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Smoke Damage Public Adjuster

Your home survived the flames of a Texas wildfire, yet the smoke still lingers. Whether your house has extensive, visible smoke damage or a lingering odor that won’t go away, recovering from the smoke damage could require extensive repairs. A smoke damage public adjuster can assess the damage and help you with all aspects of the insurance claim.

How Smoke Gets In

Smoke from Texas wildfires enters homes through siding, weep holes in bricks, chimneys, soffit vents, and doors and windows that are not sealed properly. It can also be sucked in through air conditioning systems that draw it in through the attic vents and then disperse the smoke through the ductwork to the rest of the home.

Visible and Invisible Smoke Damage

Smoke damage often leaves behind a visible layer of soot and ashes or discolors surfaces. However, even if you can’t see obvious signs of smoke damage your nose knows! In severe cases, the smell of smoke doesn’t go away without intervention.

Removing Lingering Smoke Odors

While the smoke itself eventually dissipates, the lingering odor is extremely difficult to remove. Remember how smoke travels through air conditioning ductwork? The lingering odor inside the corrugated, flexible A/C ductwork is difficult to remove. In fact, the ductwork may need to be replaced. To make matters worse, replacing ductwork between the first and second stories of a home often requires ripping out drywall.

Faint smoke odors can linger for years in the insulated exterior walls. When the wind blows, it could drive these faint odors back inside. Solving this typically involves replacing both the drywall and wall insulation on all exterior walls or encapsulating the inside surface of brick or siding material to prevent the odor from being driven back into the home every time the wind pressurizes a wall cavity.

If these smoke damage restoration measures sound expensive, you’re right. Ripping out drywall, replacing ductwork and wall insulation, and encapsulating walls are costly repairs that may be covered by your homeowners insurance policy. If a Texas wildfire has swept through and left your house severely damaged by smoke, contact a smoke damage public adjuster and find out the next step.

Minimizing Smoke Damage

While you can’t full prevent smoke from Texas wildfires from reaching your home downwind of the fires, you can take steps to minimize smoke damage. First, you’ll need to block the smoke from entering your home in the first place.

Common smoke entry points include:

  • Attic vents
  • Crawl space vents
  • Windows and doors
  • Chimneys

Make sure that each of these entry points is closed and sealed. At a minimum, close all doors and windows along with the flue to your fireplace so that smoke has fewer points of entry. Use wet towels to temporarily keep smoke from coming in through any door or window gaps. If you can safely reach the attic vents, turbines, and other ventilation points, cover them with plastic and duct tape. If your home has crawl space beneath it, seal any vents or openings so that smoke doesn’t enter through the crawl space and seep up under your floors.

In addition, smoke can be circulated throughout your home through your central air conditioning and heating system or whole house fan system. If smoke does enter your home, avoid using these air circulation systems because once the smoke gets into the ductwork your smoke damage problems could compound and become extremely costly to recover from.

These measures can reduce the amount of smoke entering your home. However, smoke may still creep in through gaps in siding, brick weep holes, cracks, and other vulnerable areas – especially if the smoke is thick and extensive.

Despite your best efforts, smoke damage may result. If so, contact a public adjuster to ensure that your smoke damage claim is fully maximized.

Is your Insurance Settlement Enough?

The insurance company sent an adjuster out to examine the smoke damage and estimate the cost to recover. A few weeks later, you receive a settlement check in the mail from your insurance company. Is it enough?

Before cashing that check or accepting your insurance company’s offer, it’s wise to get a second opinion from a smoke damage public adjuster. We work on your behalf to make sure that the insurance that you pay so dearly for pays you properly for your losses.

With smoke damage claims, the damage is often subjective. You may not be able to see the smoke damage, but you can smell it. This smell may be faint when the insurance adjuster inspects the damage, prompting the adjuster to recommend a professional cleaning or ozone treatment. However, if the smoke has gotten into the wall or attic insulation, into the carpet pad, or inside the air conditioning ductwork, cleaning isn’t a long-term solution. In fact, your only recourse could require extensive structural repairs. As you can imagine, replacing air ducts isn’t a simple matter.

Because the potential for smoke damage to be underestimated by your insurance company exists, we highly recommend that you retain the services of a public adjuster specializing in smoke damage claims before accepting any offer from your insurance company. If the public adjuster agrees with the insurance company’s assessment, great, you can rest easy. If not, tens of thousands of dollars could be at stake and you’ll need to aggressively pursue a higher settlement. Your public adjuster will become invaluable if this is the case.

Make sure your settlement offer is enough by contacting us today for your free smoke damage claim review.

Our Services

We offer comprehensive smoke damage public adjusting services to commercial and residential policyholders throughout Texas. Our services range from simple to complex and are tailored to the unique circumstances surrounding your Texas smoke damage insurance claim. Among our more commonly used services are:

  • Free smoke damage claim review
  • Smoke damage assessments
  • Documentation
  • Smoke damage repair estimates
  • Assistance with claims forms and paperwork
  • Damage inventories
  • Insurance negotiations
  • Denial disputes

We are professional insurance adjusters who work for policyholders for their benefit. Skilled in damage assessments and the recovery process, we can help determine which smoke damaged items and building materials can be cleaned and which must be replaced. Our expertise and professional documentation service come together, resulting in an insurance claim package that illustrates the merits of your claim. Don’t settle for less – let a smoke damage public adjuster take over your insurance claim.

FAQs

My house is located many miles away from the Texas wildfires, yet it smells of smoke. Is it eligible for a smoke damage insurance claim?

Part of filing an insurance claim involves supporting that claim with documentation and facts. For example, weather and wind conditions along with official fire reports can support your claim of smoke damage along with evidence of damage collected at your site. A smoke damage public adjuster can help you prove your losses and support your claim with documentation.

Before evacuating, we closed all windows, placed wet towels along door jams, and took other precautions to seal it from smoke, yet our brick house reeks of smoke inside and out. How did the smoke get in?

It’s hard to imagine smoke penetrating a well-sealed brick building. However, smoke can and does get past even the best defenses. In the case of brick buildings, smoke can get inside through weep holes in the bricks as well as through chimneys, soffits, attic vents, and other passages.

Why is my contractor recommending that we tear out the drywall and replace all of the wall insulation?

It’s not uncommon for smoke to get inside the walls and into the insulation. When this happens, your home could reek of smoke for years to come. Wind pressure on exterior walls could cause the smell to become more powerful during wind events.

My insurance adjuster already estimated the cost to clean up the smoke damage, and it’s nowhere near the cost that my contractor estimates. What do I do?

It’s not unusual for insurance estimates to be out of alignment with the actual cost of repairs. For example, your insurance adjuster may have determined that a professional cleaning would be sufficient. Meanwhile, your contractor disagrees and says that in order to remove the smoke damage, the ductwork, insulation, and drywall must all be replaced. This difference could cost you tens of thousands of dollars! So, what do you do? Get a public insurance adjuster involved. A smoke damage public adjuster can support your claim with accurate estimates and extensive documentation as well as fight on your behalf to get you the compensation you deserve.

I can’t afford to repair my home let alone pay a public insurance adjuster. Can’t I just file the claim on my own?

That’s the beauty of using public insurance adjusters for smoke damage claims. We work on a contingency so there’s no upfront cost to you. We work to make sure that your settlement is generous enough so that you can afford repairs. Since we work on a contingency, if our work doesn’t result in a settlement, you don’t pay us at all.

Insurance Glossary

  • ACV Policy – An ACV policy is an insurance policy that bases replacement costs on the ACV, or “Actual Cash Value” of the lost or damage items at the time of loss. Actual cash value means the value the item is currently worth – not its original purchase price or its replacement cost.
  • Denial – An insurance claim that has been denied by the insurance company.
  • Deductible – The amount of money that the insured pays toward a given claim. For instance, a policy with a $250 deductible requires the insured to pay $250 toward the claim’s total value.
  • Depreciation – A loss of value in property due to age or wear and tear.
  • Endorsement – A change in insurance coverage either adding or removing coverage from a policy.
  • Exclusion – A specifically excluded item in an insurance policy is known as an exclusion.
  • Insurance Adjuster – An insurance adjuster “adjusts” insurance losses for either the insurance company or the insured.
  • Insured – The person or entity covered by an insurance policy.
  • Insurer – The insurance company that has issued an insurance policy.
  • Peril – A cause of an insurance loss. For example, tornados, earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes are all examples of perils and are all responsible for causing massive insurance losses each year.
  • Policy – A contract for insurance between a policyholder and an insurance company.
  • Policy Limit – A limit in an insurance policy that limits the maximum amount an insurance company will pay for a given loss.
  • Premium – The cost for insurance coverage typically billed monthly or yearly.
  • Rider – A change in insurance coverage either adding or removing coverage from a policy.
  • Smoke Damage Claim – A type of insurance claim where the insured’s property has been damaged by smoke.
  • Statute of Limitations – The period of time spanning from the loss date to the final deadline that a lawsuit related to the claim may be filed.

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