Most home cleaners contain high levels of water, they do not have enough cleaning agent to break down the soot that results from fire damage. As a result you tend to smear the soot and not remove it. We use chemicals specific to the makeup of the soot during the fire damage restoration process. For example, some fires are petroleum based, like when plastics burn or if you had a stove top grease fire. The cleaning agents for this type of fire damage have to be strong enough to cut through the grease and not cause additional damage as it is cleaned. Additionally, wood fires are carbon based and can be cleaned using using simple chem sponges or citrus based degreasers.