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Thermal Tracking: How to Diagnose Indoor Carpeting Stains Due To Building Air Leaks InteriorAPedia © Enter your search terms Submit search form   Search This Website - InspectAPedia.com

• What causes those dark stains on building interior carpets along the walls? Photos & text identify thermal tracking, thermal bridging, air bypass, insulation defects and air movement in buildings
• Links to more photos of indoor floor, ceiling or wall stains that are not toxic mold

This article describes how to identify and diagnose carpeting stains at the edge of carpets near walls in buildings focusing on the cause of various interior wall and ceiling stains and explains how to recognize thermal tracking, thermal bridging stains, building air leaks, and building insulation defects. Often these stains are mistaken for toxic indoor mold. When investigating a building for a mold problem, you can save mold test costs by learning how to recognize Stuff that is Not Mold or is only Harmless Mold but may be mistaken for more serious contamination. Save your mold test money, and increase the accuracy of your mold contamination inspection or test for toxic or allergenic mold in buildings: review these items to learn recognize non-fungal materials or even possibly harmless cosmetic "black mold" often mistaken for "toxic fungal growth." © Copyright 2008 Daniel Friedman, All Rights Reserved. Information Accuracy & Bias Pledge is at below-left. Use links at the left of each page to navigate this document or to view other topics at this website. Green links show where you are in our document or website.

Building Air Leaks & Thermal Tracking Marks on Floor Carpeting Near Walls

Carpeting Stains along the wall/floor juncture: Alan Carson, a home inspection educator and researcher, has pointed out that we often see dark marks at the edge of floor carpeting where it touches or is close to wall baseboard. These marks are likely to be most severe where the carpet meets exterior walls.

These carpet stains at walls occur most often on the lower floors where we get infiltration (air moving in to the building space) from the basement or crawl space below. It is the counterbalance to the exfiltration (air moving out of the building space) issues found at the attic level. As outdoor, basement, or crawl space air leaks into the building around wall-floor intersections, the edge of the carpet acts like a filter and collects dirt from the air leaking in.

These carpet stains are not mold: Some people mistake these "carpet edge stains" for toxic "black mold". If the carpet stains are pretty much continuous along the floor/wall juncture of carpeting and not elsewhere, and particularly if they do not appear elsewhere and are not related to other building water leaks, it is not very likely that these stains are mold.

About the page top photograph of carpet stains: Thermal tracking or "soot tracking" is visible along the wall baseboard in the phtograph at page top - notice that gray line about an inch wide along the carpet where it meets the wall? The more ugly dark brown stains at right angles to the wall are not thermal tracking but indicate that this floor was wet, causing rust or bleeding from a cabinet which had been placed in this location. This photo is therefore interesting (if a bit confusing) because it shows two different types of carpet staining.

High indoor humidity: If indoor humidity is excessive (say regularly over 50 or 55% RH) we may be encouraging mold growth in a building or we may be inviting excessive levels of dust mite activity which in turn increases the level of allergens in the building.

Usually soot marks, thermal bridging, or thermal tracking stains appear, if at all, in the building interior locations discussed in the remaining sections of this article.

Photographs of thermal tracking and other stains on carpeting

More photographs of thermal tracking and other stains on carpetingcan be seen at PHOTO GUIDE TO STAINS on Indoor Surfaces

We welcome more thermal tracking, soot tracking, air bypass leaks, and similar photos of indoor stains as well as text suggestions to expand this detail and would be glad to credit contributors.

Use links just below or at the left of each page to navigate this document or to view other topics at this website. Green links show where you are in our document or website.

Technical Reviewers

Particular thanks are due to experts and also consumers who read these articles and suggest corrections, changes, and additions to the material. Content suggestions, technical corrections and content critique are invited for any of the content at our website.

• Daniel Friedman - InspectAPedia.com ^TM Website Author/Editor
• Thanks to Alan Carson, Carson Dunlop, Associates, Toronto, for technical critique and content suggestions regarding thermal tracking.
• Critique, contributions wanted: Contact Us to suggest text changes and additions and, if you wish, to receive online listing and credit for that contribution.

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Use this simple, economical mold test kit by following our instructions on how to collect and mail mold samples to our lab

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