Fast, Reliable Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Across San Jose
If your San Jose home just had a fire, you need someone who knows this city’s older housing stock and can get there now. Smoke moves fast through balloon-framed Craftsman walls, and water from the fire department pools under downtown slab foundations. Call Wade’s Restoration of California at (855) 915-0646 any hour, and Wade Ferris answers his own phone. He runs crews across San Jose daily, from Communications Hill to Alum Rock, and he’ll be at your door fast.
We started taking fire damage calls in San Jose because homeowners here kept telling us the same story. A national chain quoted one price on the phone, then a different one standing in the soot. That doesn’t happen with us. Wade writes the scope in front of you, prices it before work starts, and puts the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing on every fire restoration job.
Why Wade’s Restoration of California Is San Jose’s Preferred Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Company
Wade Ferris founded this company in 2007 and he still shows up on the job himself. Homeowners in San Jose’s older neighborhoods like Naglee Park and Rock Springs know the difference between an owner who lives with his reputation and a crew no one’s ever met before. Wade’s name is on the truck, his address is published, and he’s going to run into you at the hardware store on a Saturday. That’s the oldest accountability mechanism there is.
Our San Jose customers call back for a reason. We document everything with photos and written moisture logs. We talk to your insurance adjuster directly so you’re not stuck relaying messages between two sides. And every job, every single one, gets the 90-Day Done Right Promise in writing: if it’s not done right, Wade comes back and makes it right. No fine print, no argument.
Response time matters after a fire. Smoke residue starts etching into glass and metal within hours. Water from firefighting saturates drywall and subflooring and fuels mold within 48 to 72 hours. We answer calls 24/7 with a live person, and Wade heads out to San Jose homes the moment you hang up. Not a call center, not a queue. Him.
Our Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Services in San Jose
Fire damage restoration is more than wiping soot off walls. In San Jose’s older homes, especially the pre-WWII Craftsman and Victorian-era houses around downtown, smoke travels through balloon framing into upper floors and wall cavities no one’s opened in sixty years. If you only clean what you can see, you’ll smell that fire every time the heat kicks on for months. Our Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration team opens the walls and follows the smoke.
Fire Damage Cleanup
We start every San Jose fire cleanup with a structural assessment, not just a mop and bucket. Charred framing, compromised plaster, waterlogged subflooring, and soot-packed insulation all need different treatment. In ZIP codes 95120 and 95121, where many 1960s and 70s tract homes have open floor plans, smoke spreads through entire living areas fast. Our crews use professional-grade Dri-Eaz dehumidifiers and XPOWER air scrubbers from the first day, not a week later.
Smoke & Soot Removal
Soot is acidic. Left on metal fixtures for more than a few days, it etches permanent damage. On painted walls, it bonds and stains. San Jose’s downtown ZIPs have a huge inventory of pre-WWII homes with original hardware, lath-and-plaster walls, and unpainted wood trim that soot loves to soak into. We clean every surface by hand where needed, and we open wall cavities to remove soot that’s already wicked back behind the lath.
Odor Removal & Deodorization
The smell of a house fire is stubborn because the smoke particles embed into porous material: insulation, drywall, carpet pad, and even the wood framing itself. Thermal fogging and ozone treatment help, but they fail if you skip the source removal. In San Jose’s flat valley floor, where winter atmospheric rivers push moisture into crawlspaces for days at a time, fire smell that’s trapped in damp framing reactivates. We remove the source first, then deodorize the air.
Contents Cleaning & Pack-Out
Most furniture, clothing, and household goods that look ruined after a San Jose house fire are cleanable. We do on-site contents cleaning with XPOWER air scrubbers running, and we pack out what needs more thorough work. For homeowners in East Foothills and Communications Hill with mid-century furniture and family heirlooms, we catalog everything, clean what we can on-site, and rebuild the rest. You’re not sending grandma’s hutch to a warehouse and hoping it comes back.
What happens when you call
- 1
A real person answersNo phone trees - you reach a local pro.
- 2
You get an upfront price rangeHonest numbers before anyone is dispatched.
- 3
A background-checked tech heads outLicensed & insured, dispatched right away.
- 4
You approve before work beginsNothing starts until you say go.
Trusted Brands We Service in San Jose
We work on every type of fire and smoke damage equipment Bay Area homeowners have, and we keep Dri-Eaz drying systems and XPOWER filtration units stocked and ready for San Jose deployments. If your drying equipment or air scrubbers need maintenance or replacement parts after a fire response, we handle that too. Wade’s team holds IICRC, RIA, and IFA credentials, so the work is done to the industry’s highest standards, not whatever’s fastest.
Common Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration Problems We See in San Jose Homes
- Smoke hiding in balloon-framed walls. San Jose’s pre-WWII Craftsman homes use balloon framing, meaning wall cavities run unbroken from foundation to attic. A kitchen fire in a Naglee Park home sends smoke up those cavities and into bedrooms on the far side of the house. If a crew only cleans visible surfaces, the smell comes back for months.
- Water trapped under slab foundations. In downtown ZIP codes 95110 through 95113, thousands of 1960s and 70s soft-story apartment buildings and older slab-on-grade homes hold water from firefighting with nowhere to drain. The valley floor is flat and urban, so stormwater and firefighting water have no natural runoff. If crews don’t deploy Injectidry drying mats within three days, mold colonizes under the slab.
- Skipping wall cavity inspection after roof fires. Many San Jose crews only handle what’s visible after a roof or attic fire. But smoke penetrates into the insulation and framing cavities below. In 1950s tract stucco homes across ZIP 95118 and 95119, we routinely find smoke-damaged insulation two rooms away from the fire source.
- Wind-rated repair requirements on garage doors. San Jose’s building code requires that post-fire structural repairs, including rolling garage doors, meet current wind resistance standards. Crews that just replace a damaged garage door panel without checking the wind-rating requirements leave homeowners with a door that fails the next winter storm. We follow the code, not just the insurance estimate.
Pricing for Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration in San Jose, CA
Here’s what you can expect to pay in San Jose. A basic fire damage cleanup with soot removal in one or two rooms typically runs $1,800 to $4,500. Full smoke and soot removal across a larger home, including wall cavity treatment and deodorization, falls between $5,000 and $14,000. Contents cleaning and pack-out for a whole-house fire usually lands between $3,000 and $9,000 depending on volume. Emergency board-up and tarping in San Jose starts around $450 to $1,200. If you have a written estimate from another company, bring it to us. We’ll give you a free second opinion. Call (855) 915-0646 and Wade will walk through the numbers with you before any work begins.
We Also Serve Cities Near San Jose
While this page focuses on San Jose, we work across the South Bay every week. If you’re in Campbell, Alum Rock, East Foothills, or Communications Hill, the same crew and the same standards apply. Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration in San Jose is our home base, but we’re on the road across the valley daily. Call us and we’ll tell you when Wade can be there.
Serving San Jose, CA - Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the San Jose area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage - if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs - Fire & Smoke Damage Restoration in San Jose
San Jose’s winter atmospheric rivers push a lot of moisture into the air and the ground, and that moisture reactivates smoke odor trapped in porous framing. In older homes near Coyote Creek, where the water table is higher and crawlspaces run damp from November through March, fire smell that was barely noticeable in summer becomes strong again. We dry the structure first, then deodorize. That sequence matters more near the creek than it does up in the foothills.
Downtown San Jose has one of California’s largest concentrations of 1960s and 70s soft-story apartment buildings. These structures are built slab-on-grade, with a ground-floor parking level below the living units. After a fire, water from firefighting pools under the slab and can’t drain. If a crew just cleans the apartment surfaces and leaves, mold colonizes under the floor within three days. Our crews bring in Injectidry drying mats to pull moisture out through the slab before we finish.
San Jose building code requires post-fire structural repairs on single-family homes to meet current wind resistance standards, which means a damaged rolling garage door can’t simply be replaced with whatever was there in 1975. We rebuild to the current code, not the pre-fire condition. That’s not optional, and it’s not a markup. It’s the law, and it protects your home in the next storm that rolls up the valley.
Crawlspaces under 1950s tract homes in San Jose, like those across ZIP 95118 and 95119, should be dried within 48 to 72 hours of firefighting water entering them. Those homes were built before modern moisture barriers, so the subfloor assembly has no drainage plane, and water that sits for a week will mold. We deploy Dri-Eaz desiccant dehumidifiers in the crawlspace the day we arrive. Not a week later, not after the adjuster is out. Day one.
Yes. Older pier-and-beam homes in San Jose, many in Naglee Park and Alum Rock, often need temporary shoring after a kitchen fire burns through floor joists or weakens the subfloor framing. We do that structural repair alongside the smoke and odor removal, because you can’t clean the crawlspace properly while the floor above it isn’t stable. One crew handles both jobs, and you get one written scope before we start.
Written by Wade Ferris, Owner at Wade’s Restoration of California, answering calls from San Jose day and night since 2007.