The Prospects Aren’t Always So Black

How do you pick up the pieces after a fire, without burning your bank account too?

Fire is extremely destructive. But not everything “burned” in a fire needs to be replaced.

Sometimes you are only dealing with a layer of soot that can be cleaned off. And you’re good to go. Sometimes wooden members can be charred, but still retain their strength. With a little fixing up, they needn’t be replaced. On the other hand, sometimes what looks like nothing is actually a lot more.

The material properties of structural steel are rarely adversely affected by a fire. Usually it’s twisting and warping that necessitates replacement. But even this can be remediated given the right circumstance. If you know precisely what the right circumstance is.

How to Get in the Know
Unless you are truly expert in how a fire starts, propagates and is extinguished, you could miss key areas of damage. What looks damaged isn’t always so, and vice versa.

For example, pre-stressed steel found in pre-cast concrete is more affected by heat than plain rebar. So a reinforced concrete slab could look more damaged than a pre-stressed, pre-cast concrete slab, when the opposite is true.

Someone with generalized knowledge of fire and its affects could easily get little details wrong – and that could prove deadly.

If you want to get the details right and avoid future problems, contact Ron Koerth at 416.368.1700.