I am renting a house that has an oil furnace and uses forced hot air. We are starting to notice a film of black residue on plastic like surfaces (small kitchen appliances, plastic bags, plastic blinds etc...). I was wondering if it was soot. I was told it may come from burning candles, the girlfriend has many of these. Does it come from cooking? We rarely make anything that generates that much smoke. Is there a filter we should check? Is there a way soot could be getting into the house? I thought forced hot air used a heat exchanger and didn't come from the furnace. Any ideas or advice would be great.
Wipe down one room and stop burning candles for a few weeks. If the soot comes back you may have a crack in the heat exchanger in the furnance. You'll need to let the landlord know about it and have him fix it. Make sure there is at least on CO detector in the house. If the furnce is not burning the oil cleanly, you may be getting higher levels of CO in the house and that is not a good thing. You can not smell CO and it can kill.
Yes, candles could be the problem, however, a flue leak is also a possible suspect. Recommend a professional look at your furnace.
It could well be the candles, but I would definitely check the furnace for a cracked heat exchanger. If that is cracked, you can easily die from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Plastic surfaces have a tendency to create a static electric charge that will attract pollutants in the air. The combustion chamber of your furnace is isolated from the heated air. Candles are notorious for doing this.
While candles do cause some soot it is probably the furnace. If oil furnaces are not serviced regularly they can start to belch lots of smoke and soot some of which can get picked up by the blower and spread around the building. It is also possible that the heat exchanger has burned through or cracked which is a real healt hazard but you would be smelling oil fumes pretty bad. It probably needs to be serviced so it will burn clean again.
