Plumbing
Contents pack-out and restoration inventory field guide
Move the belongings out, but the job is the inventory: a photographed, tagged, room-by-room record that is the chain of custody and the contents claim.
Direct answer
A contents pack-out moves a building's belongings off-site so the structure can be dried, cleaned, or rebuilt, but the real work is the inventory: a photographed, tagged, room-by-room record of every item, its condition, and whether it can be saved. That inventory is the chain of custody and the contents claim, not the lifting.
Key takeaways
- The photographed, tagged, room-by-room inventory is the job: it serves as the chain of custody and the basis of the contents insurance claim.
- Never power on or test wet or sooty electronics; soot and water are conductive and corrosive, so route them to a specialist fast.
- Freeze wet documents, books, and photos fast, then vacuum freeze-dry by sublimation, which dries paper without swelling, blocking, or running ink.
- Porous Category 3 (contaminated) contents are usually non-salvageable and disposed; no cleaner reliably removes pathogens from porous material.
- Reconcile every packed item at pack-back: returned, settled as a total loss, or explained, then close with a customer sign-off.
What a contents pack-out actually is
A contents pack-out is the removal of a building's belongings, furniture, clothing, electronics, documents, and everything else, so the structure underneath can be dried, cleaned, or rebuilt. After a fire or a flood you usually cannot work the walls, floors, and ceilings with the rooms full, and the contents themselves keep absorbing water, soot, and odor while they sit. So the contents come out, get cleaned or stored, and come back when the building is ready.
The moving is the part everyone pictures, and it is the easy part. Two people with a truck and pads can clear a house in a day. The part that makes or breaks the job is the inventory: the documented, photographed, tagged record of what left, what condition it was in, and what happened to it. That record is the chain of custody, the basis of the insurance claim, and the proof of what you restored and what was lost.
Get the inventory right and the rest of the job has a spine to hang on. Get it wrong, and you are six weeks out with a customer asking where their grandmother's ring went and no way to answer. This guide covers the decision to pack out or clean in place, how to build the inventory, the cleaning method that fits each item type, storage, the pack-back, and the claim. Water-loss specifics tie back to our water-damage mitigation and structural drying guide, and smoke and odor specifics tie back to the fire and smoke damage guide.
Should you pack out or clean in place?
Pack out when the structure needs work the contents would be in the way of, when the on-site environment cannot support cleaning, or when the items need equipment that lives at the shop. Clean in place when the damage is contained, the building stays habitable and powered, and moving the contents would add cost and handling risk without buying anything.
The honest version is that this is a judgment call made with the adjuster, not a formula. A kitchen fire that smoked one room and left the rest of the house clean is often a clean-in-place job, maybe with a partial pack-out of the worst room. A Category 3 sewage backup across a finished basement, or a whole-structure fire that needs the drywall out and the framing sealed, is a pack-out, because you cannot dry or demo around full rooms and you do not want belongings sitting in a contaminated or torn-open space.
The middle ground is a partial pack-out: pull the heavily affected rooms and the high-value or irreplaceable items, clean the rest where they sit. A large share of residential losses land here. Whichever way you go, document the reasoning. The adjuster is paying for the move and the storage, and the file needs to show why the move was the right call rather than the expensive one.
The inventory is the job, not the lifting
Here is the one truth to carry into every pack-out: the inventory is the work and the legal record, and the moving is logistics around it. A crew that packs fast and documents poorly has not done a good job. It has created a problem that surfaces months later when nobody can prove what they took.
Think about what the inventory has to do. It is the chain of custody, so it proves you took the customer's property and tracks where each piece went. It is the contents claim, so the adjuster settles replacements off it and pays the restoration line items against it. It is the salvage record, so the file shows what was cleaned and returned versus what was a total loss. And it is the customer's trust, because these are their belongings and the list is the only thing standing between a clean job and an accusation.
So the inventory comes first, before a single box is taped. You do not pack and then try to remember what was in the box. You photograph, condition-note, and tag the item, then it goes in the box, and the box gets a label that points back to the record. Slow is smooth and smooth is the claim that pays without a fight.
Building the room-by-room inventory
The deliverable is a room-by-room inventory where every item is photographed, condition-documented, and tagged or barcoded. You work one room at a time, top to bottom, and you do not jump around, because a room you half-inventoried is a room you cannot trust. Each item gets a photo that shows what it is and what shape it is in, a condition note (pre-existing scratch, soot coating, water line, broken corner), and a tag or barcode number that ties the physical item to its record and to the box it travels in.
Detail is what separates a real inventory from a packing list. "Box of kitchen items" is worthless on a claim. "Stand mixer, stainless, soot on housing, model and serial photographed, tag 1043" is a line the adjuster can settle and you can defend. High-value items, electronics, and anything with a serial number get the serial captured. Anything sentimental or irreplaceable gets flagged so it travels in a vault, not the general warehouse.
This is exactly the work a field tool earns its keep on. A contents-tracking app like FieldOS lets the tech photograph the item, scan or assign the barcode, set the condition, and place it in a box and a room, all from a phone at the point of work. The alternative is a clipboard and a spreadsheet you reconcile later from memory, which is how items go missing and claims fall apart. Capture it once, at the item, while it is in your hands.
Chain of custody is your accountability
Chain of custody is the documented trail showing who had the customer's property, when, and where it went, from the moment it left the house to the moment it came back. You took someone's belongings out of their home. The chain of custody is how you prove you handled them responsibly and returned them.
Concretely, it means a timestamped record at every handoff: pickup at the loss site with pre-pack photos and condition notes, receipt into the warehouse, movement between cleaning and storage, and return at pack-back. Every box and container carries an identifier that ties back to the item records inside it. When a barcode is scanned at each stage, the file can show the item's whole path without anyone reconstructing it from memory.
Restorers treat the chain of custody as the thing that lets them justify the bill and prove the work was organized and complete. The exact documentation expected falls under IICRC contents processing practice, and the specifics vary by carrier and by job, so confirm what your adjuster and your firm require. What does not vary: if you cannot show where an item was at any point, you have a gap, and gaps are where disputes and loss claims live. Build the trail as you go. You will never rebuild it accurately after the fact.
What is salvageable vs non-salvageable?
Salvageable means the item can be returned to pre-loss condition by cleaning, deodorizing, or minor repair for less than it would cost to replace it. Non-salvageable means the damage is too severe, the cost to restore exceeds the replacement value, or the item is a health risk you cannot clean out. A third bucket, often called questionable, is anything that needs a specialist to call: electronics, documents, art, and high-value collectibles.
The non-salvageable items become the loss inventory, a separate documented list of everything being claimed as a total loss. That list is what the adjuster uses to pay replacement cost or actual cash value, so it has to be photographed, described, and where possible carry the make, model, and serial. A non-salvageable item with no photo and a one-word description is a fight waiting to happen.
Be careful about who makes the call. The restorer assesses restorability against industry practice, but the decision of what gets paid as a loss versus restored is settled with the adjuster, and the policy controls. Do not toss items on your own judgment before that is agreed, especially anything porous and contaminated, anything irreplaceable, or anything the customer is emotional about. When in doubt, document it, hold it, and let the assessment and the adjuster decide. The thing you threw out without a photo is the thing the claim turns on.
The pack: materials, labeling, and protecting in transit
Once an item is inventoried, it gets packed to survive the move and the storage. Use clean, new packing materials, not the soot-coated boxes from the garage, because the point is to stop cross-contamination, not spread it. Wrap fragile and finished surfaces, pad furniture, and keep porous items separated from non-porous ones so odor and residue do not migrate between them in a sealed box.
Labeling is where the pack meets the inventory. Every box gets an identifier that ties to the item records inside it and to the room it came from, so the warehouse knows what is in a container without opening it and the pack-back knows where it goes. A box with no label is an anonymous box, and an anonymous box is a lost box.
Load and transport with the same care you would want for your own things. Secure the load so nothing shifts, keep the truck dry, and do not stack heavy on fragile. The handling matters because a chip or a crack that happens in your truck is now your liability, and the condition photos you took at pickup are what prove the damage was there before, or that it was not.
How do you clean contents by item type?
You match the cleaning method to the material, because the wrong method ruins the item. Hard goods, soft goods, textiles, electronics, documents, and art each take a different process, and a tech who washes everything the same way will destroy half of it. The table below maps item type to the common approach. Treat it as the starting point, then defer to the restorer's assessment, the manufacturer's care instructions, and a specialist for anything high-value or irreplaceable.
The general rule across all of it: dry residue comes off before wet cleaning, gentle methods come before aggressive ones, and you test on an inconspicuous spot before you commit. For smoke jobs the residue type drives the chemistry, which is covered in the fire and smoke damage guide. For water jobs the category drives whether an item is even worth cleaning, which is covered in the water-damage mitigation guide.
| Item type | Common method | The caution |
|---|---|---|
| Hard goods (dishes, tools, figurines) | Wipe, wash, or ultrasonic immersion | Test finishes; not everything tolerates immersion |
| Soft goods and textiles (clothing, linens) | Launder, dry clean, ozone or hydroxyl for odor | Sort by care label; colorfastness first |
| Electronics | Specialist cleaning, power off, do not energize | Soot and water are conductive and corrosive |
| Documents, books, photos | Freeze, then vacuum freeze-dry (sublimation) | Freeze fast to stop deterioration; irreplaceable |
| Art and heirlooms | Specialty conservator | High-value, fragile, often unique |
| Porous, Cat 3 contaminated | Usually non-salvageable, disposed | No method reliably cleans pathogens out of porous |
Soft goods and textiles
Soft goods are clothing, linens, bedding, drapes, and upholstery, and most of them are cleanable by laundering or dry cleaning matched to the care label. Sort by fabric and color before anything else, because the load that mixes a colorfast cotton with a delicate is the load that bleeds. Test colorfastness on a hidden seam, and route anything labeled dry-clean-only to the right process rather than the wash.
The hard part on soft goods is usually odor, not stains. Smoke gets into fibers and a normal wash leaves it there. The common specialty approach is an ozone or hydroxyl chamber to break the odor compounds, sometimes ozonated water as part of the laundering, followed by the wash. Items can sit in a chamber and then be laundered, and the chamber work happens off-site because ozone is an unoccupied-space process. The odor side of this lives in the fire and smoke damage guide; the contents tech's job is to get the soft goods to the right process, not to improvise it.
Some textiles are too far gone or too contaminated to clean, and Category 3 water on porous goods usually means disposal. That is a documented loss, not a quiet toss.
Hard goods and ultrasonic cleaning
Hard goods are the non-porous items: dishes, glassware, metal, hard plastics, tools, ceramic figurines, and the like. Light cases wipe or hand-wash clean. The specialty tool for the rest is ultrasonic cleaning, where the item is immersed in a tank and high-frequency sound creates cavitation, tiny bubbles that collapse against the surface and lift soot, grease, nicotine, and grime out of every crevice the hand misses.
Ultrasonic shines on detailed and intricate items, the things with crevices and texture that hand-cleaning cannot reach: blinds, light fixtures, ornate hardware, toys, and dishware in volume. It is faster and more thorough than hand-washing on a fire or mold job, which is why a contents shop that does volume runs a tank.
It is not universal. Test finishes and coatings first, because some painted, plated, or glued items do not tolerate immersion, and anything that traps water or comes apart in a bath does not belong in the tank. And electronics never go in the ultrasonic bath as a routine consumer item. That is a different process and usually a different specialist, which is the next section. Sort porous from non-porous before the tank so you are not slowing the line untangling what can be immersed.
Can water-damaged electronics be saved?
Often yes, but only if you do not power them on and you get them to a specialist fast. Soot and water are both conductive and corrosive. Energize a wet or sooty device and you create shorts across the board; leave the residue sitting and the corrosion eats the contacts and traces over days. The damage that kills electronics is frequently not the loss itself but what happens after, when someone plugs it in to "see if it works."
So the field rule is blunt: power it off, unplug it, do not test it, and do not let the customer test it. Pack it, document it, and route it to an electronics restoration specialist who can open the unit, clean the boards with the right process, neutralize corrosion, and dry it properly before anyone applies power. The longer corrosive residue stays on a circuit board, the lower the odds, so electronics move to the front of the queue.
Whether a given device is worth restoring versus replacing is a value call made with the adjuster, the same as any other item, and a specialist's evaluation drives it. What is not negotiable is the sequence. Do not energize wet or sooty electronics. That single mistake turns a restorable device into a loss, and it is the most common avoidable failure on contents.
Documents, books, and photos
Wet paper is a clock. Documents, books, and photos start deteriorating, sticking, blocking, and growing mold within a day or two of getting wet, and the ink can run. The first move on irreplaceable paper is to freeze it fast, because freezing stops the deterioration and buys time to process it properly.
The restoration method is vacuum freeze-drying, which uses sublimation: the frozen water in the paper goes straight from ice to vapor under vacuum without passing through liquid. Because the water never returns to liquid form, the paper does not swell and shrink erratically, the fibers stay stable, and the ink stays where it is. It is the standard for wet books, archives, and records precisely because it does the least violence to the material, and the low-pressure chamber also flashes off many odor compounds along the way.
This is specialty work that goes to a document recovery provider, not something you air-dry on a warehouse rack. Air-drying valuable paper is how you get a warped, blocked, moldy brick. For the genuinely irreplaceable, the deeds, the photos, the one-of-a-kind records, freeze first, then route to the specialist, and document it as you would any other contents item.
Art, heirlooms, and high-value items
Art, antiques, and heirlooms go to a specialty conservator, not the general cleaning line. These items are high-value, often fragile, and frequently irreplaceable, and the wrong cleaner or solvent on a painting, a finish, or an antique can do permanent damage that the loss itself did not.
Your job on these is to identify them during the inventory, flag them, handle them with extra care, and route them to the right specialist while keeping them inside the chain of custody. Photograph and condition-note them thoroughly, because the value and the dispute potential are both high. High-value pieces are also the ones that belong in a secure vault rather than the open warehouse.
Resist the urge to clean an heirloom yourself because it looks simple. The cost of getting it wrong is the item, and there is no replacement-cost line that makes a family heirloom whole.
Treating odor in the contents
Smoke and mold odor live in the contents as much as in the structure, and you treat odor at the source first, then chase the residual with a chamber. Cleaning the residue off the item removes most of the smell. What remains is residual odor bound into the material, and that is what the chamber addresses.
The two common chamber methods are ozone and hydroxyl. Items go into an enclosed chamber where the treatment breaks down the odor compounds over a set dwell time. Ozone is the stronger of the two and is an unoccupied-space-only process, because ozone is not something you run around people or pets. Hydroxyl is gentler and safer around occupied conditions but slower. The choice and the dwell are matched to the item and the odor load.
Cleaning has to come before the chamber, not instead of it. Running odor treatment over a sooty item just bakes the residue in place, and the smell comes back when the chamber is off. The full odor methodology, source removal, the residual methods, and where each one fits, is laid out in the fire and smoke damage guide; on contents, the tech's job is to clean first, then route to the right chamber for the residual.
Climate-controlled storage and the vault
While the contents are out, they live in storage, and that storage has to protect them or you have moved the damage instead of stopping it. The standard is a climate-controlled warehouse: stable temperature and humidity that keep dried wood from warping and cracking further, keep metal and electronics from oxidizing in humid air, and keep secondary mold from taking hold on items that came out damp.
Salvageable contents go into closed vaults or designated containers, separated by job, so one customer's belongings do not mix with another's and a cleaned item does not pick up contamination from a dirty one. High-value and irreplaceable items, jewelry, art, documents, collectibles, go in a secure vault with tighter access control, because the warehouse holding a house's worth of belongings is a target and the trust is on you.
Security and time both matter here. The contents may sit for weeks or months while the structure is rebuilt, and the whole time they are your responsibility under the chain of custody. Track what is in storage, where, and in what condition, the same way you tracked it at pickup. Items get lost in storage when the inventory stops at the warehouse door, and a lost item in your warehouse is a claim against you.
The pack-back
The pack-back is the return: when the structure is repaired and ready, the contents come home. It sounds like the pack-out in reverse, and the logistics are similar, but the close-out is what matters. You place items back where they belong, ideally to the room and the spot they came from, which the room-by-room inventory makes possible.
Time the pack-back to a finished, clean, dry structure. Returning contents into a space that is still being worked, still off-gassing paint, or not fully dry undoes the cleaning you just paid for and re-exposes the belongings. Confirm the building is genuinely ready before the truck loads.
The pack-back ends with a customer sign-off, and that sign-off should mean something. It is the moment the customer confirms they got their belongings back, which closes the chain of custody you opened at pickup. Walk it with them against the inventory rather than asking them to sign a blank acknowledgment, because a sign-off on an unverified return is not worth the paper.
Reconcile the pack-back to the inventory
Every item that left has to be accounted for at the return. You reconcile the pack-back against the inventory line by line: everything that was packed is either returned, documented as a settled total loss, or explained. There is no fourth category. An item that is neither back nor on the loss list is a missing item, and missing items are how a clean job becomes a dispute.
This is where the barcoded, tagged inventory pays off. You scan items back in, the system flags anything not accounted for, and you resolve the gaps before the customer signs rather than after they call. A spreadsheet reconciled from memory misses things; a scan against the record does not.
Close it with the customer's sign-off on the reconciled list. They confirm what came back, the loss items are settled on the claim, and the file shows a complete trail from pickup to return. That is the job done. Skip the reconcile and you find the gap when the customer does, which is the worst possible time and the worst possible source.
How does the contents insurance claim work?
The contents claim is settled off the inventory and the loss list, and the policy controls what gets paid and how. Salvageable items are billed as restoration line items against the inventory. Non-salvageable items are paid out as replacement cost or actual cash value off the loss inventory. The documentation drives the whole thing, which is why the inventory is the claim and not just paperwork.
The central economic test the adjuster applies item by item is restore versus replace: an item is restored when restoration costs less than replacement and the result is acceptable, and replaced when restoration costs more or cannot return it to pre-loss condition. That sounds simple and is not, because the call depends on the item's value, the cost of the method, and sometimes a sentimental factor that does not fit a spreadsheet.
Hedge hard here, because none of this is yours to decide unilaterally. The policy terms, the coverage limits, actual cash value versus replacement cost terms, and the adjuster's determination control the outcome, and they vary by carrier and by policy. The restorer documents condition and restorability and provides the inventory and loss list; the adjuster and the policy settle the money. Present the file, make the case with the documentation, and let the coverage decide. Do not promise the customer a settlement you do not control.
Restore versus replace: the economics
Restore if it costs less than replace, and the item is worth restoring at all. That is the plain version of the rule, and on ordinary hard goods and soft goods it usually favors restoration, because cleaning a load of dishes or laundering clothes is cheaper than buying it all new.
The math gets interesting at the edges. A low-value item with heavy contamination can cost more to clean than to replace, so it goes on the loss list even though it is technically cleanable. A high-value or irreplaceable item flips the other way: you restore it even when replacement would be cheaper, because there is no replacement that makes it the same item. Heirlooms and one-of-a-kind pieces do not have a price tag that settles the question.
The restorer's role is to give the adjuster an honest cost-to-restore and an honest restorability assessment so the replace-versus-restore call is made on real numbers. The decision and the payment are the adjuster's and the policy's, and they vary, so document the item, present the cost, and let the determination land where the coverage puts it.
Contents-tracking software and the claim export
A pack-out generates hundreds to thousands of item records, photos, barcodes, conditions, locations, and statuses, and managing that on paper does not scale. Contents-tracking software is what keeps the inventory, the chain of custody, and the claim coherent across pickup, cleaning, storage, and pack-back.
The working pieces are barcodes or tags on items and boxes, photos and condition notes captured at the item, a status per item as it moves through cleaning and storage, location tracking so you know where anything is, and a claim export that hands the adjuster a clean loss list and inventory in the format they need. A tool like FieldOS lets a tech do all of that from a phone at the point of work, scan the item, photo it, set the condition, place it in a box and a room, so the record is built once and stays accurate instead of being reconstructed later.
The export is the quiet payoff. When the file is complete and structured, producing the non-salvageable report with photos and serials, and the inventory for the claim, is a button, not a week of assembling a spreadsheet. The system is what turns a careful field inventory into a claim that settles.
Safety with contaminated and damaged contents
Contents from a loss are not neutral. Fire contents carry acidic, sometimes toxic soot. Water contents carry whatever was in the water, and Category 3 water is grossly contaminated with pathogens. Mold-affected contents carry spores. You handle all of it with PPE matched to the hazard, not bare hands and good intentions.
On a Category 3 or sewage loss, that means full biohazard protection, gloves, eye protection, an appropriate respirator, and coveralls, per IICRC S500 water-damage practice, and it means porous contaminated items usually come out as non-salvageable and get bagged and disposed as contaminated waste, because no cleaner reliably gets pathogens out of porous material. Smoke contents call for respiratory protection against the soot. The category and the hazard, covered in the water-damage and fire and smoke guides, drive what PPE is required.
The blunt part: do not let the urgency of a pack-out push the crew into handling contaminated contents unprotected, and do not return items that are still a health risk. The exact requirements vary by category, contaminant, and jurisdiction, so confirm them against the standard and the job. The contents are someone's belongings, but they are also whatever the loss made them, and the crew's health is not a line item to skip.
What to document
The contents file is the inventory, the conditions, the chain of custody, the loss list, the photos, and the pack-back reconcile, all tied together. If it is not documented, on a contents job it effectively did not happen, because the file is the only thing that proves the work and supports the claim months later.
Capture it at the point of work, not from memory once the truck is loaded. A field tool like FieldOS makes the record at the item, the photo, the barcode, the condition, the location, and the status, so the file is complete and exportable without a reconstruction phase. The table below maps what to record at each stage and why it matters.
| Stage | Requirement | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-pack | Photo, condition, tag or barcode per item | Proves condition at pickup; the basis of the claim |
| Pack-out | Box labels tied to items and room | No anonymous boxes; ties pack to inventory |
| Chain of custody | Timestamped handoff at every move | Shows the item's whole path |
| Assessment | Salvageable, questionable, or loss, with cost | Drives restore vs replace with the adjuster |
| Loss inventory | Photo, description, make/model/serial | What the adjuster pays as a total loss |
| Cleaning | Method and status per item | Shows what was restored and how |
| Storage | Location and condition in the warehouse | Items get lost when tracking stops at the door |
| Pack-back | Reconcile to inventory, customer sign-off | Closes the chain of custody; everything accounted for |
Common mistakes
- A poor or missing inventory, so nobody can prove what was taken or its condition.
- No chain of custody, leaving gaps where the item's path cannot be shown.
- Using the wrong cleaning method for an item, ruining a finish or a fabric.
- Powering on wet or sooty electronics, turning a restorable device into a loss.
- Losing items in storage because tracking stopped at the warehouse door.
- No pack-back reconcile, so a missing item surfaces when the customer finds it.
- Undocumented non-salvageable losses, thrown out with no photo to support the claim.
- Promising the customer a settlement the adjuster and the policy actually control.
Field checklist
Want this checklist to run itself on every job — with photo proof and a signed record crews can hand the customer? That's FieldOS.
Standards and references
The contents discipline runs on IICRC contents processing practice, captured in the Contents Processing Technician (CPT) body of knowledge, which covers inspection, inventorying, wrapping and packing, transport, cleaning science, deodorizing, post-cleaning evaluation, storage, pack-back, and the chain of custody that ties them together. Treat the salvageability call, the cleaning methods, and the documentation as practice defined there, and follow your firm's and the carrier's specific procedures.
The loss type pulls in the other IICRC standards. Water losses run under S500, which sets the categories of water and drives whether contaminated porous contents are salvageable or disposed; the details are in our water-damage mitigation and structural drying guide. Fire and smoke losses run under S700, which covers smoke residue and the cleaning and deodorization that follows; the details are in our fire and smoke damage guide. Confirm the current edition of each, because standards are revised on a cycle.
Hedge the specialty calls to the people who own them. Electronics restoration, document freeze-drying, and art conservation are specialist trades, and the salvage and method decisions there belong to the specialist and the manufacturer's instructions, not to a general contents tech. The restore-versus-replace decision and the payment belong to the adjuster and the policy, which vary by carrier and by job. Document condition and restorability, match the method to the item, protect the electronics and the documents, store safely, reconcile the pack-back, and let the determinations land with the people who control them.
Terms and definitions
Contents restoration carries its own vocabulary, and the same item can be described differently across the inventory, the loss list, and the claim, so it helps to fix the terms.
- Contents pack-out
- Removing a building's belongings off-site so the structure can be dried, cleaned, or rebuilt
- Clean-in-place
- Cleaning contents where they sit, without removing them, when the damage is contained
- Inventory
- The documented, photographed, tagged room-by-room record of every item and its condition
- Chain of custody
- The timestamped trail showing who had each item, when, and where it went, from pickup to return
- Salvageable vs non-salvageable
- Whether an item can be restored for less than replacement, or is a documented total loss
- Loss inventory
- The separate list of non-salvageable items, with photos, for the insurance claim
- Ultrasonic cleaning
- Immersion cleaning using cavitation to lift soot and grime from detailed hard goods
- Freeze-drying documents
- Vacuum sublimation that turns ice to vapor so wet paper dries without swelling or running
- Replace vs restore
- The adjuster's item-by-item call: restore when it costs less than replacement, replace when it does not
- Pack-back
- Returning the cleaned and stored contents to the finished structure, reconciled and signed off
FAQ
What is a contents pack-out?
A contents pack-out is the removal of a building's belongings off-site so the structure can be dried, cleaned, or rebuilt after a fire or flood. The move is the easy part. The real work is the inventory, the documented and tagged record that serves as the chain of custody and the insurance claim.
What is a contents inventory?
A contents inventory is a room-by-room record of every item, photographed, condition-documented, and tagged or barcoded, built before packing. It is the chain of custody, the basis of the insurance claim, and the proof of what was restored or lost. Detail matters: serials and conditions, not a vague packing list.
When should you pack out instead of cleaning in place?
Pack out when the structure needs work the contents block, when the site cannot support cleaning, or when items need equipment at the shop. Clean in place when the damage is contained and the building stays habitable. Many losses use a partial pack-out. Make the call with the adjuster and document the reasoning.
Can water-damaged electronics be saved?
Often yes, but only if you do not power them on and you get them to a specialist quickly. Soot and water are conductive and corrosive, so energizing a wet device shorts the board and the residue corrodes the contacts. Power it off, do not test it, and route it to an electronics restoration specialist fast.
What is replace vs restore in a contents claim?
Restore versus replace is the adjuster's item-by-item call: an item is restored when restoration costs less than replacement, and replaced when it costs more or cannot return to pre-loss condition. High-value or irreplaceable items get restored regardless. The policy terms and the adjuster's determination control the outcome, and they vary by carrier.
How are wet documents and books restored?
Freeze them fast to stop deterioration, then send them to a vacuum freeze-dry provider. Freeze-drying uses sublimation, turning the ice to vapor under vacuum without passing through liquid, so the paper does not swell or shrink and the ink stays put. Air-drying valuable paper warps it and risks mold and blocking.
What is a chain of custody in contents restoration?
Chain of custody is the timestamped, documented trail showing who had the customer's property, when, and where it went, from pickup to return. Every box carries an identifier tied to the items inside, scanned at each handoff. It proves the work was organized and complete and protects against disputes over missing items.
How do you clean smoke odor out of clothing and soft goods?
Sort by care label and color, test colorfastness, then launder or dry clean. For odor bound into the fibers, the common approach is an ozone or hydroxyl chamber off-site, sometimes ozonated water, before or with laundering. Cleaning comes first; running odor treatment over dirty fabric just bakes the smell in.
What happens to contaminated contents after a Category 3 water loss?
Porous items contaminated by Category 3 black water are usually non-salvageable and disposed as contaminated waste, because no cleaner reliably removes pathogens from porous material. Non-porous items may be cleanable and disinfected. Crews use full biohazard PPE per IICRC S500 practice, and every disposed item goes on the documented loss inventory.
Why does the pack-back need to be reconciled against the inventory?
Reconciling the pack-back means every item that left is accounted for at the return: returned, settled as a total loss, or explained. Scanning items back against the barcoded inventory flags anything missing before the customer signs off. Skip it and a missing item surfaces when the customer finds it, which turns a clean job into a dispute.
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Codes cited in this guide
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