Well last night I fell asleep watching a movie. I awoke to the shrill sound of the kitchen fire alarm going off. My daughter had left some oil on the stove and it had caught fire. So now smoke is billowing into the theater, yep right next door to the kitchen. I have Servpro coming by in a couple of hours. How do I tell if my projector sucked in enough smoke to warrant a claim? How do I tell them so I am covered?

I would call your insurance company and tell them you will need to send your PJ in to the service center for a cleaning and see if they can add it to the total bill for recovery. You don't want to run your PJ after sucking in smoke, regardless of how much. I know that they run PJs in bars with lots of smoke but you are unlikely to get any warranty service later if they find smoke anywhere in the PJ.

Sorry about the fire. I know it sucks. I had a similar thing happen at my house a few years ago. It was made worse because it was cold outside and my central heat was on. It sucked up smoke and ash and blew it into every room of my house. I had Servpro clean my house too. They did a great job of cleaning things up. I highly recommend them.

I was expecting to have to fight with my insurance company about the fire but, to my surprise, my insurance claims guy was almost overly generous in saying what things needed to be replaced. I think there may have been some kind of kickbacks going on between my insurance guy and the local contractors I was using to do the repair work - so keep an eye out for shady people.

The worst part of the whole thing was dealing with the contractors that did - or did not do - the repair work. I eventually fired them and finished the work myself.

As far as your projector goes, I would just tell the insurance people that it has smoke damage and needs to be replaced. My insurance replaced anything touching the ceiling (lights, fans, vents, etc) in the kitchen and in any rooms adjacent to the kitchen. I assume that if I had a projector mounted to the ceiling in one of these rooms that they would have replaced it too.