Ozone Treatment

- “There would be no residual toxic compounds or gases remaining and is an environmentally friendly process. He said that the house would smell like ‘fresh sun-dried sheets’.”

Using ozone, naturally. A few months ago, our mom passed away and so my sister and I immediately set about informing family and friends, arranging for the funeral and celebration of life, and basically dealing with her estate. Not an easy task, but one that needed to be done. One such aspect of her estate was her home in the NE of Calgary, a nifty older bungalow with legal basement suite that she has lived in pretty much continuously for over 45 years. Mom was a smoker, a pack a day kind of smoker, and so the house constantly had this overarching smell of cigarette smoke. Our plan was always to spruce it up a bit and continue renting it out (top and bottom), but what to do about the smell? Yikes. We were told by several professional painters that just painting the house will not fully rid the smell, even using such wall washing products as TSP and using such primers as Kilz. Despite those efforts, we would still be left with the lingering odor of 45 years of cigarette smoke. What to do?

My sister was trawling around on the internet one day and came across a product and a process that was pretty much guaranteed to remove the unwanted smoke smell, not to mention remove all bacteria and critters from the house … the process uses ozone and appeared to be quite simple. We made the call and met with Larry Pineda of Canpro at our mom’s home, where he explained more of how it would work, duration of process and how much it would cost.

A few days later, Larry showed up with his ozone generating machines, which he strategically set up in different parts of the 900 sq. ft. bungalow, and several fans. In preparation for Larry’s visit, we had removed all food, people, plants and pets from the house, as the ozone process not only kills the smoke, but because it is at such an intense level, basically kills anything ‘living’. Our basement tenant was very cooperative and agreed to spend the next 48 hours out of the house with a friend. Larry explained that the ozone machines would be left on for 36 hours, with another 12 hours of ‘down time’ when the ozone would convert back to a safe level for humans to breathe. There would be no residual toxic compounds or gases remaining and is an environmentally friendly process. He said that the house would smell like ‘fresh sun-dried sheets’. Hmm, I was curious about how the house would smell after the process.

Sure enough, 48 hours came and went, and Larry and I met at the house to inspect the results with our noses. He was right, the house now smelled like ‘sun dried sheets’. I could close my eyes and image a field with sheets hanging in the sun. Neat.

The painters have come and gone, rooms look gorgeous and there really is no more smoke smell in mom’s house, thanks to this ozone process.