For many home and business owners, a fire or flood is the worst possible nightmare. These disasters mean the potential loss of valuable items, some of which are rare and irreplaceable. After a fire, soot and smoke damage can cover household and business items.
Water from the fire department’s efforts can also cause lasting damage to objects. In the case of flooding, there is water damage, of course, in addition to mold and mildew damage that can occur after the flood waters recede.
In the past, it was often better to simply get rid of most damaged objects rather than try to clean them. Even in the case of cleaning efforts, the end results were not always desirable, and were both expensive and time consuming.
Advantages of Ultrasonic Cleaning for Contents Restoration
Fortunately, ultrasonic cleaning has come into its own in the last few years. With advances in ultrasonic cleaning technology, contents restoration companies are seeing incredible results in a fraction of the time, passing on those savings to home and business owners.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Offers Unparalleled Effectiveness
Although there are many ways to clean hard items such as ceramics or metal, ultrasonic cleaning is unmatched for its effectiveness at reaching into the tiniest crevices of these objects to be cleaned. Using the physical effects of cavitation, which occurs when ultrasonic waves pass through liquid, ultrasonic cleaning thoroughly removes impurities such as soot, smoke damage, and mold from everything from china to plastic toys. Coupled with immersion in a heated and specially formulated detergent solution, ultrasonic cleaning works more effectively than any other method.
Ultrasonic Cleaning is Faster
Not only does ultrasonic cleaning remove fire and flood damage from hard contents effectively, it performs its job rapidly, too. When engaging in content restoration, speed provides the best ROI for the restoration company, assuming thorough cleaning is happening, too. Simply put, time is money. Many contents restoration companies have seen their cleaning and restoration times reduced considerably when using ultrasonic cleaning methods, reducing costs of performing restoration. These savings can be passed on to the bottom line, which in turn can have a positive effect on business growth.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Provides Significant Cost Savings
How does ultrasonic contents restoration save on costs? Mainly through reduced labor and time expenses. Contents restoration workers spend less time performing labor-intensive cleaning tasks, meaning that they can be reassigned to other areas. Fewer workers having to focus on cleaning objects means less overhead cost and less overall time spent on a restoration job. All of this translates to a significant cost savings.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Has Been Widely Tested For a Variety of Situations
As ultrasonic cleaning has grown into the contents restoration industry standard, its practitioners have encountered a wide variety of fire and flood damage situations, learning how best to clean and restore. This body of knowledge involves everything from knowing how best to use ultrasonic cleaning on delicate items such as china, to what sort of detergents are most effective for particular applications. While ultrasonic cleaning isn’t the solution for everything, it has proven to be far more effective and faster than many types of traditional cleaning methods.
How Does Ultrasonic Cleaning Work?
Simply put, ultrasonic cleaning relies on the physical principle of what happens when ultrasonic sound waves pass through a liquid and strike against an object. When this occurs, millions of tiny bubbles form and collapse all around the object, releasing energy bursts. This bubble formation and collapse is called cavitation, and the jets of energetic liquid it releases, coupled with a heated detergent solution, thoroughly and rapidly clean stubborn grime from almost any hard surface.
Ultrasonic Cleaning Steps
In contents restoration, there are a few steps to keep in mind when cleaning an object ultrasonically. First, you need to evaluate the object to be cleaned. Determine what is on the surface of the object, what damage it has undergone, what its material is, and what its original appearance was, if you can. If you don’t have experience with cleaning hard objects ultrasonically, first take a course in ultrasonic cleaning content restoration or consult an experienced professional who has cleaned a variety of materials with different kinds of damage.
Once you have evaluated the object to be cleaned, you can make decisions about the cleaning process itself. This will determine what detergent you choose, at what temperature you set the liquid bath, at what frequency you set your ultrasonic transducers, and so on. For example, in the case of smoke-damaged painted china, you’ll want to make sure you pre-soak it and bring it up to temperature before putting it immediately into the heated detergent solution to avoid cracking, and you’ll want to test the detergent on the china’s paint to make sure you avoid color loss. In general, a good rule of thumb is to educate yourself and consult others with more experience until you have built your own body of experience with contents restoration.
Want to know more about how Omegasonics can assist with ultrasonic cleaning and contents restoration? Contact your Omegasonics representative at 888-989-5560 or email us at
