One morning the oil furnace and boiler companies woke up to discover they were the Canadian bad guys -- everybody was condemning oil burning heating and the government was even paying people to scrap them. The oil furnace and boiler companies had to admit that they had been pretty contented and l...
Traditional furnace rooms are nothing more than a partition designed to hide an ugly furnace. They are neither sealed nor insulated, and they obtain combustion air from the house through door or wall grills of the open floor joist area. Sealing off the drafty leaks in a house and introducing a sy...
The best way for air to move through a duct is to have a straight duct with a smooth inside wall and a round form will have the smallest surface area to cause the air to slow down. That straight smooth round duct is what is considered the benchmark for good ducting.
Everything else is measure...
Some rooms are colder than others, or a forced air system works well for heating but not air conditioning. Although such problems may require repositioning ductwork, or adding booster fans -- the first thing to check is that the ductwork is balanced and balanced differently for the two differ...
When you just can't get enough hot air to come out of that back bedroom floor grill and you have tried everything (like balancing your heating system), there is still hope.
We took a look at two fans on the market designed to boost that hot air.
The first, and the easiest to install and use is ...
In my experience, heating ducts that run through attics cause serious problems in snow country. Don't let a contractor talk you into it.
In warm climates it is common practice to run heating and air conditioning ducting through attic spaces simply because it is easy to do. Unfortunately this ...
The only research done that I have found on duct cleaning, outside of the duct cleaning companies themselves, has been by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation -- EFFICIENCY OF RESIDENTIAL DUCT CLEANING -- CMHC Project No. : 93-2-001 January 1994.
Basically they found that when the ducts ...
Building codes require that a heating system be able to just barely maintain a comfortable house during the coldest day of the year. Hence the size of the heating system depends not only on the size of the house but on where it is located and how well it is winterized (sealed and insulated). The ...
Drum Cymbal noises --> Furnace Ducting
Gina in Saskatoon is complaining about drum cymbal-like crashes that happen every time her furnace goes on. This is common when you have smooth flat ductwork. The heat and pressure of the air can cause the large flat surface of sheet metal to flex eithe...
Note: There is one important exception to all the pollution control described below. The Montreal by-law states: "Authorizing the use of all solid fuel-burning devices during electricity outages that last more than three hours." (but you must keep your fireplace and chimney clean and in good ...
