We are breathing air OMG!!!

[jackfaire]

So today I had an SC who was cleaning her furnace. She was wiping down part of the burner with a rag and shockingly (yes sarcasm) It came away black. She immediately called us in a panic about how they are breathing in soot. Apparently the idea that your equipment gets dirty as you use it hadn't occured to them.

[Argabarga]

Don't ever start breathing air kid, me, I'm hooked......

[Nurian]

I'm not hooked! I can stop any time!

Now DHMO....that stuff is killer.

[Automan Empire]

It totally depends on the design of the heater, but generally, soot has no business being where it can be wiped, namely on the house side of the firebox. This customer may be on to something. CO poisoning is nothing to trifle with.

Our gas company will gladly dispach a technician to inspect an appliance and test for CO if a combustion leak is suspected.

[Broomjockey]

but generally, soot

I'm not sure that it's even soot. Some random person doing cleaning? More likely dust.

[sirwired]

It totally depends on the design of the heater, but generally, soot has no business being where it can be wiped, namely on the house side of the firebox. This customer may be on to something. CO poisoning is nothing to trifle with.

Our gas company will gladly dispach a technician to inspect an appliance and test for CO if a combustion leak is suspected.

Sounds like she was wiping down the inside of the burner compartment, which is plenty accessible on many furnaces. Yes, if the heatEx side has soot, bad juju is occuring.

That said, there shouldn't have soot anywhere... so the furnace probably needs work regardless.

SirWired

Bonus Story: Had my furnace go through a checkup several years ago... guy goes into the crawl space and comes back two minutes later and says "you need a new furnace." He then says "You are probably wondering how I could tell so quickly..." I follow him into the crawl where the last person to work on the furnace had helpfully scratched the word "crack" with an arrow pointing towards the crack in the heat exchanger. (For those that don't know, a cracked heat exchanger = possibility of CO = replace furnace, as swapping that part out is virtually impossible.)

I guess the previous homeowner was a real cheap bastard for not replacing the furnace when the crack was discovered.

[Andara Bledin]

I follow him into the crawl where the last person to work on the furnace had helpfully scratched the word "crack" with an arrow pointing towards the crack in the heat exchanger.

It was awfully nice of the previous tech to leave a note so that you wouldn't have to waste time doing the same diagnostics.

^-.-^

[jackfaire]

Okay. My bad. Not something we are trained on we supply the gas. The equipment is theirs we aren't even legally allowed to do anything more than look at it and tighten a bolt here or a screw there.

The tech would know more about that. Part of what struck me as stupid however was the incredibly panicked attitude. She was acting like the home was on fire but kept telling me it isn't an emergency.

She got mad at me for trying to figure out what she was talking about. She started by saying the air was black. The rag thing was something she yelled out later and she never clarified what she was cleaning.