Know the odors you are dealing with and the best ways to treat them.

For this R&R Roundtable, we asked four odor removal professionals — Tony Macaluso, Jeff May, Sean Scott and Andrea Stenberg — the same five questions on topics including common missteps or misconceptions, top tools, memorable projects and future predictions.

When considering abrasives for property restoration, four important physical characteristics help determine proper application. Media blasting expert Wayne Lawrence shares these characteristics along with popular alternatives to sand blasting in this overview of abrasive blast media.

In this episode of Ask Annissa, Annissa Coy responds to the following message: “My customer is asking me for a guarantee of my work and for the removal of odor. … I don’t know how to answer this.” 

We all have had at least one tricky customer with severe reactions to unfamiliar smells, or allergies to cleaning solutions. The methods listed here are not your average restoration practices, but they can make chemical- and odor-sensitive customers very happy while also providing effective odor-removing remedies.

What are the most important restoration tools and advancements for CAT, cleaning and disinfection, contents, fire and smoke, forensic, mold, and water damage work? We asked 14 industry experts to weigh in.

The oldest and most complex of the restoration disciplines, fire remediation work requires an understanding of how fire and combustion residues behave to effectively neutralize and return a structure to a livable state. Cole Stanton explores four fundamental chemistry subsets of fire damage and how each can impact restoration work.

Specialized teams of artists, electronic technicians or textile restoration personnel are trained to analyze items based on many types of damage: heat, soot, smoke, humidity, breakage and water. The most elusive damage is from soot. Short term, lingering soot in items will cause a smoke smell to persist in the room. Medium to longer term, up to six months or a year, these soot particles can cause corrosion in electronics and the item can stop working.

Every fire has its own chemical makeup or DNA – the fuels that burned, the types of chemicals that have reacted or interacted, the duration of the fire, the intensity of the heat, the odors and gases the fire generates all contribute to the uniqueness and toxicity of structure fire environments.