NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/misc/consumer/house/16105

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-27 | 6.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!walter!att-out!rutgers!gatech!destroyer!ncar!noao!arizona!naucse!sunset.cse.nau.edu
From: [e-mail] (Bob Wier)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Propane leak detector (longish)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 27 Dec 92 19:21:31 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
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Nntp-Posting-Host: sunset.cse.nau.edu
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From article <[e-mail]>, by [e-mail] (Gary Heston):
>
> Have you looked into digging a trench from your basement to the
> outside, and putting a door into the basement wall? No idea if
> your yard slopes that much, or if you have room for that, but
> it seems there should be *some* way to put a floor-level vent
> in that would satisfy the code requirements. Even if you call the
> vent a basement entrance....
>
> (I hate knee-jerk building codes; they're usually idiotic....)
>
> Gary Heston, at home....
> [e-mail]


   Yeah, me too.  Since I've had a number of inquiries I thought I'd
   respond back here.

   The basement is actually reached thru a trap door thru the floor
   at the back of the house (ie, interior entrance).

   In my case, my basement floor is about 7' below grade at the back
   of the house, and 5' below grade at the front (this is 8,000' elev in the
   Rockies, so yup, my yard does slope that much...got GREAT drainage,
   though :-) Makes mowing the grass interesting.

   What I've been told is that the "propane escape" has to be at the
   absolute lowest point in the basement - since mine is a combination
   cement /dirt floor (this is a 103 year old house), that means that
   a vent would have to be installed at the floor level, again from
   7 to 5 feet down.  I'd either have to run the pipe (which would
   probably have to be 6" in diameter - whatever is similar to a
   standard flue pipe) out a couple of hundred feet to intersect the
   down slope, or have some sort of forced fan arrangement.

   Problem - with a forced fan, you have to have an explosion
   safe fan - you don't want bushings producing sparks if you are
   venting propane. These are pretty expensive.  The other problem
   with these (my building inspector said) is that in our particular
   situation they tend to get covered up with snow and thus don't work
   real well unless you are willing to pump out hot air to melt it.
   In my location, we average about 180" of snow a year (about 15 miles
   from Telluride Co (not here in Flagstaff), so if you ran a vent out
   to the other side of the yard, and then up with a fan, it could be
   a real problem.  I guess you could build a little shack around the
   vent to protect it, but then there is a problem since I don't want
   something like that out in front of my house (plus I'm in a National
   Historic District, and the little houses tended to be in BACK of the
   house rather than in front back in Victorian time (have to think about
   that one ...   :-)

   The power vent arrangement usually has the fan hooked up either to a
   timer (big waste of heat if you are heating your basement) or to a
   leak detector.  Considering that my house is built on an old mining
   claim sitting on solid granite (radon problem there) the cost of
   excavation would probably be more than just getting a new furnace :-(.

   Also, since this is a Victorian there is EXTREMELY limited available
   space to put a furnace upstairs. I have managed to carve out ONE
   large closet space in the back of the house for a water heater
   (80 gals being as the water temp runs about 40 degrees year round)
   and a washer & dryer (and at that the washer and dryer sit at 90
   degrees to each other since I don't have a single wall space large
   enough to put 'em side by side).

   After several discussions with people on the net, it looks like my
   best bet for a furnace replacement is to go again with a propane
   model built to downdraft thru the floor on the first floor into a
   vent in the basement.  This can then be run to the original vent
   system (currently it's forced air - because I don't want hot water
   radiators on the hardwood floors and I don't want baseboard heaters
   covering up my milled baseboards).

   The EASIEST solution is an electrical unit which simply slips
   inline in the existing vent system.  But to generate the same heat
   as I'm getting now would probably take a 20 to 30 KW unit, and I'm
   looking at potential heating bills over a kilobuck per month, so that's
   out.

   One kind of interesting thing is that two doors down from me, a
   guy is heating his house with geothermal energy.  The area is
   quite active with hot springs.  The situation is complicated by
   western water law, though.  He didn't build his house until
   10 years ago, and even though the hot spring comes up on his
   lot, the water is owned by a guy on the other side of town and
   is piped over there.  But the guy down the street negoatied a deal
   and now has a heat exchanger installed in the pipe and heats his
   house with that.  Lots of instrumentation, I understand, to prevent
   him from extracting heat if some kind of complicated situation arises
   regarding outside temperature, delta temperature change in the hot
   water line, etc.  It is pretty amazing, though.  You can go down
   to his yard and put your hand on the pipe. Even though it's
   insulated, you can still feel the heat.  (Incidentally, this is
   a little town called Ouray, Co.).

   Back to the subject, though.  I've been told that you can get
   propane furnaces which include a boiler for hot water, and which
   are not too much bigger than standard electric water heaters
   (especially my 80 galloner).  I've gotten a couple of suggestions
   on brands, but I'll take this opportunity to solicit again any
   suggestions, comments, cautions, along these lines.  One thing
   which I'm wary about is that the current "high efficiency"
   furnaces seem to have a couple of prevalent problems.  One is
   moisture condensation in the vent.  Another is a problem about
   a pilot going out / or electronic ignition not being able to
   start the furnace due to oxygen supply/draft problems.  The third
   is that the "pulse" type furnaces tend to be noisy (a problem
   in my case since my neighbors are close enough to hear something
   like that - and in a town of 800 you don't want to piss off your
   neighbors...)

   THANKS

- Bob Wier

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