Fire Damage Repair in San Antonio

It's tempting to want new drywall up the week after a fire. Every day the house looks burned is a hard day. But building new walls into a house that still holds soot and smoke residue is how you end up with a brand-new room that smells like a campfire every time the afternoon heat warms it up.

So the order goes like this. First the fire damage restoration: soot off the surfaces, smoke residue cleaned room by room, odor dealt with at its source, and the water from firefighting extracted and dried. Then the repair. The ANSI/IICRC S700, the industry standard for professional fire and smoke damage restoration, covers that cleanup and restoration work. Repair builds on top of it. Skip the cleanup and the rebuild inherits every problem underneath.

There's a practical reason too. Cleaning shows you what's actually salvageable. A cabinet that looked ruined under a layer of soot sometimes cleans up fine. A wall that looked okay sometimes reveals scorching once the film comes off. We'd rather know before we order materials.

Fire damage repair is really two lists. One is what burned. The other is what didn't burn but can't be cleaned well enough to keep.

A fire job is long, and the hardest part for most families is keeping track of who's doing what. We rebuild the projects we restore, so the team that ran the cleanup is the one that runs the rebuild. They know which rooms the smoke reached, which cabinets came out and where the water from the hoses ended up. That history goes into the repair plan instead of getting lost between two companies.

It also helps with your belongings. If your things went out through contents pack-out, they've been wrapped, protected, inventoried and stored securely while the house was cleaned. They can stay put until the rebuild is done and the rooms are ready for them.

A house fire usually touches systems that need their own specialists. Wiring near the fire, the gas line, the air conditioning and ductwork, and sometimes the roof. We don't do electrical, gas, HVAC or roofing repair, and we'll tell you so plainly. Those trades need to sign off on their parts of the house.

Ready.gov is clear on one piece of this: don't try to reconnect utilities yourself. The fire department should make sure utilities are either safe to use or disconnected before they leave.

Our fire damage repair estimates are written in Xactimate by our Xactimate-certified operations manager. Adjusters work in that software every day, so the scope is laid out in a form your carrier can review.

Whoever you hire, the Texas Department of Insurance has good advice in its claim tips for Texas wildfires, and it applies to house fires just as well. Make only temporary repairs and save your receipts. When it's time to rebuild, get more than one bid, don't sign a contract with blanks to be filled in later, and don't pay in full up front. TDI also says to avoid contractors who offer to waive your insurance deductible, because paying it or promising a rebate of it is illegal in Texas.

Your carrier decides what your policy covers and pays, and the deductible is yours. We don't interpret policies, negotiate or act as adjusters. We help document the damage and work with your insurance carrier throughout the restoration process. Our insurance claims page explains our part in more detail.

We're an IICRC-certified company, veteran-owned and family-operated, with our home base in San Antonio. We rebuild fire-damaged homes across the metro and in Seguin, Austin and Round Rock. If the fire just happened, call 24/7 and we'll start with the cleanup. If the cleanup is finished somewhere else and you need the rebuild, tell us what happened.