Fresh air is a must for combustion in furnaces, fireplaces, wood stoves, gas water heaters. In fact, for complete combustion the requirement of fresh air is to the tune of 10 times the natural gas burned. So a furnace requires plentiful supply of air to support proper consumption.
As people want to make their homes more energy efficient by insulation and other things to avoid heat loss, result is that houses become air deficit. This is especially true when you’re using exhaust fans where outside air can be drawn into the home, perhaps through the furnace pipe or chimney. This is generally known as back drafting and can also produce carbon monoxide. To prevent houses from such air deficit, it is necessary to build the new houses with a special duct that brings outside air directly to the heating system.
If your house is deficit for air, fresh air intake mechanism needs to be put in place supplying fresh air directly to the combustion area otherwise limit the use of dryers for clothes, fireplaces, furnaces, and mechanical exhaust fans. Using more than one of these devices at a time can cause back drafting if your home doesn’t have an adequate fresh air supply. The solution to back drafting is to provide sufficient make-up air for fuel-burning equipment.
You can get combustion air either from inside the house or from outside. Combustion units using combustion air directly from the outside through sealed and insulated ductwork. However, when air is drawn from a heated room, it returns to the outside via a chimney after sustaining combustion in the firebox. If air from inside is used, the furnace should be in a large and open area. Otherwise, louvers or grills in the furnace room door or wall to provide combustion air can be installed. Irrespective of type of combustion air source, make sure that the openings are properly sized and free of obstructions.
The combustion systems in the house require a dependable air source to operate properly. Making a house airtight and not providing enough outside combustion air for fuel-burners, may result into problems.
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October 13th, 2009
Tushar Mathur
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