Carpet showing carbon build up from furnace? (fireplace, hot water heater, stove)
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We recently had our wall to wall upstairs bedrooms & hall carpet cleaned, very light carpet. Carpet cleaner (who we always ask for, he does a great job) told us that what I though was dust that would NOT come up along the baseboards, was actually carbon build up from our forced hot air furnace. We burn natural gas, the furnace is 3 years old, filter changed quarterly....
He suggested we have our ducts cleaned/furnace cleaned.
If you're getting black soot from anything you need to have it serviced immediately. If you do not have CO detectors do not use the furnace or whatever else might be causing it until you get some. This is not something to screw around with no matter how long it's being going on.Black soot is a sign of incomplete combustion which also causes excessive CO, if the soot is in your house CO will most likely be present too.
A 3 year old unit is not going to give carbon black to the house environment unless the heat exchanger has burned thru. The possibility of that is slim and none. And it would get even slimmer that a natural gas burner is giving off that much carbon. Just far too much to be wrong for the event to happen. Probabilities are a lot higher you're burning scented candles.
Natural gas should not be giving you a carbon buildup. Any chances it was there before and from an oil furnace?
We moved in to the house when it was brand new....this is our second furnace for upstairs (two zone heat) b/c when the original one turned 10 years old it couldn't keep up.
My husband said the same thing, about the natural gas, so he's pretty confused. Of course he wasn't home when "carpet guy" told me this, and I had no idea what questions I should ask.
A 3 year old unit is not going to give carbon black to the house environment unless the heat exchanger has burned thru. The possibility of that is slim and none. And it would get even slimmer that a natural gas burner is giving off that much carbon. Just far too much to be wrong for the event to happen. Probabilities are a lot higher you're burning scented candles.
Actually, I haven't burned scented candles for years. Have a little guy who is sneaky and my older two find burning candles waaaay to fascinating for my comfort. EXCEPT for when Sandy hit in October. Then we burned candles every day (a lot of them) for about 4 days - no power.
I don't remember when I noticed that I couldn't get the carpet cleaned along the baseboards any longer, but I'm pretty sure it was before Sandy hit.
If you're getting black soot from anything you need to have it serviced immediately. If you do not have CO detectors do not use the furnace or whatever else might be causing it until you get some. This is not something to screw around with no matter how long it's being going on.Black soot is a sign of incomplete combustion which also causes excessive CO, if the soot is in your house CO will most likely be present too.
Thanks for the info - and that is something that crossed my mind. We do have Carbon Monoxide detectors on every level of the house.
Thanks for all the posts/info. Tomorrow morning I'm going to call the contractor who put our furnace in and have him come take a look at it as well as another HVAC contractor I have a number for.
Thanks for the info - and that is something that crossed my mind. We do have Carbon Monoxide detectors on every level of the house.
Ar the very least consider getting one with a readout that gives you PPM to see if you have low levels that would be indicative of a problem but not enough to set off the regular detector.
I don't want to sound like the "sky is falling" but there is lot of people that have died from CO ignoring tell tale signs like soot in the house. Do you have anything else in the house that uses combustibles like a gas cook stove, gas dryer, gas/oil hot water heater or a gas fireplace? Anything that burns something is a possible source of CO.
This "soot" might not be soot and unrelated entirely but it's not something to ignore either.
Dust floats around in the air but it has a tendency to stick more to warm areas like around heat registers and it gives the appearance that the dirty streaks came out of the vent but it didn't.
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