I’m tired of my basement smelling of unburnt propane, having high CO readings (50-60PPM), and having my furnace be blown out about once every week.
I think I’m going to attribute my recent laziness/drowsiness (last few months) on the fact that I’m sleeping in my laundry room which is right next to my basement.
I didn’t know until recently how much CO was creeping in to my laundry room… It’s been getting around 20-30PPM depending on weather conditions.
Basically I take a shower at night, dry off, then hop in to bed. Which means the heater is running while I sleep, making CO… So the detector I see says 0, but in reality the CO doesn’t hit me until after the heater has been running a while and it crept up in the room with me.
Right?
So here’s the situation…
Are double wall flex pipes code around here?
I know many things, but B-venting I do not know much about. Ask me about venting a solid fuel appliance and I’m all over it… But when it comes to a LP heater, I’m in the dark.
There’s 3 90s, then one more 90 outside the house that runs up along the side of the house… It runs up 8ft from the elbow outside. I think it’s 2x4ft pieces, that places it 1ft above my eave. I’m not counting the cap.
I think the problem you are having is that you have many bends in your flue. While it’s ok to have bends the straight sections must always be rising at a 1/4’ per ft. This allows the gas to continually flow out and not encounter stagnant flow. If you do you may want to consider installing a power vent. Or go tankless which will take up less room and allow for a better flue layout.
I was also under the impression that you can’t have copper go directly to galvanized at the tank, you have to have some other type of metal between as a barrier. That’s why the green is starting to form where they meet.
Does this vent with your furnace? When we had our furnace replaced they said if we went high efficiency I would have to put a smaller tube in the chimney so the water tank would actually vent and not just sit in the chimney. But with a non-high efficiency there was enough exhaust from the 2 appliances that the gas would go out. Maybe you just need a smaller sleeve inside the chimney.
Edit: Just re-read that it doesn’t go to a chimney, so a smaller pipe outside may help.
that setup will not pass code. you need B-vent pipe (double walled) with single walled pipe you have to be 6" away from any combustible. buy a power vent for that and never worry about CO2 again.
Dissimilar metal pipes need a dielectric connection.
Power vent tanks are much more expensive and do not function in a power outage.
Yeah, the solder job may not be pretty but it’s a "pilots landing. " Any solder job you can walk away from is a good one.
I’m not an HVAC specialist but I would get in touch with one. I don’t see why you’re having issues. I’ve seen worse setups function without incident.
Don’t know, piping looks old as dirt but it’s copper and not leaking so I’m not interested in touching it.
Correct, that’s why I’m asking a good way to just vent this straight out. I was mainly wondering if switching down to two 90s with a rise in the horizontal would benefit any here. Since I can just punch a hole in the wall and go at it. But I don’t see removing one elbow having much of a benefit. Solid fuel appliances list exactly the max amount of elbows/offsets you’re allowed per chimney height. Also what to subtract from your total chimney height when calculating draft. I can’t find anything to this with these water heaters. Like I said, I know solid fuel chimneys, not B vent.
Correct, you can’t go from copper to other shit without the proper fitting whether it’s brass or dielectric. Once again, it hasn’t fucked up yet and I’ve bigger fish to fry for the moment.
I don’t have a furnace, the water heater it has it’s own flue/chimney set up.
I know it won’t. It’s single wall galv pipe, using ceramic as a fire barrier where it exits. I’m not worried about CO2, it’s the CO I worry about. There’s no need to replace a water heater if this one can be fixed by just running the flue properly. I wanted to go tankless, but if I’m only living here for another 3-4 years, I won’t see any return on the $2k+ investment of a quality on demand system… Money down the drain.
I also figure if I switch over to B-vent, the double wall will provide a better draft since it can heat up and hold the heat better than a single wall.
Like I said in the origonal post as well… It extends about 1’ past the roof line. No where near the 2/10/3 rule. Absolutely not code.
Thought about it, or a birds nest or something to that extent. Just keep forgetting to run something through it
It eventually does get the proper draft once the heater warms up if it’s not windy out. Then it runs like a champ… The chimney just has to warm up which is the hard part, so it leads me to believe that it’s not a plugged flue.
switch to all b-vent, get rid of any un-needed 90’s and extend it on the roof a foot or two. For what ever reason we have been having this problem alot this year and this should fix it.
