Expert: James Ball - 11/15/2010

Question
WE have a hundred year old home with a fireplace in the dining room.  Periodically we have had an offecsive plastic smell in the central hallway.  My husband claims it wasn't from the heating system ( We have a viesmman boiler with a mixture of hydro air and forced hot water wall radiators throughout the house.  I closed the pocket door to the diningroom.  The odor is only in the dining room.  I mostly notice the odors when we start the heating season--sometime in the summer I can smell it--the boiler also generates our hot water.  A couple of years back we had a stainless steel liner installed in the chimney and had a hood with a screen put on top of the chimney to prevent any animals from getting in. Could this have anything to do with the liner?  I can't remember which season I noticed the odors.  I would like to be able to open up the dining room.  I 'm keeping it closed now that I know the smell is originating from there.

Answer
Hello Cheryl, not sure what you have going on there but I would have a local Certified Chimney Sweep www.csia.org, (there you can look up by zip code to find one near you) take a first hand look at what you have they should be able to help.

Hope this helps
James