Dirty Walls

steamsey

Hi - I hope this is the right place to post this.

My sister is being driven mad with black gunk on her downstairs walls, doors and windows. She lives near the Curragh, in a semi- deatched house and asked me to post this up for her.

She has gas fired central heating, and a fireplace in the living room. When she moved in, she painted all the downstairs walls a creamy colour (Dulux Vinyl) but soon noticed that the walls and even doors were becoming discoloured - by a black soot type material, but the chimney has been cleaned, and a plumber serviced the gas heating and checked all the rads. Bord Gais did a Carbon Monoxide check and found nothing. The worst of the stuff is developing directly above rads - in the living room and on the opposite wall in the hall. The inside of her windows are dirtier than the outside.

There does not seem to any damp, but she does find a good bit of condensation on the windows in the morning. House is energy rated "H"!

Her neighbours are not experiencing the same problem.

I attach a few pics. If anyone has any ideas of what this could be and how to fix it, we'd really appreciate it.

slowburner

Does she have problems with smoke from the fire?

steamsey

No - no problems with smoke from the fire. She does light candles around the house if that's relevant - but there is none of this gunk above where candles are used.

Degsy

It could be mould caused by damp surfaces..

steamsey

Cheers - I'll look into the mould suggestion but it's on the windows too so not sure if mould grows on glass.

slimjimmc

The rads bit suggests to me there are a lot of air-borne particles in the rooms. The warm air currents climbing up the wall from the rads are dragging the particles with it and they stick to the wall. It could be mould spores, and if so it is very very likely to be detrimental to health.
Mould wont usually grow on the glass itself but does grow on the window frames especially damp wooden ones. Run a cloth over the bottom rail and see if it'll come up black.

There might be too little ventilation in the house, has she closed off any vents?

aujopimur

If she burns coloured or scented candles, that could be the problem as most of them cause discolouration, paticularly the cheap ones.

slowburner

steamsey wrote: »

There does not seem to any damp, but she does find a good bit of condensation on the windows in the morning. House is energy rated "H"!

Excessive condensation on the windows could be an indicator of a damp atmosphere.
It could also be an product of single glazing, insufficient heating and/or poor insulation, or a combination of all three.

If the black staining is a mould, spray on bleach will make it disappear almost instantly.
If it is a smoke residue the bleach will not have the same rapid effect.
You could do this to establish the nature of the staining.

If you decide that it is a mould, come back - damp can have numerous contributing factors and I'm sure that many of the knowledgeable folk here would be only too pleased to help.

steamsey

Cheers everyone.

Not aware of any closed vents but will double check.

Will try the bleach on it to see what happens.

We were worried about mould & health but a family plumber & also Bord Gais say there is nothing to worry about from what they've seen.

She does use a fair amount of candles - this might the best place to start trial & error.

slowburner

Hopefully the candles are the culprit. That would be a fairly simple problem to solve.

Happyman42

Not sure if I am seeing the pics right, but have pictures been removed from the walls? If that is what I am seeing then I doubt mould would respect the contours of a picture, more likely something to do with smoke imo.

CBYR1983

You'd normally only get mould on cold external walls and ceilings. Not usually on internal partition walls. By the looks of it, smoke has caused it. In addition to candles, does she smoke in the house?

Dirt above radiators can happen. Dust behind and under the rad.

This is another reason why rads are sometimes placed under Windows! Obviously not feasible in a hall.

Stove Fan

CBYR1983 wrote: »

You'd normally only get mould on cold external walls and ceilings. Not usually on internal partition walls. By the looks of it, smoke has caused it. In addition to candles, does she smoke in the house?

Dirt above radiators can happen. Dust behind and under the rad.

This is another reason why rads are sometimes placed under Windows! Obviously not feasible in a hall.

Looks very much like nicotine smoke staining. Where a picture has been it's clear and can clearly see where the picture has been.

I viewed a bungalow that was exactly the same. Covered and stained walls,ceilings and UPVC windows and glass.

You need to clean it off, use a stainblock and repaint. I'd be very surprised you had damp all over:eek:

Stove Fan:)

steamsey

Thanks for the input, I appreciate it and my sis said to say thanks (she is not much of an Interweb user).

Happyman42 - Yes - she took the pictures down a while ago to show the difference between the original cream colour (under the pics) and the colour on the exposed wall. Makes sense that it's not mould as mould would not descriminate between behind a picture and not behind a picture.

CBYR1983 - No, there is no smoking in the house

Stove Fan - I agree - I don't think anymore that damp is the culprit.

I'm pretty sure it's the candles that she has been using so the plan now is to clean up the living room, re paint the walls, completely ban any candles and see if the gunk comes back. I'm pretty sure it won't and if it doesnt, then happy days, problem sorted and she can go back to enjoying her new home.

mrswalton

Goodness she must use an awful lot of 'cheap' candles.

Is the fireplace in the living room an open fire?

hanloj1

I'm not saying its the same but I have to tell you my story. We fitted a new insert stove two years ago. The room was painted before the stove was fitted. About a year later we had to repaint the walls as they were black, this was most obvious around the pictures and above the radiators. We didn't make much of it at the time. We repainted the room. But then it came back again. This time a lot worse. The ceiling, windows(PVC) and walls were black and obviously black. The vent in the room was black also. We got the lad that fitted the fire back out. He concluded that the vent was drawing air out rather than pushing it in. We temporarily blocked the vent and opened the window that was loacted on a different wall. This worked very well for the six months. We repainted the room totally before christmas and added a vent on the same wall as the windows. I rub my finger on the wall every so often and all seems well.

Billy Bunting

If an open fire is not in use its normal to have cold air fall down the chimney, this air can have deposits of carbon (soot), the heat from your rads raises cooler air from floor level and circulates to higher levels, with the soot dposits.
A chimney balloon could be the answer.