CONTAMINATED INSULATION
The smoke didn’t leave when the sky cleared. It’s sitting in your attic insulation and soaked into your roof sheeting — and your family breathes a little of it every day the heat kicks on. We remove it, treat it, and seal it out for good.
Your attic is a giant smoke filter — and it never got changed
Attic ventilation is designed to move outside air through your attic. During smoke season, that means days of soot, ash and fine particles flowing straight across your insulation.
Loose-fill insulation is millions of tiny air pockets — a perfect filter. Fine smoke particles and odor compounds lodge deep in it, where no amount of airing out can reach.
Smoke residue is oily and acidic. It penetrates bare roof sheathing, trusses and framing — wood you can’t remove, holding odor and residue that surface cleaning won’t fix.
Attic heat re-releases those compounds, and normal air movement carries them down into living space. That’s the “campfire smell” that shows up months later — and the air your family is breathing.
Fine smoke particles and the compounds they carry are a known respiratory irritant — especially for kids, seniors, and anyone with asthma or allergies. Getting the contaminated material out, and sealing what has to stay, is how you actually close the door on a smoke event.
Remove it. Treat it. Encapsulate it. Replace it.
Contaminated Insulation Removal
Smoke-saturated insulation can’t be cleaned — it has to come out. We vacuum it straight to our truck through HEPA filtration, so soot and particles never get dragged through your living space.
Smoke & Odor Treatment
Framing, joists and roof sheathing get a professional-grade odor-neutralizing and antimicrobial treatment that breaks down smoke residue at the source — instead of masking the smell until the next hot day.
Roof Sheeting & Truss Encapsulation
This is the step most companies skip — and the reason the smell comes back. After treatment, we seal the roof deck and framing with an odor-blocking encapsulant that locks remaining residue permanently into the wood, so it can’t off-gas into your air again.
Fresh Insulation Reinstall
Once your attic is clean, treated and sealed, we blow in borate-treated Clean Fiber cellulose to R-49–R-60. You end up with cleaner air and a better-insulated home than before the fire — and utility rebates often help cover it.
Signs the smoke never really left
One of these is worth a phone call. Two or more means your attic is still holding onto that fire — and releasing it into your home.
Straight answers, since 2012
Pacific Insulation & Restoration is a veteran-owned Spokane Valley company with 135+ five-star reviews. We’ve been in local attics for over a decade, and here’s our promise: if your insulation checks out, we’ll tell you it checks out — and leave. A free inspection costs you nothing either way.
What homeowners ask us
Airing out moves the loose smell, but the particles and residue lodged inside your insulation and soaked into the wood don’t leave with a breeze. That’s why the odor returns every hot day — the source is still up there.
The fine particles in wildfire smoke are a well-documented respiratory irritant, and residue in your attic keeps re-entering your home’s air through normal air movement. It affects kids, seniors and anyone with asthma or allergies the most. Removing the contaminated material removes the ongoing exposure.
Treatment neutralizes what’s on and near the surface — but smoke residue penetrates into the wood itself, and attic heat keeps pulling it back out. Encapsulation seals the sheathing and trusses so anything left in the wood is locked in permanently. Skipping it is the #1 reason smoke jobs fail.
Often, yes — smoke damage from a wildfire is frequently a covered loss under homeowner’s policies, even if the fire never touched your property. We document everything with photos and a written line-item scope your adjuster can work from, and we’ll tell you straight if we think you have a claim.
The assessment takes about an hour. Most full jobs — removal, treatment, encapsulation and fresh insulation — are done in one to two days.
It depends on square footage, how much insulation has to come out, and what the inspection finds — which is why we don’t guess over the phone. You get a written, line-item bid after a free assessment, with any rebates applied. No surprises later.
