Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with soot

How do I create soot without burning a building down?

ieatwords — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 16:59:27 -0800

I want to add soot as an element to one of my paintings. How do I create soot? Obviously, I have to burn something...but what? It should be dark like charcoal and fine enough to spread over a large area. I'm not looking for big chunks. Ideally, it would be something that I burn and hold over the canvas as it falls into the desired locations. I would prefer something that I could control as it is burning and rather it not be toxic enough to knock me out. Any ideas?

Mystery dust.

prefpara — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 07:29:11 -0800

A mysterious gray film/residue is appearing on all of the plastic in my apartment. What is going on? It's on the ice cube trays, the tupperware, the coffee maker, my printer, the dishwasher, etc. It's all over a plastic grocery bag that has been lying in the living room for only two days (close-up). My roommate and I have never seen anything like it before. Is it mutant dust of some kind?

If anyone can identify this substance, we would love to confirm that it is not going to kill us.

accident involving lots and lots of soot-like dust and my bedroom...

krautland — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:01:04 -0800

accident involving lots and lots of soot-like dust and my bedroom... my landlady has a bunch of guys converting the loftspace below her roof into a proper attic she can store items in. one of them broke through the floor and into my bedroom below. we're talking a big hole here - he actually landed in my bed.

the whole room is covered in 2cm of soot-like fine black dust. it went into all the cupboards and closets. all my clothes are severly blackened. it looks sort of what you'd imagine the inside of a chimney to be like and the stuff it itchy and makes me cough.

if you have dealt with this kind of problem before, would you mind giving me some basic info on what to do? I'm not talking financial issues here, obviously that needs to be worked out but my questions at this point are more basic:

how do I clean that kind of mess thoroughly?
are all my clothes ruined or can I get that stuff out?
is this something dangerous beyond just a hassle or nothing to be too worried about?
I'm also not sure what to ask her to do before I go back and sleep in there again. the mattress is covered, the sheets are ruined, do we need professionals to clean this or how do I do it?

one more thing on the soot: I washed my hands four times now and I still feel it all over them. this stuff does not go away easily.

Help me clean up the nuclear winter (flour fire) in my apartment

sarahkeebs — Sun, 11 May 2008 06:52:23 -0800

I had a very small kitchen fire ... but a bag of flour was involved, causing nuclear winter in my apartment. How thoroughly should I clean up, and how? Obviously I'm going to clean up the soot which is now ALL OVER my apartment. My problem is that the paint job, especially in the kithen and especially the cabinets, is so shoddy that (a) soot has settles into all the bubbles and flaws, making for a permanent speckled effect, and (b) cleaning (just basic damp-cloth cleaning) if revealing huge bubbles and making the paint crack and peel.

Now, the cruddy paint job was here when I moved in, and I always intended to paint over it. But this has revealed so many flaws in the cabinetry that I wonder if it's worth it. So:

Can I get rid of the visual traces of soot without repainting or hard scrubbing (which will mess up the existing paint)? And if so, what do I use?

FWIW, I'm in Toronto, I'd prefer not to use anything that might kill me, and I'm okay with methods that leave my kitchen temporarily unusable, as long as the rest of my (well ventilated) apartment is safe.

Cleaning smoke from paintings

Ariadne — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:06:28 -0800

Do you recognize this painting ? If not, can you tell me how to clean the soot off of it? I've had this painting hanging in my room since I was a small child. We had a house fire a couple of years ago and it was ruined by smoke. I would like to either replace this painting or clean the soot off of it (I have several other paintings to clean also). Does anyone know where I can get another print of it? It isn't signed.

Soot sprinkles

walla — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 06:42:49 -0800

SootFilter: A friend of mine's building cleaned its chimney and a lot of the soot got in her window. There is a fine layer all over her hardwood floor and all of her belongings. How can she clean it off? Most of the info. we've found has been about cleaning up after a fire and is therefore pretty drastic, but this is more like it's been sprinkled all over the place. Cleaning attempts so far have just smeared the stuff. Thank you!

So I'm taking down my chimney. . .

jbradley — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 21:28:57 -0800

This is a venting chimney running through the center of the house. We just replaced the oil furnace, so the chimney is no longer needed, but the space it takes up in the kitchen is. So far things are going pretty well. I've been able to get it down below the roof line and then can start removing bricks from in the attic. After that, though, I'll be in a bit of a tight spot, and I might resort to dropping the bricks into the chimney itself as a I work my way down (I can get those later when I'm down in the basement.) I was thinking that it might be worth thinking about mitigating the soot and dust somehow before starting to drop bricks in. I considered misting in some water, but I don't want to risk having a black river running thru my basement. Ideally, there would be some substance that would wet the stuff down and then maybe dry up and leave the soot somehow clumped up and easily/cleanly shoveled out once I'm removing stuff out of the basement. Unfortunately, I have not seen this advertised on TV, so I turn to you. Any ideas?