Puffback. What is It and What to Do?

8/23/2021 (Permalink)

When you see the term “puffback”, you might think it was a breed of a pufferfish. If only.

So, what is a puffback? The term refers to a messy, and dangerous, explosion in the burner chamber of your home heating furnace or boiler. When the burner backfires, it sends soot throughout your home. 

The soot can be expelled all at once, quickly covering your walls, carpets, and furniture. Or it can leak out soot particles gradually, perhaps causing you to think dirt was tracked into your home somehow. 

Most puffbacks occur in oil heating systems, which result in the soot. However, when a puffback occurs in a gas heating system, the explosion in the burner is bigger and dangerous, and could cause a fire and resulting fire damage. 

How can you prevent a puffback? The best way is to have your home heating system professionally inspected and cleaned once a year. 

What should you do if a puffback happens in your home, spreading soot everywhere? Hire a certified and trained Massachusetts fire damage restoration professional, who will pretest your surfaces to determine the extent of soot damage, and then use the specific equipment and cleaning products required for soot on the surfaces of your home. 

Depending on the amount of soot, your fire damage restoration professional may be able to reduce your recovery costs by cleaning lighter soot deposits found on some surfaces, which eliminates your expenses incurred with repainting or refinishing. If the soot level is too deep, they will clean to prepare for painting, which deodorizes the surface and ensures the new paint will adhere properly.

Hear what one of our happy customers had to say after their puffback event:

“When my furnace caused soot to cover my house I was seriously depressed. I called SERVPRO. Brian came out, surveyed the damage and said ‘no problem’. He would deal with the insurance company directly and have a crew out in the next two days. Nury and Gabriel arrived in the morning, and said not to worry, they would take care of everything. Starting in the basement they worked their way to the second floor cleaning everything in sight, from walls and ceilings, to countertops and floors. I went from a state of despair to one of joy. They sure exemplify their motto "Like it never even happened."

If you’re dealing with soot from a puffback, contact our fire damage recovery experts at SERVPRO Haverhill / Newburyport. We’ll come out and assess your soot damage along with any remediation, cleaning, or restoration that needs to be done to your home.