What fire restoration actually costs.
Ask for four separate estimates: emergency services, the structural cleaning, the contents, and the rebuild. They are four different jobs, often four different crews, and a fire estimate that arrives as one number is impossible to check and impossible to compare against anyone else’s.
The one that surprises people is contents, which is frequently the largest of the four.
What drives the number
How far the smoke went. The burn is contained; the smoke is not. A kitchen fire that put residue through the whole house via the ducts is a whole house cleaning job whatever the burn looked like.
Whether the HVAC ran. If it did, every duct is part of the job, and insulated flexible duct that took residue is usually replaced rather than cleaned.
How much water went in, and how quickly it was extracted. The water is often the bigger half.
How long before work started. Soot is acidic and keeps reacting. Metal that would have cleaned in week one is pitted by week three, and porous surfaces absorb further with every day.
How much is demolished. Charred structure comes out, so does wet insulation, so does anything absorbent that took smoke.
Contents volume. Every item is either cleaned, restored, or listed and replaced, and all three cost money.
Where you live. Labor rates, and after a widespread event, demand.
The four estimates, and what is in each
Emergency: board up, temporary fencing, roof covering, water extraction, drying equipment per unit per day, monitoring visits.
Structural cleaning: containment, HEPA air scrubbers, dry soot removal, wet cleaning by surface, duct cleaning or replacement, sealing and stain blocking primer, deodorization.
Contents: pack out, inventory, cleaning, ultrasonic cleaning for hard items, textile restoration, electronics assessment and restoration, document and photograph recovery, storage while the house is repaired, and pack back.
Rebuild: demolition, framing repairs, drywall, insulation, electrical, plumbing, flooring, cabinetry, paint. Ordinary construction, priced as construction.
Questions that change the price honestly
What is your sequence? Extraction and drying should come before cleaning. If it does not, ask why.
How many machines, for how many days, at what daily rate?
What is being cleaned versus replaced, and who decides?
Is the pack out storage cost in this number, and for how long? Storage runs for the length of the rebuild, so a rebuild that slips costs more here too.
What is not in this estimate?
Where money is lost
Waiting. The most expensive thing on the list. Corrosion and absorption are cumulative and irreversible.
Cleaning it yourself first. Water on soot sets it, and a household vacuum redistributes it. What makes it permanent.
Switching on electronics. Residue on a board is conductive and corrosive. Have them assessed instead.
Deodorising instead of removing. A quote that leads with fogging or ozone is selling you a smell that comes back.
Signing on day one. An assignment of benefits hands over your rights under the policy, and it gets presented while you are standing in the street.
Not knowing the sub-limits. Jewelry, collectibles, and electronics are frequently capped separately regardless of the contents limit. Which is one of the four places a fire claim gets argued.
Closing the claim before replacing. On a replacement cost policy the balance is paid when you actually replace and produce a receipt, and there is a deadline.
Comparing estimates
Two fire estimates are only comparable if they cover the same scope. The cheaper one is usually cheaper because it is cleaning something the other is replacing, or because it is not doing containment, or because contents are excluded.
Ask both to price the same list. Where they disagree about the list, that disagreement is the real question.
What is reasonable to do yourself
Very little, and less than in any other cluster on this site. A small contained smoke event with no structural involvement is a weekend. What that looks like.
Anything beyond that involves containment, negative air, corrosive residue, and a building whose structure may be compromised, and the do it yourself version mostly makes the professional version cost more.
The short version
Four estimates, not one: emergency, structural cleaning, contents, rebuild. Contents is usually the biggest and the most underestimated. The price is driven by how far the smoke went, whether the HVAC ran, how much water went in, and how long everyone waited. Ask what is being cleaned versus replaced, and what is not in the number.