Single appliance approach resolves issues and presents opportunities - Part I

Cliff McNeill is with Equipco in outside sales for Southern Alberta. He is also Equipco’s in-house technical specialist for hydronic heating and engineer-focused products. McNeill can be reached at cmcneill@equipcoltd.com.

Thereare thousands of single-family homes in every marketplace in Canada that still have a mid efficient furnace and a mid efficient water heater. The vast majority of these systems use a common or shared vent for both of these appliances.

It is becoming more and more challenging for homeowners with mid efficient equipment to do a simple replacement when one of these appliances fails. The market is dominated with high efficiency furnaces and high efficiency water heaters. As government and industry continue to move toward high efficiency appliances and discontinue mid efficient appliances, that simple “direct replacement” will one day no longer be an option.

When a homeowner makes a proactive decision to update one of their appliances or are forced to make a grudge purchase of a new appliance as an existing one has failed, they face a venting challenge. While this may seem like a small challenge, it does open up the opportunity to provide them with a better system using hydronics. That system can be a condensing boiler, air handler and indirect domestic hot water tank, or a combi boiler and an air handler.

By using hydronics, our industry can provide homeowners with a solution using a single appliance that provides home heating, as well as satisfying domestic hot water needs. In addition, this single appliance approach can, in most cases, reuse their existing venting system as “chase” to install an appropriate venting system for the single condensing boiler or combi boiler. There are several rigid and flexible venting systems in the Canadian market that allow us to reuse this existing pathway to vent a single appliance.

Scenarios with mixed efficiencies

If a homeowner decides to replace their mid efficiency furnace with a high efficiency furnace and keep their mid efficient water heater because it was “new” or vice versa, they would face one of two scenarios due to venting.

Scenario one If the home happens to have an unfinished basement, where this equipment is typically located, this can be a relatively painless scenario. The installing contractor will need to find an appropriate exterior wall to vent the high efficiency appliance. This means a wall that does not exceed the maximum venting length of the appliance, does not vent near fresh air intakes, opening doors and windows, gas and electric meters, over a sidewalk, or too close to the property line or an adjacent building. So, maybe this option is not quite so painless. They would also need to make any repairs necessary to the exterior of the building after the vent installation.