Ten companies on facts that do not go stale, and the table that separates a fire loss from a smoke-only loss from a puffback. Work out which one you have before anybody quotes you.
This guide is published by Prime Restoration of Sterling Heights, which is one of the ten companies compared in it and is disclosed as the publisher here, in its own table row, and in the methodology at the end. Every company fact below was read from that company’s own published page, or from a stated public directory, on 2 September 2026. No company paid for placement and no company was excluded for declining to.
No star rating and no review count appears anywhere in this guide, for any company including the publisher, because none could be verified on the day it was compiled. What appears instead are facts that do not drift week to week.
Start here, before the list
Fire, smoke-only and puffback get sold as one service and they are three different trades. Getting this wrong is the most expensive mistake available at this stage, in both directions: hiring a builder for a cleaning job, or hiring a cleaner for a job that needs a licensed rebuild. Work out which row you are in before you call anybody.
| The loss | What happened | What it looks like | How many trades it needs | Who should handle it | The common trap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structure fire | Something burned. There is fire damage to framing, finishes or contents, and almost always water damage underneath it from suppression. | Charring, structural loss, standing or absorbed suppression water, and a building the fire service has secured. | Three, and this is the part people miss. Mitigation to stabilise, dry and clean. Contents restoration, often off site and often a separate specialist industry. A rebuild, which in Michigan is licensed residential building work. | A company that holds all three, or that has told you honestly which ones it hands off and to whom. Ask for a residential builder licence number for the third one specifically. | Hiring a mitigation-only company and discovering at dry standard that nobody is booked to close the building up. |
| Smoke only, nothing burned here | Smoke or soot reached the building from a fire that happened somewhere else. A neighbouring unit, an adjacent structure, a contained appliance fire, or heavy cooking smoke. | Odour and residue with no charring, no structural loss and no suppression water. Often worst on cold surfaces and in soft goods. | One and a half. Cleaning and deodorisation, plus HVAC if the system ran while smoke was in the air. There is nothing to rebuild. | A cleaning and deodorisation capability, and duct cleaning. A general contractor is the wrong shape of company for this and you will be paying builder overhead for a cleaning job. | Sealing and painting over residue instead of removing it. The odour returns with the first humid week, and now it is under a coat of paint. |
| Puffback | A furnace or boiler misfires and pushes unburned combustion products out into the building rather than up the flue. It is classically an oil-fired failure. | A fine oily black film distributed evenly through the building, worst at supply registers and on walls above them, with no fire anywhere and no obvious source in any one room. | Two, and the order matters. The HVAC system is the job. Cleaning the visible rooms without addressing the ducts and the appliance means it comes back. | A company with duct and HVAC cleaning capability, working after a heating technician has found and fixed the fault. Two of the ten companies below publish air duct and HVAC cleaning. | Being diagnosed with a puffback in a house that burns natural gas. Read the next section before you accept that word. |
The thing nobody writes down
Usually not, and if somebody has used that word about your house it is worth one question before you accept it.
A puffback is classically an oil-fired failure. Unburned fuel accumulates in a combustion chamber, ignites late, and pushes soot into the building instead of up the flue. It is a signature Northeast loss, and the restoration literature that describes it was largely written where oil heat is normal.
Michigan is not that place. About 74 percent of occupied Michigan housing units heated with utility gas in 2023, with electricity around 12.7 percent and propane a little over 8 percent. Heating oil does not appear as a meaningful Michigan share at all. The US Energy Information Administration puts natural gas at roughly half of homes nationwide and states plainly that heating oil is particularly important to the Northeast.
So the question is simple and you can answer it yourself in a minute: what does your furnace burn? If the answer is natural gas, which for most homes in Macomb and Oakland County it will be, then a classic oil puffback is not what happened. Gas appliances can and do produce soot when they malfunction, particularly with a cracked heat exchanger or a badly adjusted burner, so the word is not impossible. It just stops being a label and starts needing a specific explanation, from a heating technician, before anybody cleans anything.
The reason this matters commercially rather than just technically: a puffback scope is an HVAC scope. If that is genuinely what you have, the ducts are the job and the visible rooms are the symptom, and a company without duct and HVAC cleaning capability will clean your walls and leave the source in place. Two of the ten companies below publish that capability. If your problem is distributed black film with no fire anywhere, that is the column to read.
The ten
Five companies on the Macomb side, five on the Oakland side, six columns, every cell read from a published page on 2 September 2026. Prime Restoration appears first because it publishes this guide, not because it won anything. The numbered list of alternatives starts at 2.
| Company | Dispatches from | County side | Published arrival | Rebuild | A specific you can check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prime Restoration(the company that publishes this guide) | 13854 Lakeside Circle, Suite 558, Sterling Heights | Macomb | On site in 60 minutes | In-house | MI Residential Builder #262500492 |
| Miracle Property Restoration | 33280 Groesbeck Hwy, Fraser, MI 48026 | Macomb | Immediate emergency response; within 2 hours for email during business hours | "Comprehensive fire restoration from emergency mitigation through complete reconstruction" | States 29 years, serving since 1996. IICRC-certified technicians. |
| RestoPros of Oakland & Macomb | No street address published on the location page; phone (248) 970-0555 | Both | 24/7 emergency response, same-day scheduling; no numeric window published | Rebuild and reconstruction listed | IICRC Certified and EPA Lead-Safe certified; 23 named service cities across both counties |
| U&S Companies | 51192 Milano Dr, Macomb, MI 48042 | Macomb | Not published; states a staff member will respond as fast as possible | Yes | Operating since 2009; residential, commercial, industrial and multi-family fire work |
| Paul Davis Restoration of East Michigan | 50581 Sabrina Dr., Shelby Twp, MI 48315 | Macomb | Not published on any page readable this run | Yes | Lists trauma, lead, asbestos and biohazard alongside fire; BBB file opened 16 February 2024 |
| SERVPRO of Birmingham, Troy | 280 N Old Woodward Ave, Suite 100, Birmingham, MI 48009 | Oakland | Not published; states 24 hours a day, seven days a week | Construction listed among services | Publishes air duct and HVAC cleaning, document restoration and odor removal |
| BELFOR Property Restoration | 185 Oakland Ave, Suite 150, Birmingham, MI 48009 | Oakland | Not published; 24-hour hotline 800.800.2353 | Yes | This is the company’s global headquarters; states more than 75 years in disaster recovery |
| Concraft | 4225 N. Atlantic Blvd, Auburn Hills, MI 48326 | Oakland | Not published; states 24/7 emergency services | "also offer reconstruction services to rebuild and restore damaged structures" | Trading since 1986; lists IICRC, RIA and HAAG certifications |
| Modernistic | 1402 Rankin Dr., Troy, MI 48083 | Oakland | "We aim to be on the scene within 60 to 90 minutes of your call" | Not published as reconstruction; fire service described as structural demolition and cleaning | Publishes air duct cleaning; fire work described as soot removal and deodorization |
| DRYmedic Restoration Services | 795 Industrial Ct, Bloomfield Township, MI 48302 | Oakland | Not published; states a rapid response time with no figure | Confirm before signing | States technicians are certified by the IICRC and the National Association of Mold Professionals |
Every cell was read from the named company’s own published page, or from a stated public directory, on 2 September 2026. “Not published” means no figure could be found on a public page that day. It is not a criticism and it is not an absence of capability. Company details change; check anything time-sensitive against the source before relying on it.
Read these five first
The publisher, unnumbered
Dispatches from 13854 Lakeside Circle, Suite 558, Sterling Heights. Licence MI Residential Builder #262500492. Published arrival on site in 60 minutes. Rebuild in-house. Standing 5.0 on Google, 100+ reviews.
The argument for Prime on a fire loss is the third trade rather than the first. Mitigation and the rebuild stay with one accountable crew, which matters more on fire than on water because a fire loss has three seams in it rather than one: stabilise and clean, treat the contents, then rebuild. Each handoff is a place for documentation to fall through and a schedule to stall.
The estimate is free. It comes with a written scope listing what would be cleaned, what would be removed and what would be rebuilt, with a reason on each line, and it is yours whether or not you hire anyone. On the water underneath the fire, it also comes with moisture readings taken against a dry standard from an unaffected part of the same building.
Where Prime is the wrong call. If what you have is a smoke-only loss with nothing burned, you do not need a residential builder and you should not pay for one; a cleaning and duct capability is the right shape of company and two of the ten below have it. If your loss is large, commercial and multi-tenant, the national operators are built for that in a way Prime is not. And if you want the longest trading history in this comparison, that is Concraft, not us.
The alternatives, 2 to 10
2. Miracle Property Restoration
Macomb side
Dispatches from: 33280 Groesbeck Hwy, Fraser, MI 48026
Published arrival: Immediate emergency response; within 2 hours for email during business hours
Rebuild: "Comprehensive fire restoration from emergency mitigation through complete reconstruction"
Checkable: States 29 years, serving since 1996. IICRC-certified technicians.
3. RestoPros of Oakland & Macomb
Both side
Dispatches from: No street address published on the location page; phone (248) 970-0555
Published arrival: 24/7 emergency response, same-day scheduling; no numeric window published
Rebuild: Rebuild and reconstruction listed
Checkable: IICRC Certified and EPA Lead-Safe certified; 23 named service cities across both counties
4. U&S Companies
Macomb side
Dispatches from: 51192 Milano Dr, Macomb, MI 48042
Published arrival: Not published; states a staff member will respond as fast as possible
Rebuild: Yes
Checkable: Operating since 2009; residential, commercial, industrial and multi-family fire work
5. Paul Davis Restoration of East Michigan
Macomb side
Dispatches from: 50581 Sabrina Dr., Shelby Twp, MI 48315
Published arrival: Not published on any page readable this run
Rebuild: Yes
Checkable: Lists trauma, lead, asbestos and biohazard alongside fire; BBB file opened 16 February 2024
6. SERVPRO of Birmingham, Troy
Oakland side
Dispatches from: 280 N Old Woodward Ave, Suite 100, Birmingham, MI 48009
Published arrival: Not published; states 24 hours a day, seven days a week
Rebuild: Construction listed among services
Checkable: Publishes air duct and HVAC cleaning, document restoration and odor removal
7. BELFOR Property Restoration
Oakland side
Dispatches from: 185 Oakland Ave, Suite 150, Birmingham, MI 48009
Published arrival: Not published; 24-hour hotline 800.800.2353
Rebuild: Yes
Checkable: This is the company’s global headquarters; states more than 75 years in disaster recovery
8. Concraft
Oakland side
Dispatches from: 4225 N. Atlantic Blvd, Auburn Hills, MI 48326
Published arrival: Not published; states 24/7 emergency services
Rebuild: "also offer reconstruction services to rebuild and restore damaged structures"
Checkable: Trading since 1986; lists IICRC, RIA and HAAG certifications
9. Modernistic
Oakland side
Dispatches from: 1402 Rankin Dr., Troy, MI 48083
Published arrival: "We aim to be on the scene within 60 to 90 minutes of your call"
Rebuild: Not published as reconstruction; fire service described as structural demolition and cleaning
Checkable: Publishes air duct cleaning; fire work described as soot removal and deodorization
10. DRYmedic Restoration Services
Oakland side
Dispatches from: 795 Industrial Ct, Bloomfield Township, MI 48302
Published arrival: Not published; states a rapid response time with no figure
Rebuild: Confirm before signing
Checkable: States technicians are certified by the IICRC and the National Association of Mold Professionals
Dated, with sources
2023 NFIRS data, published by the US Fire Administration
Michigan recorded 9.5 deaths and 31.4 injuries per 1,000 residential building fires, against national figures of 5.8 and 19.7. Across all fires the Michigan rates were 4.4 deaths and 13.9 injuries per 1,000, against 2.1 and 6.4 nationally. 910 Michigan fire departments reported NFIRS data that year. The practical consequence for a homeowner is not a statistic, it is a schedule: a scene with casualties is held longer, and nobody enters a building before the fire service releases it, whatever a contractor tells you.
2017 to 2019 NFIRS data, published by the US Fire Administration
Cooking was the leading cause of residential fires nationally at 51 percent, with heating at 9 percent. That ratio is worth holding next to the puffback question below, because most residential smoke in this market has a kitchen behind it rather than a furnace.
2023 Michigan household heating fuel
Roughly 74 percent of occupied Michigan housing units heated with utility gas, with electricity around 12.7 percent and propane a little over 8 percent. Heating oil does not appear as a meaningful Michigan share. The US Energy Information Administration puts natural gas at about 50 percent of homes nationwide and states plainly that heating oil is particularly important to the Northeast.
Sequence
Six steps, and the first one is the reason a fire loss feels slower than a water loss. Nothing here is a promise about hours. It is the order things have to happen in, and it is the same order for every company in the comparison above.
Hour 0
Nobody enters until the fire service releases the building
This is outside every contractor’s control and it is not negotiable. A company that offers to be working inside before release is describing something that will not happen. On a scene with casualties it takes longer, and Michigan’s residential fire casualty rate is well above the national figure.
Hour 1 to 4
Emergency board-up and tarping
Close the building. Openings cut for suppression, broken glazing and a compromised roof all let weather in on top of a loss that is already there. This is the one step where speed is worth real money and it happens before any scope exists.
First visit
Photograph, then establish which of the three losses this is
Wide and close, room by room, timestamped, before anything moves. Then the diagnosis: fire, smoke-only or a combustion event. Everything downstream follows from that and it should be stated with a reason rather than assumed.
Day 0 to 1
Meter the water, not just the fire
Almost every structure fire is also a water loss and the water usually reaches further than the fire did. Readings taken below and beside the fire area, against a dry standard from an unaffected part of the same building. A fire scope with no moisture readings in it is incomplete.
Day 1 to 3
Contents decision, and stop the system
What leaves the building for specialist treatment, what is cleaned in place, and what is not recoverable. The HVAC system stays off until somebody has decided whether it distributed residue, because running it is free and undoing it is not.
Then
Cleaning, deodorisation, drying, and only then rebuild
Odour is removed at source rather than sealed over. Drying ends on a reading rather than a date. Nothing closes up over a wet cavity, and no finish goes back over residue that was painted rather than cleaned.
The list the estimate is really made from
On a fire loss the materials list matters more than the square footage, and it is the document to hold a contractor to. Ask for it before anything is removed, with a reason attached to each line. The two rows worth reading twice are the ductwork, because it is why odour comes back, and the electronics, because the decision is made in the first hour by whoever gets there first.
| Material | How it behaves with smoke | Can it be saved | What decides it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Painted drywall and plaster, intact | Holds residue on the surface and in the paint film. Porous enough to absorb odour if the residue sits. | Usually, if cleaned with the right chemistry for the residue type and reached before it sets. | Which residue it is. Dry soot lifts with a dry method first and is driven into the surface by anything wet. Protein and oily residue need the opposite. Using the wrong one first can turn a cleanable wall into a repaint. |
| Textiles, upholstery and soft goods | Absorbs odour deep into the fibre. Pressure drives residue further in, which is why walking and sitting on affected material makes it worse. | Frequently, but off site, by a specialist, and not in a driveway. | Fibre type, residue type and how long it sat. This is the category most often written off too early and most often attempted badly in place. |
| Carpet and pad | Pad holds odour almost indefinitely once residue reaches it. Carpet face fibre is more recoverable than the pad beneath it. | Pad rarely. Carpet sometimes. | Whether residue reached the pad, and whether suppression water did too. Two different questions with the same answer most of the time. |
| Insulation in an affected cavity | Traps odour and holds it. It cannot be surface cleaned because the surface is not where the problem is. | No, where residue or suppression water reached it. | Whether the cavity was open to smoke. If a wall was opened for suppression, assume it was. |
| Unfinished wood, framing and subfloor | Porous and absorbent. Holds odour after the surface looks clean, and holds suppression water longer than anything else in the assembly. | Usually, with cleaning and sealing after it is dry, but only in that order. | The moisture reading, before anything else. Sealing a framing member that is still wet locks water in and creates a second problem behind a finished wall. |
| HVAC ductwork | Distributes residue to rooms that never saw the fire, then keeps re-releasing it every time the system runs. | Cleaned rather than replaced in most cases. | Whether the system ran while smoke was in the air. If it did, this is not optional and it is the single most common reason an odour comes back after a job is called finished. |
| Metals, glazing and polished stone | Non-porous, so the residue sits on top. Some residues are acidic and will etch a finish if left on. | Almost always, if reached early. | Time. This is the category where speed genuinely buys something back, and it is a reason not to wait a week for a second opinion on a chrome or marble finish. |
| Electronics | Draws residue inside through cooling vents, where it sits on boards and connectors. | Sometimes, by a specialist, and never by powering it on to test. | Do not switch it on. That is the whole decision, and it is made in the first hour by whoever gets there first. |
Geography
The decade a building went up decides what smoke does to it and what the rebuild costs, and these two counties were built in very different waves. The bands below are general development patterns rather than claims about any address. What they are useful for is knowing which conversation you are about to have.
| Band | Where | Building stock | What that changes about a fire or smoke loss |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Macomb postwar grid | Warren, Roseville, Eastpointe, Center Line, Fraser | Dense 1950s and 1960s single-storey stock on small lots | Close spacing means a neighbouring fire is a real smoke-only exposure rather than a theoretical one. Attached garages are common, and a garage fire reaches the living space through a shared ceiling. |
| The Macomb build-out | Sterling Heights, Clinton Township, Shelby Township, Utica, Macomb Township | 1970s through 2000s subdivisions, many with finished lower levels | Suppression water runs to the lowest finished space, so the fire is upstairs and the second loss is a finished basement nobody was looking at. Engineered floor systems in the newer stretch hold both moisture and odour inside the webbing. |
| The lakeshore and canal edge | St. Clair Shores, Harrison Township, New Baltimore, Chesterfield | Original cottage stock, canal-front housing and infill | Tight access on canal lots changes staging and board-up. Older stock is more likely to hold materials that are cleaned rather than replaced. |
| The Oakland inner ring | Ferndale, Hazel Park, Royal Oak, Berkley, Pleasant Ridge, Huntington Woods | Pre-war bungalows and colonials, plaster over wood lath, original millwork | The hardest smoke work in the two counties. Plaster and original woodwork hold odour and are replicated rather than replaced if they are lost, so removing less is worth far more here than moving fast. |
| The Oakland postwar band | Troy, Madison Heights, Clawson, Southfield, Farmington | Roughly 1955 to 1980 poured-basement subdivisions | Drywall rather than plaster, so the cleaning is more predictable and the rebuild is catalogue work rather than a replication trade. The finished lower level is again where the suppression water ends up. |
| The Big Beaver commercial corridor | Troy, between Crooks and John R, and the Somerset area | Office towers, hotels and multi-tenant retail | Multi-occupancy work. Smoke crosses demising walls and shared systems, so a fire in one tenancy is a smoke-only loss in three others. Sprinkler discharge rather than hose is the usual water source and it is cleaner but no less voluminous. |
| The lakes district | West Bloomfield, Commerce Township, Waterford, Walled Lake, Keego Harbor | Mixed cottage, 1960s infill and 1990s replacement builds | Long driveways and lake-side access slow staging and board-up. A high seasonal water table means suppression water in a crawl space does not drain away on its own. |
| The north county | Clarkston, Lake Orion, Oxford, Springfield, Independence, Holly | Rural into the 1980s, then walkout and daylight subdivisions | Propane and wood heat are more common here than anywhere else in the two counties, which changes the plausible combustion story. Longer runs for equipment and longer waits for the building to be released. |
What moves the number
No company in this comparison publishes a price and none should, because a fire number produced without seeing the building is a sales figure rather than a scope. What is publishable is the list of things that actually move it. If a contractor’s number changes after they arrive, one of these is the reason, and you are entitled to be told which.
What the smoke was made of
This decides more than square footage does. Dry soot from a paper and wood fire behaves nothing like protein residue from a cooking fire, which behaves nothing like the oily film from a combustion appliance. Each needs a different cleaning chemistry and a different sequence, and getting it wrong the first time means doing it twice.
What the smoke landed on
Non-porous surfaces clean. Semi-porous surfaces usually clean with effort. Porous material such as soft goods, insulation and unfinished wood often holds odour after the surface looks fine. The removal list is where a fire estimate is really made, and you are entitled to see it with a reason on each line.
How much suppression water is in the building
Almost every structure fire is also a water loss, and the water frequently reaches further than the fire did. If nobody has metered below and beside the fire area, the scope is incomplete no matter how good the soot cleaning is.
Whether the HVAC system ran while smoke was in the air
If it did, the ducts distributed residue through rooms that never saw the fire. Cleaning those rooms without cleaning the system is why an odour comes back, and it is the single most common reason a fire job gets reopened.
Whether contents leave the building
Textiles, documents and electronics are frequently treated off site by specialists rather than in place. That is a separate line, a separate schedule and sometimes a separate company, and it should be named before work starts rather than discovered later.
Whether one company owns mitigation, contents and the rebuild
Three trades, and the seams between them are where fire jobs go wrong. Every handoff is a place for documentation to fall through and for a schedule to stall.
When the fire service releases the building
Nothing starts before that, and it is outside every contractor’s control. A company that promises to be working inside before release is describing something that will not happen.
Our boundary, published
A comparison written by a company in the list should say where that company stops. Six items, and you can hold us to them.
Origin and cause investigation
Determining how a fire started is not a restoration contractor’s job and we do not offer an opinion on it. We start after that question has been answered by whoever is entitled to answer it.
The heating appliance itself
On any suspected combustion event the appliance is a licensed heating technician. Cleaning up a puffback while the fault that caused it is still there is money spent twice, and we will say so before quoting.
Electrical and gas
Anything from a heat-damaged panel to a circuit found behind an opened wall. That is a licensed trade, not a judgement call on a jobsite.
Specialist contents
Documents, photographs, textiles and electronics are frequently treated off site by companies that do only that. We will tell you when your contents are in that category rather than attempting it in a driveway.
Air quality testing
If you want the air assessed after a smoke event, hire an independent indoor environmental professional directly. The company doing the cleaning should not be the company certifying the cleaning worked.
Structural engineering
If fire reached framing and anything about load path is in question, that is an engineer’s stamp rather than a contractor’s opinion. We stop and say so rather than build over it.
Before anyone starts
Every one of those works on the company publishing this guide exactly as it works on the other nine.
There is no single answer and any guide that gives you one is selling something. What this comparison does is put ten companies side by side on facts you can check yourself: where each dispatches from, what each publishes about arrival, whether the rebuild is in-house, and how long each says it has been trading. Five of the ten are on the Macomb side and five on the Oakland side. Two have been trading longer than the company publishing this guide: Concraft states 1986 and Miracle Property Restoration states 1996. The right choice depends on which of the three losses you actually have, which the table above is designed to help you work out before you call anybody.
They are different jobs with different trades behind them. A structure fire means something burned in your building: there is charring, usually structural loss, and almost always suppression water underneath it, so it needs mitigation, contents work and a licensed rebuild. A smoke-only loss means smoke or soot reached your building from a fire somewhere else, so there is odour and residue but no charring, no structural loss and nothing to rebuild. That second one needs cleaning, deodorisation and probably duct work, and hiring a general contractor for it means paying builder overhead for a cleaning job. The distinction matters commercially, not just technically, and it is the first thing to establish before anyone quotes you.
A puffback is a furnace or boiler misfiring and pushing unburned combustion products into the building rather than up the flue, leaving a fine oily black film distributed through the house, worst at supply registers and on the walls above them, with no fire anywhere. It is classically an oil-fired failure, and that is where the Michigan question comes in. About 74 percent of occupied Michigan housing units heated with utility gas in 2023, with electricity around 12.7 percent and propane a little over 8 percent. Heating oil does not appear as a meaningful share here; the US Energy Information Administration describes heating oil as particularly important to the Northeast. So if you are told you have had a puffback in Macomb or Oakland County, the first question to ask is what your furnace actually burns. Gas appliances can produce soot when they malfunction, so the word is not impossible, but in this market it is an unusual diagnosis and it deserves a specific explanation rather than a label.
Slower than you think, and for a reason that is nobody’s fault. Nothing starts before the fire service releases the building, and on a scene with casualties that takes longer. Three of the ten companies here publish a numeric window: Prime Restoration is on site in 60 minutes, Modernistic aims to be on the scene within 60 to 90 minutes of your call, and Miracle Property Restoration states an immediate emergency response with a two-hour reply to email during business hours. The rest publish 24/7 availability without a figure. What matters more than the first hour on a fire loss is the first week: emergency board-up and tarping to close the building, then a scope built from what the smoke was made of and what it landed on.
Two usual reasons, and both are avoidable. The first is that residue was sealed or painted over rather than removed. Odour is a physical residue rather than an atmosphere, so covering it postpones it, and the smell returns with the first humid week except now it is under a coat of paint. The second, and more common, is the HVAC system. If the furnace or air handler ran while smoke was in the air, the ducts distributed residue into rooms that never saw the fire, and cleaning those rooms without cleaning the system means it recurs. Two of the ten companies in this comparison publish air duct and HVAC cleaning capability. If odour is your main problem, that column is the one to read.
For part of the work. Michigan regulates residential building work under Article 24 of the Occupational Code, at MCL 339.2401 through 339.2412, reaching the repair, alteration, addition, subtraction or improvement of a residential structure for compensation. There is an exemption where the aggregate contract price for labour, material and every other item on one project is under 600 dollars, and the statute expressly refuses that exemption where a job is part of a larger operation or has been split into small contracts to get beneath the line. Cleaning soot is not licensed residential building work. Rebuilding what burned passes 600 dollars immediately and is. So on a structure fire, ask specifically who holds the residential builder licence for the rebuild, and verify the number with the state rather than accepting a card. Prime Restoration is MI Residential Builder #262500492.
Because none could be verified on the day this page was compiled, and republishing an old figure as though it were current misleads a reader who has no way to date it. This comparison uses facts that do not drift on a weekly cycle instead: the street address a company dispatches from, what it publishes about arrival, whether the rebuild is in-house, how long it says it has been trading, and what certifications it lists. Every one of those was read from the named company’s own published page on 2 September 2026. If you want current review standing, look it up on Google before you hire anyone, including the company publishing this guide.
Match the company to the building rather than to the badge. A fire in a multi-tenant commercial property, where several occupancies are affected and somebody is trying to keep trading, favours the equipment depth and central coordination a national operator brings; BELFOR runs its global headquarters at 185 Oakland Avenue in Birmingham and states more than 75 years in disaster recovery. A single-family structure fire is a different problem, where crew continuity and one accountable party through mitigation, contents and the rebuild usually matter more than fleet size. Both kinds of company are in the table above, and the columns that separate them are the rebuild column and the address.
Very little, and that is the honest answer rather than a short one. Do not enter until the fire service releases the building. Once you can, photograph before anything moves, wide and close, room by room and timestamped. Do not run the furnace or the air conditioning, because moving air moves residue into rooms that are currently clean. Do not wipe soot off walls with a household cleaner; the wrong chemistry on the wrong residue sets it into the surface and turns a cleanable wall into a repaint. Do not sit on upholstery or walk on carpet in affected areas more than you must, because pressure drives residue deeper into a fibre. Take what you need for a few days and leave the rest where it is.
Almost always, and it frequently reaches further than the fire did. Suppression water runs downward and sideways through a building, into wall cavities, along joist bays and into rooms and floors below the fire area. It behaves exactly like any other water loss from that point on: it has a category, it degrades with time, and it ends on a moisture reading taken against a dry standard from an unaffected part of the same building rather than on a date. If nobody has metered below and beside the fire area, the scope is incomplete however good the soot cleaning is. Ask whether the company handling your fire also handles the drying, and if the answer is no, ask who does and when they are booked.
Methodology
Every company fact in the table and in the entries above was read on 2 September 2026 from one of these source classes:
Each company’s own website. Office addresses, phone numbers, service lists, published arrival windows, certification claims and years-trading claims. Where a company states something about itself, this guide quotes it and attributes it rather than paraphrasing it into a claim of its own.
Better Business Bureau profiles. Used for one entry, Paul Davis Restoration of East Michigan, whose own site returned a certificate validation error from this machine. No BBB rating is published for any company in this guide, including the publisher, because a rating read once and reprinted for months is exactly the stale-figure problem this guide avoids elsewhere. Look them up yourself.
The Michigan licence lookup. Residential building work in Michigan requires a licensed residential builder under Article 24 of the Occupational Code, MCL 339.2401 through 339.2412, and numbers are independently verifiable through the State of Michigan. We recommend you check any company you consider, including this one.
The US Fire Administration, for the 2023 Michigan and national NFIRS casualty rates and the 2017 to 2019 residential fire cause proportions.
Published Michigan household heating fuel data and the US Energy Information Administration, for the heating fuel shares behind the puffback section.
Disclosure. This comparison is published by Prime Restoration, which is included in the list, is disclosed as the publisher in the first sentence of the body, in its own table row and here. Prime appears first because it publishes the guide, not because it placed first; the numbered list of alternatives begins at 2. Every company is assessed against the same criteria. No company paid for placement, and no company was excluded for declining to. Two companies in this comparison have been trading longer than the publisher, one publishes a faster arrival window in part of the market, and the industry’s global headquarters is in Birmingham, and all three facts are stated in the table and in the body rather than omitted.
Corrections. If you are named here and a detail is wrong or out of date, tell us and it will be changed. Nothing on this page is legal, plumbing, electrical, engineering or medical advice.
24/7 dispatch across Macomb and Oakland County. On site in 60 minutes once the building is released. The estimate is free, and it comes with a written scope and an honest answer about whether you need a builder at all.
Call (586) 277-1069Prime Restoration is a Michigan licensed residential builder (MI Residential Builder #262500492) and a full-service restoration contractor serving Macomb and Oakland County from Sterling Heights. Company details in this comparison were read on 2 September 2026 and change without notice; verify anything time-sensitive against the source. No company paid for placement.
