NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
When a fire happens in a North Merrick home, the damage rarely stops at the room where it started. Smoke travels through wall cavities, ductwork, and the gaps around decades-old plumbing and wiring — settling into every corner of the house before the fire trucks are even gone. The visible char is only part of what needs to be addressed.
The bigger issue in North Merrick is what’s behind the walls. Most homes here were built between 1940 and 1969, which means there’s a very real chance your home contains asbestos-containing materials — floor tiles, pipe insulation, ceiling texture — and lead paint. A fire disturbs all of it. Any contractor who isn’t licensed by the NYS Department of Labor to handle asbestos and lead cannot legally complete the full scope of restoration work on your property. That’s a legal requirement that affects every post-fire job in Nassau County.
Then there’s the water. The North Merrick Volunteer Fire Department does their job well, but suppressing a residential fire means thousands of gallons soaking into your floors, walls, and substructure. In Long Island’s coastal climate, that moisture creates mold risk within 24 to 48 hours. Addressing fire damage without also addressing the water left behind is how a $15,000 restoration turns into a $25,000 one.
We’re a Long Island-based restoration company headquartered in Bohemia, NY, serving North Merrick and surrounding Nassau County communities. We hold a Nassau County General Contractor License, which means we can legally perform full structural reconstruction — not just cleanup — right here in the Town of Hempstead. That matters because most restoration companies stop at remediation and hand you off to a separate contractor. We take the job from the first emergency call through the final rebuild.
We’re IICRC certified for fire and smoke damage restoration, hold NYS DOL Asbestos and Mold licenses, and carry USEPA Lead/RRP certification — the full set of credentials required to work legally on the kind of mid-century housing stock that defines North Merrick. We also bill insurance companies directly and have guided hundreds of Long Island homeowners through the claims process from start to finish.
With over 5,000 completed restoration projects across New York State, we’ve worked on homes that look exactly like yours — same era, same materials, same South Shore conditions.
It starts the moment you call. We operate 24/7 and commit to on-site arrival within one hour — because the window between a fire being extinguished and secondary damage setting in is short. Soot begins permanently bonding to surfaces within hours. Moisture left by firefighting water starts creating mold conditions within a day. The faster mitigation begins, the less total damage there is to reverse.
Once on-site, our team assesses the full scope — not just the burn zone, but smoke migration through the HVAC system, water intrusion into the substructure, and any hazardous materials that may have been disturbed. In North Merrick, that last part is standard protocol, not an exception. Before any demolition or reconstruction begins on a pre-1980 home, a certified asbestos inspection is required under NYS DOL Industrial Code Rule 56. We handle that process in-house, which keeps your project moving instead of stalling while you search for a separate licensed contractor.
From there, the work moves through water extraction, structural drying, soot and smoke remediation, HVAC cleaning, and — where needed — full structural reconstruction under our Nassau County GC license. Your insurance company is kept in the loop throughout, with documentation at every phase. You deal with one company, one point of contact, and one timeline.
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Fire damage restoration in a 1950s Nassau County home is a different job than it is in a newer build. The materials are different, the hazards are different, and the regulatory requirements are different. Our service scope reflects that.
Smoke and soot removal goes well beyond wiping down walls. Oily soot — common in oil-heated homes after a puff-back or furnace-related fire — requires specialized cleaning agents and technique. Wiping it with a standard cleaner smears it further. We use air scrubbers, thermal fogging, and ozone treatment to address smoke contamination at the source, including inside the HVAC ductwork where particles continue to circulate long after visible cleanup is done. Our NADCA certification for HVAC cleaning is directly relevant here, because oil heat is the dominant heating system in North Merrick’s mid-century housing stock and puff-back incidents are one of the most common insurance claims in this community.
For homes where the fire disturbed asbestos-containing materials or lead paint — which, given the median construction year of 1953, applies to the vast majority of properties in North Merrick — we perform licensed abatement as part of the same project. No second contractor, no gap in the timeline. The full scope runs from emergency mitigation through hazardous materials abatement, structural repair, and complete rebuild, all under one roof and one Nassau County General Contractor License.
If your home was built before 1980 — and in North Merrick, that describes the overwhelming majority of the housing stock — there’s a meaningful chance it contains asbestos-containing materials. The most common locations are floor tiles, pipe insulation, ceiling texture, joint compound, and roofing materials. These materials are generally stable when left undisturbed, but a fire changes that entirely. Heat, structural damage, and the demolition work that follows can all release asbestos fibers into the air.
Under NYS DOL Industrial Code Rule 56, any contractor performing renovation or demolition work that could disturb potential asbestos-containing materials is required to conduct a certified asbestos survey first — and any abatement work must be performed by a licensed asbestos contractor. We hold that license. Before any structural work begins on your home, we’ll handle the inspection and abatement process in-house, keeping your project on a single timeline rather than stalling while you find a separately licensed firm.
In most cases, yes — standard homeowner’s insurance policies cover fire damage, including smoke remediation, water damage from firefighting efforts, and structural repairs. But the scope of what gets approved and how much you recover often comes down to documentation. Adjusters work from what’s in front of them, and a poorly documented claim on a $700,000 Nassau County home can leave significant money on the table.
We bill insurance companies directly and document every phase of the restoration — from initial assessment through final rebuild. Our IICRC certification matters here too, because insurance adjusters recognize IICRC-documented work as following an accepted industry standard, which reduces the likelihood of disputes. If your North Merrick home also requires asbestos abatement or lead remediation — both common in pre-1978 housing stock throughout the area — those costs are typically covered under your policy as well, provided they’re properly documented and performed by a licensed contractor.
It depends on the scope, but most residential fire restoration projects fall somewhere between two weeks and several months. A contained kitchen fire with smoke migration throughout the house might be fully restored in three to four weeks. A fire that caused significant structural damage — especially in an older North Merrick home where hazardous materials abatement is required — can run two to four months from emergency response to move-back-in day.
The variable that most affects timeline in North Merrick specifically is the age of the housing stock. Homes built in the 1950s and 1960s require a certified asbestos inspection before any demolition begins, and if abatement is needed, that adds time to the front end of the project. Working with a contractor who holds the NYS DOL Asbestos License in-house — rather than having to subcontract that work out — keeps the project moving without the delays that come from coordinating multiple vendors. We’ll give you a realistic timeline during the initial assessment, not a number designed to get the job.
Cleanup is the removal of debris, soot, and damaged materials. Restoration is returning your home to a livable, structurally sound condition — which includes everything from smoke remediation and odor elimination to structural repairs, drywall replacement, flooring, painting, and any hazardous materials abatement required along the way. Many companies only do one or the other.
This distinction matters a lot in a community like North Merrick, where the financial stakes are high and the housing stock is complex. A cleanup-only company can remove the visible damage and leave your home uninhabitable because the structural work wasn’t completed. A restoration company without a General Contractor license can remediate the smoke but legally cannot perform the reconstruction. We hold a Nassau County GC license, which means we can take the job all the way through — from the first emergency call to the final coat of paint — without handing you off to someone else mid-project.
A puff-back happens when an oil burner misfires or backfires, releasing a cloud of fine, oily soot that spreads throughout the home through the HVAC system. There’s no actual fire — but the result looks like one. Walls, ceilings, furniture, and belongings get coated in a greasy, dark residue that’s significantly harder to clean than dry soot from a typical fire. Standard household cleaners make it worse by smearing it into surfaces.
Puff-backs are one of the most common insurance claims on Long Island, particularly in communities like North Merrick where oil heat is the norm in mid-century homes. Most standard homeowner’s policies cover puff-back damage under the fire or sudden and accidental damage provisions, though coverage details vary by policy. We have specific experience with oil burner puff-back cleanup — including NADCA-certified HVAC duct cleaning to remove the soot that settles inside the ductwork and redistributes every time the heat runs. If you’ve had a puff-back, getting the HVAC system cleaned is not optional — it’s the part most people miss.
Yes. Any structural repair work following fire damage in North Merrick requires a building permit from the Town of Hempstead’s Building Department. This includes framing, electrical, plumbing, and any work that affects the structure of the home. Cosmetic repairs — painting, flooring replacement in kind — typically don’t require permits, but the line between cosmetic and structural gets crossed quickly in a fire restoration project.
The permit requirement is one of the practical reasons it matters to work with a contractor who holds a Nassau County General Contractor License. An unlicensed contractor cannot legally pull permits in Nassau County, which means the work either doesn’t get permitted — creating liability for you as the homeowner — or stalls while you find someone who can. We’re fully licensed in Nassau County and handle the permitting process as part of the project. We also coordinate with your insurance company throughout, so the documentation the adjuster needs and the documentation the building department needs are both covered without you having to manage two separate processes on your own.
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