I can access to pull out the smoke smell and remove soot. One of the last steps, putting the piano and all parts in a thermal fogging chamber. The only way to remove the smoke smell that has permeated into the wood from the water vapor from the fire is to create a cleaning fog that is even finer mist. We leave this in for 24 hours. As a side note, you might have some restorers using an ozonator to remove the smoke smell, this will promote rust on the metal. We don’t do that. After cleaning is done, strings are put back on and of course needs tuning and the action we pulled must be regulated (like tuning up your car engine). While doing that work, it is common to fix things, here some of the hammers were not properly glued which we fixed. This is what the keys looked like when it came in. All done. Showroom new!
