This is the fourth and final installment on recent house projects.

The heating system install finally finished in January. When the guys ripped out the old system they discovered a crack in the furnace (can you say carbon monoxide leak), this meant it not only needed to be replaced, it had to be replaced. Now with the old furnace gone, there is a tremendous amount of space in the basement. Harry and I will need to fill in the concrete were the furnace and water heater were. We’ll probably do that this spring.

In a previous post I complained about the boiler going out just before we went on vacation. This was due to a design flaw (or poor manufacture’s recommendations), either way Agway came out this week and we discuss possible remedies for the problem. In the end we decide to move the exhaust vent. This will have two pluses and one minus. The pluses are the intake should no longer freeze causing the system to stop working, and the exhaust will no longer fog up the windows. These are things I didn’t know to consider, having never had a non-chimney venting system before. Apparently, Agway was caught off guard by the window fogging issue, they didn’t expect the system to put out that much exhaust, and mind you, this only happens on the cold days (below 15 degrees). The downside to moving the vent is that we’ll now have a “hot” vent traversing the basement, and with the low ceiling, it might be low enough for someone to smack their head on if they aren’t paying attention.

I also asked them to rework the intake vent inside the basement so that it wasn’t going directly in front of the window — a couple of elbows should easily take care of that.

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