heating equipment & Safety audit

A typical gas/oil heating system emits about 15,000 or 20,000 pounds of pollutants each year, part of which may spill into the living space, raising safety and health concerns and making safety audits crucial components of energy audits.

In fact, energy efficiency audits are often accompanied by safety audits to gas and oil furnaces, boilers, hot water heater, stoves and other combustion heating equipment.

These audits can have a professional approach, and use special equipment (ultrasonic leak detection devices to test for leaks in gas piping, for instance), but you can also do preventive inspections yourself.

Ventilation system

Heating Equipment Assessment, by EERE Pay special attention to the ventilation system. It should deal efficiently with the emissions - CO2 and other pollutants. If you detect peculiar odors or signs of malfunction, call a technician to inspect it.

Unvented Space Heaters

Special precautions should be taken when operating unvented fuel-burning equipment like gas space heaters or kerosene heaters... Persistent yellow-tipped flames are often a sign of improper adjustment and more pollutants; if you ever detect them, act quickly.

Unvented heating equipment requires regular maintenance. Only through it you will keep the heater properly adjusted and safer.

Non-sealed combustion appliances should be regularly inspected and tested, even if there isn't any sign of spilled combustion products.

Installers, contractors or auditors can conduct worst-case depressurization tests.

CO2 detection
If you are using combustion heating equipment consider buying a CO2 detector. It’s cheap ($20-$50) and can be installed in many places.

Old equipment

Old heating equipmement is particularly pollutant and due to it, much more unsafe then newer equipment. Its efficiency us measured by its AFUE, which in the case of older appliances is often 50%, 60% or 70%, meaning that 30-50% of the fuel they use goes up the chimney and also an increased chance of spillage of pollutants into the home.

If your heating equipment is more than 10 or 15 years old, you should upgrade it.

Upgrading To Sealed Combustion Equipment

When upgrading fuel-based heating equipment always prefer sealed-combustion equipment or power-vented boilers, furnaces and water heaters to ensure complete exhaustion of the combustion gases.

Also pay attention to their air intakes and to the air exhaust grilles. They should function properly to drastically reduce the chance of spillage of combustion products into the home.

Equipment qualified by Energy Star or certified by organizations like the Underwriters Laboratory (UL) is an excellent choice, even if it is slightly more expensive. They are qualified heating equipment with sealed combustion and power-venting features...