Boiler ache can be deadly
A couple of weeks after Christmas I received a call from a young man who had to move his family out of their apartment due to an unbearable smell. Usually, a bad smell can be attributed to drains, a moldy basement or a rat or two, but this was something completely different.It took a little questioning to build a case. Last summer, Danny, his wife Lauren and baby moved into a newly renovated condominium apartment in the Montreal plateau area. It was their dream home. Everything about the place was perfect; or so it seemed, until the start of the cold season when the heaters were turned on. An odd acrid smell took over the apartment, and it got worse by the day. Eventually it became so bad that they could no longer be in the apartment. Some sympathetic friends let them move in until it was sorted out. That’s when they called me. I invited my colleage Paul to join me in my investigation of this interesting problem.
Some background
The building was originally a triplex built around 1910 and converted into three condominium apartments. The condo in question was the middle unit. The lower unit was heated with a gas-fired boiler in a crawl space, using the original chimney to exhaust the flue gases. During renovations some of the interior of the masonry structure had been exposed, including the chimney breast, as is the current fashion with these older buildings. The exposed chimney appeared wet.
The legwork, or rather crawlwork
Paul and I headed for the crawl space to check out the boiler. We found a 60 year old boiler that had been converted from oil to gas about 25 years ago. We checked the flue clean out and found it to be completely clogged with plant debris, and removed at least a garbage bag full of rotting birds and squirrels nests. With mirror and flashlight we found there was no liner in the chimney. All we saw was bricks.
Eureka
The problem became clear as day. It was all in the bare brick. The flue gases were migrating through the bricks of the chimney, and since the plaster had been removed on the inside, they were entering the apartment. Flue gasses contain a lot of water vapour, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and a few other compounds - carbon monoxide being the most deadly of them all. Danny did the right thing in moving out. It may have saved his and his family’s lives. We went outside and saw a huge moisture stain on the outside of the building. As one can see in the picture it extends from the ground up three stories to the top of the building.
Next step was to turn off the boiler and call the gas company. They arrived the next day and installed a liner. Immediately, the smell began to dissipate and Danny, Lauren and baby were able to return home.
