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Advice on Furnace Repair?
QUESTION:I'm renting a house in NH (the housing market here is horrible,
so this is just temporary). The place is a dump, but it's almost
impossible to get rental housing here, so moving would be problematic.
When it came time to occasionally heat the place, the furnace wasn't
working, so the management company sent out a repair guy. He got the
furnace working (needed a new burner), but also said that the furnace
was horribly mis-installed since it has no cold air return on it.
Thus, air circulates poorly in the house, and what air does circulate
has *horrible* air quality, since the air intake for the furnace is
just the basement air, and the basement is incredibly moldy and musty
dew to seepage and an incredible amount of dust (mostly dryer lint,
but that's another story). It's bad enough that the house reeks and
I'm worried about health.
However, the furnace guy can't do any repairs without authorization
from the building owners. The management company itself thinks the
repairs should be done, but the actual building owner refuses,
claiming the furnace is installed "just fine."
So I'm trying two approaches:
1. Trying to talk to the local building inspector. The air quality is
so horrible it *can't* be healthy. But I don't know if this will
get me anywhere, but hopefully they can force the owner to do something.
2. Jury-rigging something myself. It's not like I can run ducts or
anything, but I *could* take one or two of the centrally located
heater vents in the house and divert them to the cold air intake on
the furnace without much work. Is this a horrible idea?
ANSWER: First of all there has to be a cold air return of some sort or the furnace
will not run at all! It sounds as if it is just a poorly placed return,
still most likely against code.
Call the local building inspector would probably be your best bet. All
though he may "red tag" it, and shut it off. Then he will contact the
buildings owners to get it fixed. This of course will piss off the owners
and you will be looking for a new place to live!
Do not jury rig something!
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