The short answer: heat destroys, smoke travels. Anything structurally compromised by heat comes out. Anything carrying soot that can’t be fully cleaned comes out. Everything else gets cleaned — but “cleaned” means verified clean, not wiped down and hoped for the best. The scope decision is the whole job; get it wrong in either direction and you pay for it.
This is the operator’s version. Not the IICRC text — what the standard means when you’re standing in the structure.
Fire damage vs smoke damage are two different jobs
Fire damage is heat damage. Charring, blistering, melted materials, structural members that lost strength. It’s visible, it’s localized to where the fire actually burned, and the decision is mostly binary: the material either still performs or it doesn’t.
Smoke damage is contamination damage. Soot particles and odor that traveled far beyond the fire room — through doorways, into attics, through the HVAC system, into rooms that look untouched. It’s invisible at first glance and it’s what causes most scope disputes, because the adjuster sees a clean-looking room and you see a contaminated one.
Scope the two separately. Walk the heat damage first, then walk the smoke damage. They’re different decisions with different evidence.
The demolition decision: three questions
For every material in the affected area, run it through these in order:
- Is it structurally compromised? Charred framing, blistered paint on structural members, melted wiring, warped subfloor. If heat changed what the material does, it comes out. No cleaning fixes compromised structure.
- Is it porous and heavily contaminated? Drywall, insulation, carpet, unfinished wood — porous materials absorb soot and odor deep. Light surface soot on drywall can sometimes be sealed and painted. Heavy soot in insulation cannot be cleaned out of insulation. Insulation with smoke odor gets replaced, full stop.
- Can you verify it’s clean? This is the one that matters. If you clean it and can’t prove — by sight, by touch, by smell, by testing — that the contamination is gone, you haven’t finished. “Looks okay” is not a scope decision.
Soot types change the cleaning plan
Not all soot behaves the same, and this is where generic cleaning quotes fall apart:
- Dry smoke — fast-burning, high-heat fires (paper, wood). Powdery residue, easier to clean from non-porous surfaces.
- Wet smoke — slow-burning, low-heat fires (plastics, rubber). Thick, sticky, smeary. Harder to clean, stronger odor.
- Protein smoke — kitchen fires. Nearly invisible, but the odor is brutal and it discolors paints and varnishes.
- Fuel oil soot — furnace puffbacks. Oily, widespread, gets into everything.
Identify the soot type before you quote the cleaning. A protein-smoke kitchen and a wet-smoke living room are different jobs with different chemistry, even if they look similar.
The rooms that look fine
Smoke doesn’t respect room boundaries. Check these even when they look untouched:
- HVAC system and ductwork. Smoke travels through ducts. If the system ran during or after the fire, the ducts are part of the scope. This is the most commonly missed line item in fire scopes.
- Attics and crawlspaces. Soot rises and settles. Insulation up there acts as a filter — and a reservoir.
- Closets and cabinets. Closed doors slow smoke but don’t stop it. Contents inside need assessment.
- Wall cavities. If drywall comes out, check what’s behind it before the new drywall goes up.
Document each of these with photos even when they’re clean. “Checked, no contamination found” with a photo beats “we looked” every time the scope gets questioned.
Odor is the final inspector
Here’s the rule that ends arguments: if you can still smell it, you’re not done. Odor means contamination remains — in a porous material, in the HVAC, in a cavity you didn’t open. No amount of deodorizing covers active contamination; sealants and foggers go on after the source is removed, not instead of removing it.
Sequence matters: remove the source, clean what’s cleanable, then treat residual odor (thermal fogging, hydroxyl, ozone — matched to the situation). Doing it in reverse order is how jobs get callbacks.
What the adjuster needs to see
Fire scopes get disputed more than any other claim type, because the dollar spread between “clean it” and “replace it” is enormous. Your documentation is the scope:
- Photos of char depth on structural members (not just “burned wood” — show the measurement)
- Soot type identified per area, with the cleaning method matched to it
- HVAC assessment with photos — don’t let this be the missing line item
- Contents triage documented separately (restorable, questionable, non-restorable)
- Odor verification notes — what was checked, what was found, what was done
The estimate isn’t the argument. The documentation is.
Operator’s translation, not the standard. IICRC S740 is the authority on procedure — this is what it looks like from inside the structure.