Tuscarawas County odors, gone for good.

One to four hours for most jobs, so a changeover day usually covers it without blocking the property for longer. The part worth planning is the order. If you are replacing carpet or repainting as part of the turnover, we should be in before the finishes rather than after, because treating a subfloor is straightforward while it is exposed and awkward once new flooring is over it. Tell us the handover date and what else is happening that week and we will fit around the trades rather than adding a day to the schedule.

That is the most common call we get, and it is not bad workmanship. Smoke residue is not on the surface, it is in it. Tar and nicotine condense out of warm air and work into plaster, drywall paper, timber, carpet backing and the inside of the ductwork, so a heavy clean and two coats buy you a few weeks and the first warm humid day brings it back through. Sealing does have a place, but only after the residue underneath has been dealt with and only on surfaces that genuinely cannot be treated. Doing it in the wrong order is the most expensive mistake we see, because the paint has to come off again before anyone can get at the problem.

Tell us the ZIP and the type of property when we call you back and we will give you the soonest date we can genuinely keep, rather than a promise we might miss. The treatment, the equipment and the guarantee are the same in every market we cover. It is worth telling us everything on that call, so we arrive with what the job needs the first time.

We quote per job rather than publishing a rate, because the same smell in two houses is not the same job. What moves the price is how far the odor has travelled, not how bad it smells on the day. Cigarette smoke that has been in a house for years has gone into drywall, carpet backing and the inside of the ductwork, and that is a different piece of work to the same smell in a rental that was smoked in for one winter. Tell us the room count, the odor, and roughly how long it has been there, and we will call you back with a real number rather than a range that means nothing. The quote is free and there is no charge for a visit that turns into advice rather than work.

No, though it is common enough that people accept it. A musty smell is the by-product of organic material staying wet: untreated timber, cardboard boxes, old carpet, drywall that wicked up water once and never fully dried. It is worse in summer because warm humid air meets cool basement surfaces and condenses on them, which is the opposite of what most people expect. Before treating anything it is worth knowing whether the space is actively wet or only humid, because they need different answers. Active water is a drainage or sump problem and has to be fixed first. We will not tell you a treatment fixes a leak, and if water is still getting in we will say so before you spend money rather than after.

If the smell comes back within 7 days of your treatment, we come back and fix it, and you do not pay twice. That is the whole of the guarantee, and it is deliberately short and plain. The reason we can offer it is that we treat the source instead of covering it, so there is usually nothing left to come back. Where a smell does return, it is almost always because something is still feeding it: water still getting in, a drain still open to the sewer, an animal still in the wall. In that situation we will tell you what needs fixing first rather than keep re-treating a symptom and billing you for it.

It is one of the most common reasons people call us, and the timing that works is after the clear-out and before the photographs. Smell is the first thing a buyer registers, before they have looked at a single room, and it is the objection nobody talks themselves out of afterwards. It is also the one thing a viewer will not raise with your agent, so you tend to find out through the offers rather than the feedback. We treat the source so the house reads as clean rather than heavily scented, because buyers are wise to a house that smells strongly of anything, including air freshener. Agents in New Philadelphia, Dover and Tuscarawas County tend to be blunt about this, and they are usually right.

Most jobs are one to four hours on site. A single room or a car is at the short end, a whole house with heavy smoke residue is at the long end and occasionally needs a second visit. What takes the time is not the treatment itself but working out how far the odor has gone and getting at it, which is why we would rather spend the first twenty minutes finding the source than start spraying. You will usually notice the difference before we leave, and the last of it settles over the following day as the air turns over.