Expert: Randy Brooks - 7/30/2010

Question
Hello Randy Brooks,



I have watched your show for many years and now turn to you for some much need help. My wife and I purchased our tri level house about 5 years ago and since then have been remodeling the inside and outside including new mechanical items such as furnace, A/C. We still have the hot water heater which is approaching 10 years old. Every thing in the house was working well and then we replaced are old drafty windows with new ones from Window World about 2 years ago. Then we started having problems with our Hot Water heater not venting out of the flu but was baking up in the laundry room. The laundry room is small and contains the washer/dryer Furnace and Hot water heater. We did not understand why the hot water heater was not venting so; we called out a chimney man. He then said that the old flu you have is a 7 or 8 inch sorry I can remember which one. The chimney man then said let me get my book out and he performed some calculation based on the number of turns and combined BTU of the hot water heater and furnace and well as the height.  He came back and said you need a 5.5 inch diameter pipe. I can order one in Stainless and reline the flu for you and this will fix the problem. He went on to explain that the smaller pipe would draft and hold the heat that currently the pipe is not heating up and will not draft causing the reverse draft. I would also like to mention that the first question he asked was did you change any windows or doors in the house. If you did it would tighten it up removing the excess draft. Well, we did acknowledge we did have new windows put in the spring prior. So, we said ok go ahead and do the work and everything seems to be working fine.



Now, we have the outside of the house resided a new roof with power fans installed added many new soffit vents cut in to ensure we have adequate ventilation for the attic. Next, we have the insulation brought up to an R38 along with having the soffit things installed inside the attic in every roof rafter so the air will flow around the insulation from the soffits to the roof vents. This work was done about 2 months ago and the temperature outside got very warm in the 90’s. We turn the air on everything is running well no issues for a couple of months. No 2 days ago we have the same problem back where the hot water heater is not venting. I had to open a window to help it out and the flu was cold. Today since the air did not run very much over the night we had no problem and did not have to open a window.



I have spoken with Chimney guys, A/C folks and no one has an answer why this started again. I have asked do we need to replace the hot water heater thinking the pilot is not producing enough heat when the room gets cold. One last this I would like to mention is that the door to the room is a ½ louver door for ventilation.



I desperately need some help and Idea’s



Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you.

Answer
Larry,

I only wish I could look at your situation myself. That being said, it sounds like you may wish to contract with an energy rating firm to determine the vent and gas pressure needs of your house as a system. Anytime you make the wholesale changes to the house as a system you have made, issues could come up. I personally like the new tank-less water heater and would recommend that as a means for reducing one appliance from the mix. Good luck.