How much does fire damage restoration cost in Ontario?

Published Ontario loss bands run from $8,000 to $25,000 for a contained kitchen or appliance fire in its cleanup phase, $15,000 to $45,000 for whole-home soot with no structural fire such as a furnace puff-back, $30,000 to $90,000 for a single room that burned including the rebuild, and $50,000 to $300,000 and beyond for a multi-room loss (24/7 Remedial Services; Restoration Mate). Full reconstruction after a severe fire is quoted at $200 to $500 per square foot.

What is a puff-back, and why does it cost so much with no fire?

A furnace or boiler misfires and blows oily soot through the ductwork into every room. Nothing burned, nothing is structurally damaged, and the house is still full of a greasy film that bonds to paint, fabric and plastic and smears when it is wiped wrong. Whole-home soot cleanup with no structural fire is published at $15,000 to $45,000 for that reason: the work is every surface in the house, twice, plus the duct system that spread it.

Why does the smell come back weeks later?

Because odour is a chemical residue, not a scent hanging in the air, and it re-releases when heat and humidity rise. Treating it means finding where the smoke condensed, which is usually inside the wall cavity, under the underlay, and in the ductwork. Restoration Mate prices odour removal with air scrubbing at $500 to $3,000 per home, and 911 Water Damage Experts price the parts separately at $200 to $1,000 for deodorizing and $500 to $1,500 for air purification. This page used to quote single-room, whole-home, ozone and hydroxyl prices from one Ontario source that now blocks every non-browser request; all four were withdrawn rather than republished on trust. The technology choice still matters: ozone means leaving the house, and hydroxyl is safe to stay in and takes longer.

What does a contents pack-out involve?

The crew inventories, photographs and removes everything portable, cleans it off site in equipment you cannot rent, stores it while the structure is worked on, and brings it back. It is quoted at $2,000 to $20,000 and up per household (Restoration Mate). The inventory is the part worth caring about: it is the document you and your insurer will argue from about what was in the house and what could not be saved.

Should I board up the house myself?

An emergency board-up and roof tarp is $500 to $3,000 (Restoration Mate), and it is the cheapest line on the whole claim. An open roof turns one fire loss into a fire loss plus a water loss the next time it rains, and an unsecured house invites a theft claim your policy will treat as a separate deductible. Most Ontario policies expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, which is exactly what this is.

Who pays, and what should I ask for first?

Almost every fire loss is settled by an insurer, so the numbers that decide your month are your policy limit and your additional living expenses coverage, not the contractor's range. Ask for the written scope before demolition begins, because once the walls are out nobody can prove what was in them. Ask whether the quote separates cleanup from reconstruction. And ask who is holding the contents inventory.

What fire and smoke damage restoration costs in Ontario

Fire is the one loss on this site where the range is genuinely enormous, and it is not evasion. A contained kitchen fire cleans up for $8,000 to $25,000. Soot blown through the whole house by a furnace, with nothing burned at all, is $15,000 to $45,000. One room actually alight, cleaned and rebuilt, is $30,000 to $90,000. Several rooms starts at $50,000 and does not have a ceiling.

Pick the nearest band below, add the parts that get quoted separately, and the total is the shape of the claim rather than a guess at your house.

Page last updated: September 13, 2026By The RestorationIndex Desk

The numbers behind it

$8,000 to $25,000a contained kitchen or appliance fire, cleanup phase (24/7 Remedial Services)
$15,000 to $45,000whole-home soot with no structural fire, such as a puff-back
$200 to $500per sq ft to fully reconstruct after a severe fire (Restoration Mate)
$500 to $3,000emergency board-up and roof tarping, the cheapest line on the claim

What does this fire loss cost to put right?

What kind of loss is it?These are published Ontario loss bands, not guesses at your job. Pick the nearest.Odour treatmentSoot smell outlives soot. It comes back on a humid day if the source was never treated.

What else is in this bill?

Emergency board-up and roof tarpingSame night. An open house is a second insurance claim waiting to happen.Damage assessment and written scopeThe document your adjuster works from.Contents packed out and cleanedFurniture, clothing and everything soft leaves the house and comes back cleaned.

Structure to rebuild, if anysq ftFull reconstruction after a severe fire is $200 to $500 per sq ft. Leave at zero if nothing is being rebuilt.

What a loss like this is quoted at

$9,200 to $31,500

Canadian dollars before 13% HST. Fire losses are the widest ranges on this site because two fires that look alike from the doorway can differ tenfold once the walls are open.

A contained kitchen or appliance fire: the cleanup phase24/7 Remedial Services: $8,000 to $25,000
Emergency board-up and roof tarping the same nightRestoration Mate: $500 to $3,000
Damage assessment and written scope911 Water Damage Experts: $200 to $500
Odour removal with air scrubbing, quoted as a packageRestoration Mate: $500 to $3,000

Most fire losses are settled by an insurer rather than paid out of pocket, so the number that decides your month is your policy limit and your additional living expenses coverage, not this range. Get the scope in writing before the demolition starts: after it, nobody can prove what was there.

What the money is actually buying

A fire job runs in three stages that get billed as though they were one. Stabilising comes first and happens the same night: board-up, tarping, power made safe, standing water from the hoses pulled out before it soaks into what the fire missed. Then the cleanup, which is soot off every surface, ductwork, contents out of the house, and the odour work. Only then does anything get rebuilt.

The reason this calculator asks which band rather than how many square feet is that Ontario restoration firms publish it that way, and they publish it that way because square footage is a poor predictor here. Smoke goes where air goes. A small fire in a closed room with the furnace running can contaminate a house more thoroughly than a bigger one that vented straight out a window, and the invoice follows the soot rather than the flame.

Watch the seam between cleanup and reconstruction. Two of the published bands cover both and two cover only the cleanup, which is why the reconstruction input on this page appears for some choices and not others: adding a per-square-foot rebuild to a band that already contains one would double the largest number on the screen. Ask any real quote the same question, in the same words, before you compare it to another.

Fire and water arrive together more often than not, because the fire is put out with water and the water then has to be dealt with under the same deadline as any other loss. The water damage calculator prices that half, and the fire and smoke cost guide carries the full source-cited table this page reads from.

Frequently asked questions

How much does fire damage restoration cost in Ontario?: Published Ontario loss bands run from $8,000 to $25,000 for a contained kitchen or appliance fire in its cleanup phase, $15,000 to $45,000 for whole-home soot with no structural fire such as a furnace puff-back, $30,000 to $90,000 for a single room that burned including the rebuild, and $50,000 to $300,000 and beyond for a multi-room loss (24/7 Remedial Services; Restoration Mate). Full reconstruction after a severe fire is quoted at $200 to $500 per square foot.
What is a puff-back, and why does it cost so much with no fire?: A furnace or boiler misfires and blows oily soot through the ductwork into every room. Nothing burned, nothing is structurally damaged, and the house is still full of a greasy film that bonds to paint, fabric and plastic and smears when it is wiped wrong. Whole-home soot cleanup with no structural fire is published at $15,000 to $45,000 for that reason: the work is every surface in the house, twice, plus the duct system that spread it.
Why does the smell come back weeks later?: Because odour is a chemical residue, not a scent hanging in the air, and it re-releases when heat and humidity rise. Treating it means finding where the smoke condensed, which is usually inside the wall cavity, under the underlay, and in the ductwork. Restoration Mate prices odour removal with air scrubbing at $500 to $3,000 per home, and 911 Water Damage Experts price the parts separately at $200 to $1,000 for deodorizing and $500 to $1,500 for air purification. This page used to quote single-room, whole-home, ozone and hydroxyl prices from one Ontario source that now blocks every non-browser request; all four were withdrawn rather than republished on trust. The technology choice still matters: ozone means leaving the house, and hydroxyl is safe to stay in and takes longer.
What does a contents pack-out involve?: The crew inventories, photographs and removes everything portable, cleans it off site in equipment you cannot rent, stores it while the structure is worked on, and brings it back. It is quoted at $2,000 to $20,000 and up per household (Restoration Mate). The inventory is the part worth caring about: it is the document you and your insurer will argue from about what was in the house and what could not be saved.
Should I board up the house myself?: An emergency board-up and roof tarp is $500 to $3,000 (Restoration Mate), and it is the cheapest line on the whole claim. An open roof turns one fire loss into a fire loss plus a water loss the next time it rains, and an unsecured house invites a theft claim your policy will treat as a separate deductible. Most Ontario policies expect you to take reasonable steps to prevent further damage, which is exactly what this is.
Who pays, and what should I ask for first?: Almost every fire loss is settled by an insurer, so the numbers that decide your month are your policy limit and your additional living expenses coverage, not the contractor's range. Ask for the written scope before demolition begins, because once the walls are out nobody can prove what was in them. Ask whether the quote separates cleanup from reconstruction. And ask who is holding the contents inventory.

Where these numbers come from

These are published Ontario restoration company figures collected into RestorationIndex's fire and smoke pricing file, last reviewed July 2026. Every figure was re-checked in August 2026 against the cached text of the page it is attributed to. Fire pricing is quoted in loss bands rather than per square foot by almost everyone in the trade, so that is how the tool works: bands from the sources, extras added as the same sources list them. Canadian dollars, before 13% HST, and before whatever your policy limit turns out to be.

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