Exhaust for Furnace Room
We have a gas hot water heater/furnace which sits right underneath my son’s bed. In the winter, this is a real advantage as it heats up his room like a charm. In the summer, however, not so. Do people ever put exhaust fans into furnace rooms to remove the hot air? (FWIW, the furnace vents…
We have a gas hot water heater/furnace which sits right underneath my son’s bed. In the winter, this is a real advantage as it heats up his room like a charm. In the summer, however, not so.
Do people ever put exhaust fans into furnace rooms to remove the hot air? (FWIW, the furnace vents thru the chimney.)
A big merci for your feedback!
My bad! Good point MP. Thanks for catching that. Sometimes I forget that I’m not dealing with industrial plants when I respond here and there is a lesson in that. Listen for the record, you will never be stepping on my toes correcting me. It’s easy to feel that when when dealing with a pro. There are some others that I wouldn’t feel that way about ;P Good catch..
-SM
No! no! no! Do not exhaust air from your boiler room. That’s the chimney’s job. If natural make-up air exchange to the outside is not enough to provide adequate venting, the next option is to add pressure to the boiler room by blowing air in from outside. The chimney will equalize the room pressure.
A mechanical device, such as a small fan, blowing out of the room can cause the chimney to work in reverse and suck air down from the roof as the room sees a drop in pressure.
Then exhaust gases (carbon monoxide) go some place other than where they are intended to be. Never good.
I’ve seen it done in some larger mechanical rooms that have oversized air intakes and some additional failsafes, (SteamMan knows what sail switches and thermal fuses are) but that’s probably not what you have going on.
Sorry if I stepped on any toes here.
This is a great post as it shows how much heat (money) is wasted by this type of hot water heater. That being said…
OP, you can do any or all of three things.
1. Per Jock make sure your room has a fresh air intake which will serve two purposes. It will allow for better combustion and less CO in your flue gases. It will allow ventilation of the heat if it is toward the upper half of the room (hot air rises).
2. Yes. You can install a small exhaust fan in the wall, it is quite common, however make sure you have adequate fresh air coming in or you will have incomplete combustion (see #1)
3. If you can procure the correct insulation (800 F) should be more than sufficient, you can insulate the flue. That would help a quite a bit. If you want to spend money, you could install double insulated vent pipe which is a flue pipe with insulation and then a second pipe jacketing the insulation.
And yes. Make sure you have a CO detector in your son’s room!
The room should have a fresh air intake if it is in a separtate room. That should let some of the heat escape.
Make sure his room has a carbon monoxide detector http://www.alarmspecs.com/