A few times a year, I find fuel-burning (gas-fired or oil-fired) appliances installed in unsuitable and unsafe locations. About a year ago, shortly after arrival at an inspection, I was walking around the exterior of the house. The old masonry chimney, a commonly seen situation, was retrofitted with a B-vent from a gas appliance.
When I went inside, I asked the young man who lived at this college student rental house to take me to the furnace and the water heater. I followed him to a bedroom, where he opened the closet door, and viola: Both the gas-fired furnace and the gas-fired water heater were inside his bedroom closet. The closet had louvered doors that allowed air to flow between the appliances and the sleeping room.
Gas furnace inside the right side door, white gas water heater inside the other door on the left
This bedroom installation of medium-efficiency appliances with B-vents is unsafe and can lead to dire consequences including carbon monoxide poisoning. Safety and installation guidelines are specific:
"Fuel-burning appliances cannot be installed in sleeping rooms, bathrooms, toilet rooms, storage closets , or in a space that opens into such rooms or spaces unless the appliances are direct vent or listed for use within living space."
There are a handful of exceptions to this rule, but most professionally installed fuel-burning furnaces or water heaters, situated in any of the rooms listed above, will be high-efficiency models that vent outside and obtain combustion air from the outdoors. Also, certain fireplaces or heaters are allowed in sleeping rooms if the devices are approved-listed for that use and if they are installed per manufacturers' specifications.
Another exception, less often seen and more complicated to implement, will allow installing a non-high-efficiency appliance near a bedroom. Doing so, in essence, necessitates turning a room, e.g., a bedroom closet, into an isolated mechanical room that can no longer be used as a closet or for storage.
"Non-high-efficiency appliances must be installed in an enclosure in which all combustion air is taken from the outdoors. Access to such enclosure shall be through a solid weather-stripped door equipped with an approved self-closing device." (It goes without saying that all exhaust air must be directed to the outdoors as well.)
Another significant safety hazard, often associated with closet furnaces and water heaters, involves hot B-vents. B-vents must be kept away from combustibles, otherwise they can cause fires. Storing clothing inside the closet shown in this photo is a less than stellar wardrobe option.
Sometimes HVAC contractors have installed furnaces in acceptable locations, but homeowners or landlords have hacked away at the floor plan and, in so doing, created safety hazards. Often, at an unfinished basement, an owner will tack up drywall and suddenly the basement furnace and the water heater are smack dab inside a newly created sleeping room.
A person is vulnerable to danger when sleeping and it is best to wake up again in the morning. When I see an unsafe installation, I alert occupants to the immanent danger and recommend immediate consultation with a licensed HVAC professional. Even if the appliances have been in the bedroom for several years, with no known ill-effects, circumstances change and an equipment malfunction could result in sickness or death as a result of the by-products of combustion or, potentially, a fire.
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