On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:58:31 -0800, jazon48 wrote:

On Mar 3, 9:57 pm, "dave" nospam wrote:
I get a lot of dust in my house. I noticed the front panel on my
furnace is not even close to air tight. I can see through gaps and
holes directly into where the blower is (which is directly over the air
filter). So the blower is sucking in some air from the return line and
through the air filter, but a lot is coming through the gaps in the
panel. Should I somehow seal this panel better and force all air to
come from my air return vent which is located in the center hallway of
the house? I don't understand this design of a furnace which takes no
care in keeping dirty air from the garage out.

Thanks,
DaveL

If you have gas or oil, you are "sucking" air into the furnace
room to support combustion and carry the fumes up the chimney. When
running, a combustion furnace attempts to pull a vacuum on the whole
house.

The fact that your furnace panel doesn't seal well doesn't affect that
whole house vacuum. It merely allows the furnace to draw air from the
furnace room and distribute it through the registers.

Building codes demand that garages be constructed to prevent garage air
from entering the house (when any connecting door is closed of course).
If you somehow know that "dirty garage air" is entering your house, then
you have a problem with the doors and walls, not the furnace.

In any case, around here, outside air is "dirtier" than garage air.

You can seal the gaps in the panel if you wish. That will improve the
ability of your system to heat the upstairs rooms.

Jason


This is interesting. My garage is attached. My furnace is in my basement
which sort of borders the garage but not under it of course. I have a CO
detector in the basement which is mounted on the wall that sort of borders
the garage. If I run a car in the garage with the exhaust facing in,
within 2 minutes that CO detector will start sounding off. The basement
does not smell of fumes, but I am trusting the detector on this one.

So this would be a sign of poor construction? My house is only a few
years old. The return inside the house has a vent that exits the house on
the rear so I assume this is to equalize house pressure. So if any small
holes in my garage, then I assume air will suck in from there as well?


Thanks for any info.


dnoyeB