Our Fire Damage Restoration Work on St Paul Coptic Orthodox Church

St Paul Coptic Orthodox Church Fire Damage Restoration

In late 2020, St Paul Coptic Orthodox Church in Bendigo was gutted by fire, after 100 years of standing and ten years of providing services to a Coptic Orthodox congregation of about 35 families. Due to the heritage value the building required fire damage restoration, rather than rebuilding. This restoration work included laser fire damage restoration of all brick walls.

Learn more about our laser cleaning for fire damage restoration.

Repairing the Irreparable

Before Precision Laser Cleaning was contacted, the insurance builder managing St Paul Coptic Orthodox Church had trialled various other fire damage restoration methods to remove the carbon build-up throughout the building. These methods had proved either ineffective, or too abrasive to the structure.

The insurance builder called PLC partner Steamatic Australia to assess the damage and advise on the right fire damage restoration services for them. Steamatic recommended Precision Laser Cleaning, who - after a few localised trials demonstrating the effectiveness of laser cleaning - were able to effectively remove the carbon build-up with our laser cleaners in a non-destructive way.

Our Solution

Why Laser Cleaning?

Laser cleaning is the ideal solution for fire damage restoration projects as the laser cleaners are calibrated to instantly vaporise the layer of carbon build-up while leaving material below untouched. Laser cleaning utilises the fact that everything absorbs different wavelengths of light at different rates – so while carbon-build up will absorb a certain wavelength of light and be vaporised, the building material beneath it will not absorb that wavelength, and so will not be damaged. This avoids abrasive and chemical damage that other fire damage restoration services may cause.

 
Further, while chemical cleaning and water blasting pushes soot further into the pores of masonry surfaces – making them harder to restore – laser cleaning eliminates the soot entirely. It leaves no soot left over, and no waste or media to clean up.

Working with Steamatic Australia