sooty, hot water registers

kellyj

Got a call from a customer, she has soot coming from her registers. O.K. but they are hot water fin tube radiation. Anybody ever seen this.



It is a fairly new house, 5 years old. Boiler is a direct vent gas boiler, in its own room in basement. 1/2 of the house is radiant and the rest is fin tube. She says the soot is right above the baseboard about a foot up, and all over the ceilings.



Havent been there yet, but she says the boiler room is clean?

Mark Eatherton

Does your client burn a lot of candles??

There have been discussions here, and they led to a discussion about the extensive use of candles, which lead to carbon deposition.



ME

icesailor

Soot:

And some candles soot far worse than others.

Bob Flanagan_3

Sooty Registers

It is important to remember that baseboard heating works by convection.  It is basically just circulating the cold air from across the floor over the fin tube and into the room.  Any dirt/soot particles in the air from a fireplace or from the burning of candles can cause the streaking/ghosting effect that is being seen on the walls and ceiling. 

No smoke candles and making sure the damper and fireplace are in proper working order should eliminate this problem. 

Bob

clammy

check boiler aquastat setting

Have your tech check the aquastat setting on the boiler .I had a job with the same promblem it ended up being the aquastat setting was at 230 degrees .At that hi of a temp it was causing ghosting (black soot like marks ) on the walls .I lowered the aquastat to 180 and they repainted the walls and that was the end of that no more ghosting .in some fin tube system when the temp is very hi it inreases the convention of the air and causes that sooting marks on the walls .I don,t really think ot is a issue of the home not being clean the job where i ran into it was as clean as a pin .Hope that helps peace and good luck clammy

Jamie Hall

The whole point being...

that it isn't related to the boiler or boiler combustion.  It may be soot (e.g. candles as noted) or just plain ordinary dirt.  What happens is that whatever it is is carried up the wall by the convection currents (steam radiators do it too!) but, since the walls are usually cool, it deposits and collects there... and since there is almost always a bit of grease, it kind of goops on and can be the very devil to get rid of.

kellyj

soot

Thanks everybody, that is about what i was thinking. The insurance guy is coming, they said they would cover cleaning soot and repainting. But, I have to fix boiler so it won't happen again.



I'm trying to tell them it isn't a boiler problem.

icesailor

Sooty Boilers:

So, do they want you to break the gas fired, direct vent boiler that doesn't smoke so you can fix the soot problem? Can you do that?

If they don't burn candles or make smoke/soot some other way, where is it coming from? "Smokeless Candles" is an oxymoron. There's no such thing.

World Plumber

Yep!

I saw it a couple times the first I pulled my hair out. Candles, the cheep wax candles produce 40 million carbon particles is 20 minutes of burning. If they have vinyl windows, synthetic carpets and new plastic front appliances it changes the charge of the particles and the stick.

 The fist time I saw it it went from the baseboard about 3 feet up the about 2 feet from the ceiling and about 2 feet across the ceiling. 

  Of course the people wanted to blame the oil burner, you guess who serviced that.