Wildfire Smoke Cleanup in Salt Lake County

Every summer and early fall, smoke from wildfires in the canyons, on the west desert, and from fires hundreds of miles away in Idaho, Nevada, and California settles into the Salt Lake Valley and stays — sometimes for weeks. The homes most affected are not the ones closest to a fire. They are the ones that were breathing the outside air the hardest: windows open at night, an evaporative cooler running, a furnace fan on circulate, in the foothill and bench neighborhoods where the smoke pools and the house backs onto open ground.

Wildfire smoke is different from smoke from a fire inside a home. It is cooler, so it does not drive into wall cavities the way heat-pressurized smoke does. But it is extremely fine ash and particulate, it arrives in enormous volume, and it keeps arriving for days. By the time the air clears there is a gray film on every horizontal surface, ash in the window tracks and on the sills, a loaded HVAC system, carpet and upholstery that smell like a campfire, and an odor that comes back every time the house warms up.

The evaporative cooler problem

Swamp coolers are common across the Wasatch Front, and because they pull outside air in, they can fill a home with wildfire smoke — turn them off when smoke is in the air. A cooler moves outside air into the house at high volume through wet pads with essentially no filtration. During a smoke event, the pads load with ash, the reservoir water turns gray, and the cooler delivers smoke-laden air to every room on purpose. Cleanup means replacing the pads, cleaning and sanitizing the reservoir and cabinet, and cleaning the duct run from the cooler before it runs again — and we clean the ductwork ourselves rather than subcontracting it.

The furnace and air handler

Even with the cooler off, a central system with the fan on circulate pulled outside-infiltrated air through the returns for weeks, and the filter caught only part of it. The duct interiors and the blower compartment hold ash and odor and re-release it on every cycle. Changing the filter helps the air; it does nothing for the ducts.

Surfaces and soft goods

Hard surfaces are cleaned with a damp method, never swept or dry-dusted, so the ash is captured instead of lofted back into the air. Carpet, drapes, upholstery, bedding, and clothing hold the bulk of the odor. Keystone Restoration packs soft contents out so the structure can be cleaned and treated; textiles go to a textile specialist and other contents to a trusted contents-cleaning partner. We clean the structure, and HEPA air scrubbers run throughout to pull the fine particulate out of the air while we work.

Seth Saxton holds the IICRC FSRT (Fire and Smoke Restoration Technician) and OCT (Odor Control Technician) certifications, and Keystone Restoration is an IICRC Certified Firm (#70266523).