Last winter
when our furnace died there
were a number of reasons given for why it failed. The biggest and
most obvious to me was the exhaust and intake being located next to
each other under the deck. The pipe facing down is the intake.
The pipe facing toward the camera is the
exhaust. Originally the two pipes stuck directly out of the
wall next to each other. Being located under the deck, the
intake likely sucked in the moist steamy exhaust when the
furnace was running. That moisture lead to corrosion and failure of
our furnace. - or so they said. At some point with the old furnace,
I added the two pieces pointing the direction of the intake and
exhaust pipes away from each other. When they installed the
new furnace, not only did they leave the exhaust under the deck, but
they left the end piece I installed for the previous furnace. The
instructions for the new furnace clearly say for two inch exhaust
pipe, there can be only one ninety degree bend and five feet of
pipe. With this setup there are two nineties (there's one inside the
house you can't see here) and over five feet of pipe.
In the instructions it says if i can increase
the diameter of the exhaust pipe to two and half inches or more, I
can use more nineties and go thirty some feet in
length.
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So I converted
it to three inch pipe (Home Depot doesn't carry two and a half), got
a forty-five and extended
it to beyond the deck. I had to get a
forty-five because I couldn't run it straight out. Here's the setup
at the
house end.
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And here it is running
to the outside of the deck. I put a slight (or not) downword slope
to let condensation
and moisture run out if it collects in the pipe.
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Here's the exit. To tell you the truth
I'm not sure this fixes anything. Sure it gets the steamy air from
under
my deck, but at what cost? The air doesn't exactly rush
out the end of the pipe. I can feel it blowing, but
there isn't
a whole lot of force behind it. The length of the pipe is roughly
seventeen feet. Is it possible for
the condensation to collect
and freeze enough in the pipe to block it? Sure
there's a slope to the pipe, but
is it enough? The other
issue is the exit of the pipe is only twelve inches off the
ground. With enough snow,
that can get burried. I'll have to
keep an eye on it when it snows excessively. I guess I'll mark
this one
complete, but something tells me
we'll be revisiting this one.
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