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QUESTION:Anyone had experience with black "soot-like" residue around the edges of their
carpets?
Here's the situation . . .
The carpets throughout an entire house (all light colored carpets) began
turning black around the edges in every room. Heard on a radio talk show, that
this type of staining / discoloration could be caused by soot and/or carbon
monoxide from a malfunctioning furnace.
The furnace was checked out and it indeed had a cracked heat exchanger (gas
forced hot air heating system).
Has anyone else had similar situations? Was it caused by a faulty furnace?
What type of furnace? Was it traced to some other cause not yet considered?
ANSWER: We also have this problem in the house that we are renting
(moving out to our own house in about a month--yes!). The carpet is
white and around most of the edges there are dark spots, they have
been there since we moved in almost 3 years ago. There were also dark
gray stains near the heat registers (oil furnace), but they appear to
have been caused by the previous tenants not changing the furnace
filter properly. Frequent filter changing along with shampooing the
area every 3 months or so has considerably lightened these stains.
The furnace is serviced about every 3 years or so, and there has been
no sign of a cracked heat exchanger.
I doubt the ones around the edge of the carpet are caused by the
furnace though. They appear even in the finished basement, which is
not served by the oil furnace. And some edges of the carpet seem to
be immune and do not have these black spots on the carpet. My thought
is that it was caused by improper installation of the carpet, because
in many places the pattern of spots is very regular, two rows of
alternating dots, just like the carpet tack strips that are put down
to anchor wall to wall carpet. In other places, it looks almost like
a line of black or gray dye at the edge of the carpet. Examination of
the area also shows that the discolorations are darker at the base of the
fibers than at the surface, which also would seem to indicate that
they are emanating from under the carpet, rather than being some
stain happening from above.
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