If your Peachtree City home has a gas furnace or water heater inside, you may not realize that the equipment can pose a hazard to your family’s health and safety. To ensure you have a healthy, safe home air supply, it’s vital to learn about this potential risk and why a sealed combustion closet is the solution.

Why Combustion Equipment May Pose a Safety Risk

Furnaces and water heaters are commonly installed within the conditioned envelope of a home, so they get the air needed for combustion from the surrounding room. They’re also vented outdoors to allow exhaust fumes to exit. An installation setup like this can pose two serious threats to your family’s safety:

• Water heater exhaust backdrafting. When combustion air is being drawn from inside the home and expelled outdoors, negative pressure can pull hazardous fumes back down the exhaust pipe. This can lead to incomplete fuel combustion in the appliance’s burner, and send life-threatening carbon monoxide into your home’s air supply.
• Loss of a critical furnace safety feature. If your water heater’s vent pipe is connected to your furnace flue and it becomes blocked, the sensor in the furnace may not accurately detect the resulting increase in pressure and shut off the unit for safety. This can let hazardous trapped exhaust fumes backdraft down the water heater’s vent pipe.

A Sealed Combustion Closet Solves the Problem

Enclosing the furnace and water heater in a sealed combustion closet can prevent potential backdrafting. To be effective, such a closet must:

• Be completed sealed and self-contained so air can’t enter the surrounding room.
• Have a weatherstripped access door with a tight threshold to stop any air leakage.
• Have any wall or ceiling penetrations properly air sealed.
• Be equipped with two combustion air inlets – one that terminates a foot from the floor, and the other a foot from the ceiling.
  
• Have air inlets sized according to the equipment capacity – with a square inch of inlet size per 4,000 Btu of equipment input capacity.

For expert help creating a safe home air supply, contact us today at Powers Heating & Air.