Thanks for these responses. One of the problems is that carbon dioxide is most effective when light levels are the highest during the day and the carbon dioxide is mainly produced at night when the heater operates the most. Greenhouse heating is essential to overwinter vegetables in all but the extreme southern latitudes of the U.S. Rather than just keeping plants alive, which can be done at any temperature above freezing, maintaining a temperature set point of 64F or above will help to produce a good yield of high-quality fruit from your greenhouse. Our shrubs in the surrounding area are slowly dying off. Check out the MSU Agricultural Operations Program! The exhaust pipes should be near to where the furnace is but on the outside. I had a "plume diverter kit" fitted to my vent. WebDuring very cold and windy weather the screening collects ice, blocking the vent and causing a furnace shutdown. After three days of exposureall flowers and buds had been shed. We installed a high efficiency furnace several years ago and were told that the exhaust would not harm plants or bushes. Esperanza grows in USDA zones 8 through 11 and originates in the hot, dry deserts and forests of northern Mexico. WebGrasses and perennials that grow more than 6 inches high should also be planted at least 2 to 3 feet away from the base of the unit because ventilation for the unit is also drawn from that area. 3 Answers Sorted by: 1 No, it sounds like you have a high efficiency furnace and these will direct vent outside versus using the chimney stack to vent. Is It Worth Getting A High Efficiency Furnace? WebFurnace exhaust is killing bushes. Natural gas underground will kill grasses and plants. and act as the last layer of warning. 3 Places Mold Can Hide in Your Home Air Conditioning and Heating System, Tired of the Humidity? Also, call your furnace maintenance firm to inspect the unit in question. If I can revive it or plant new I'll either add a slight angle to the exhaust or wrap the holly in burlap to protect it and see how that works. A heater that has been serviced in the fall will probably not be at peak efficiency as spring approaches. High Efficiency Furnace exhaust and plants. My high efficiency furnace vents warm (not hot) moist air. The heat exchanger, in its turn, can also develop cracks due to age or exposure to moisture. A recuperator is a gas-to-gas heat exchanger that is installed on the furnace exhaust that preheats incoming combustion air. An unvented heater is one that is designed without a flue connection so that the heat and products of combustion are exhausted into the greenhouse. They often can handle temperature changes and dry air better than smaller plants with thin leaves. Ethylene in the Greenhouse: Symptoms, Detection & Prevention. Why do academics stay as adjuncts for years rather than move around? First and foremost, vent all burners to the outside. Can I move this outside vent to the roof vent? I have noted plant injury symptoms more often in plastic greenhouses compared to glass greenhouses due to the airtight nature of poly-greenhouses. Hilarious thread. Other than that, yes it can go through the roof instead & again, But, both the intake & the exhaust have go up together. Ethylene in the Greenhouse: Symptoms, Detection & Prevention. At this point, it might be easiest to just accept that you're not going to have a bush there. I think it just thawed it out during winter at that spot. 5. Also, there seems to be a gurgling sound that I did not notice previously. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the recuperator is the most widely used heat recovery device. They are usually placed in the habitable areas (dining rooms, bedrooms, hallways, etc.) I'm updating an exhaust pipe on my furnace. It has a heat value of from about 950 1050 Btu/cu ft. Thats why the exhaust that leaves the system might be merely warm. Is it possible to rotate a window 90 degrees if it has the same length and width? The company also provides assistance to customers looking to add recuperation to an existing burner system. Increased moisture levels can cause increased incidence of disease problems including fungi, blight and molds. You can invite a professional to perform an indoor air quality test (this will help figure out if you have a leak or not). 3 Answers Sorted by: 1 No, it sounds like you have a high efficiency furnace and these will direct vent outside versus using the chimney stack to vent. This partial combustion leads to the formation of various byproducts, starting from nitrogen dioxide and ending with carbon monoxide. WebOne is that if a condensate drain is draining water from a high-efficiency furnace, this water can be acidic and damage plants. In fact, 1 ppm (part per million) of ethylene or carbon monoxide can cause serious damage. All gas-burning appliances generate combustion gases that can be potentially dangerous if your system is not able to get rid of them properly. WebSolved it by placing a cedar wood panel in front of the vent. Im just wondering if i could use this free warm exhaust air and hopefully heat my small greenhouse with it. Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. all rights reserved, 2023 Coolray Heating, Cooling, Plumbing & Electrical. Photo credit: Ethylene Contamination: Symptoms andSources in the Greenhouse, Michelle Jones, The Ohio State University. I work for a gas utility and have never heard of combustion gases killing plants, in fact some greenhouses remove there venting in winter to help heat the spaces. He feels this company could reduce that bill by 25%. We have ferns and hostas growing happily in front of it now. Especially, if there are gaps in the ductwork, through which unfiltered air can get sucked in. Any thoughts? WebGrasses and perennials that grow more than 6 inches high should also be planted at least 2 to 3 feet away from the base of the unit because ventilation for the unit is also drawn from that area. I'm buying a new Trane S9V2 furnace. Insufficient information to make any comment as it is not your old furnace. Clearly, energy savings are not always enough. If you have a heat pump or an electric heater, you can ignore this advice. Some plants, especially those with skinnier leaves, are especially sensitive to low humidity. The vent is pointing upwards and the bushes have actually started dying off in in sections around the exhaust pipe so there is acutally green on the far side of some of the bushes and dry and brown on the side near the pipe. Repairs should be made as soon as possible. That excellent idea of yours should be considered by tent growers. Even at todays attractive rates for natural gas as an industrial fuel, it makes complete sense to recover as much of the waste heat from the furnace as possible and use it for beneficial purposes. You must log in or register to reply here. If the color of your plants leaves is fading or if the leaves are wilting, it could be because the plant is too close to an air conditioning vent. You are inAlabama. Plantsexposed to 2 ppm ethylene for one day (B), two days (C), and three days (D). Why Nest Thermostat Not Turning On? We have ferns and hostas growing happily in front of it now. Your IP: 103.30.145.169, Requested URL: www.jlconline.com/how-to/hvac/drain-pain-furnace-condensate-proves-tricky-to-manage_o, User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36. Although this is not an answer to your question, but it a more attractive venting option. Share Improve this answer Follow answered Jun 5, 2014 at 14:18 Steven 27.3k 9 51 86 3 1-K kerosene is a low-sulfur petroleum product whose composition varies widely depending on what part of the world it comes from. I was basing my response on the title, which suggested furnace exhaust. A disadvantage is that the heat content of the incoming air has some variation, making precise combustion control more difficult. Difference between "select-editor" and "update-alternatives --config editor". How To Troubleshoot It? Thanks for sharing! I'll say peace again, instead of idiot. Yes, furnace exhaust does contain carbon monoxide as it is created during the process of burning gas. Will Gnome 43 be included in the upgrades of 22.04 Jammy? Portions of the evergreens have died but this year we totally lost the rhodadendron leaving the unsightly exhaust pipes exposed. Box 231, Crystal Springs, MS 39059. You might want to talk to the installer to see if it could be better positioned as to not damage you plants. This site shows youhow to create a beautiful DIY terrarium. For example, if your heater is 160,000 BTUs, use 160,000/100,000, or 1.6 times 50 equals 80 square inches (or about half a square foot) of air intake for the burners. If the heaters were vented, the moisture would have been exhausted outside along with the flue gases. However, he also points out that for operators with site emission permits written on a lb/MMBtu basis, recuperation allows the use of more furnace capacity, hence increased productivity. Levels as low as 0.01 ppm can create symptoms such as malformed leaves and flowers, stunted growth, bud abcission, epinasty and flower senescence. This heat-loving shrub produces tiny cream and pink flowers during warm weather, particularly after periods of rain, and grows to just 1 to 3 feet tall with an equal spread. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. High Efficiency Furnace exhaust and plants. There are three differenty types of bushes in the area and we are having the same problem with all of them. It both protects the plants from the blast and collects any lint and keeps it from view. 2. For more information, visit https://extension.msu.edu. OP was discussing CO, not CO2. some people need to learn the difference between C02 and C0. It only takes a minute to sign up. If we take a 30' x 100' double poly greenhouse and maintain inside temperature at 60 F on a 0 F night for a 12 hour period, heating with unvented propane or kerosene heaters would add about 22 gallons of moisture to the air and heating with natural gas would add about 16 gallons. Using gas chromatography, the air samples can be assessed for ethylene levels and other hydrocarbons such as methane and propane, which is helpful in discovery of leaks in gas supply lines and leaks in the heat exchangers. The other set of wires I have red, white, blue, yellow, and black. and fuel supply lines with leaks. High humidity can cause mold growth, damage to your homes structures, and more. A heater that has been serviced in the fall will probably not be at peak efficiency as spring approaches. In general, in a string of multiplication is it better to multiply the big numbers or the small numbers first? The exhaust stack (flue) should extend at least 2 feet, preferably 4 feet, above the ridge (highest point) of the greenhouse. They therefore make good indicator plants. If the color of your plants leaves is fading or if the leaves are wilting, it could be because the plant is too close to an air conditioning vent. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has some excellent information on carbon monoxide poisoning at their website, including fact sheets and other useful leaflets. Also, be sure the flame is adjusted properly to get complete combustion. Well, plants need heat and humidityand air conditioners remove both from your home. Although less commonly used than recuperators, regenerators are still widely used in high temperature furnaces such as glass and steel reheat furnaces. Usually, if you smell gas, you should get alarmed. We had the vent relocated a few years ago due to some construction we were doing and the same thing happened in both locations. Depending on the installation, you may not be able to. Better than a dead bush. WebOne is that if a condensate drain is draining water from a high-efficiency furnace, this water can be acidic and damage plants. However, tighter greenhouses are more likely to allow buildup of toxic gases. Are you insane? It can be a very dangerous situation depending on the size of the leak We installed a high efficiency furnace several years ago and were told that the exhaust would not harm plants or bushes. And even if screening is installed, it will corrode into rust flakes within a year or two. According to Jim Roberts from Eclipse, in recent years an important improvement in furnace heat recovery is development of self-recuperative burners, such as Eclipses ThermaJetdesign. Linear Algebra - Linear transformation question, Batch split images vertically in half, sequentially numbering the output files. During combustion sulfur in the fuel is combined with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide. A free air inlet of at least 1 sq in/1000 Btu/hr input is needed. You might want to talk to the installer to see if it could be better positioned as to not damage you plants. Using gas chromatography, the air samples can be assessed for ethylene levels and other hydrocarbons such as methane and propane, which is helpful in discovery of leaks in gas supply lines and leaks in the heat exchangers. When designing the greenhouse layout, make sure the intake vent from one greenhouse is not close to the exhaust stack of another one. As an example he cites a Tier 2 automotive manufacturer that has a plant with a monthly energy bill of $200,000 per month. A great indicator plant to use for the presence of ethylene is a tomato plant. You can size the air intake for the heating unit with a simple formula: use 50 square inches of intake for each 100,000 BTUs of the heating system. The major pollutants that result from burning kerosene are nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde. There is also an issue with cleaning cooling coils and condensate drains with cleaners to keep them operating properly. 3 Natural Ways to Give it the Boot. Our shrubs in the surrounding area are slowly dying off. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. Hauck both manufactures furnace combustion equipment, including recuperative burners, and offers custom engineering services to industrial furnace users. Home Improvement Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for contractors and serious DIYers. His company is working on designs that might allow systems to operate at temperatures as high as 2200 F, but for the time being the limitation still stands. Never allow gases to remain inside the greenhouse. Initiallyonly open flowers abscised, then buds began to abscise. Esperanza (Tecoma stans) is a flowering shrub that works well for larger yards. WebDuring very cold and windy weather the screening collects ice, blocking the vent and causing a furnace shutdown. See all author stories here. Conventional furnaces that are 80% efficient will make the flue pipe extremely hot (the temperature might get up to 400 F). This is a sign of too much moisture. ); carbon monoxide is especially dangerous as this invisible, odorless gas can lead to poisoning. Tomato plants are very sensitive to certain pollutants found in the exhaust from fossil fuels. Usually excess air is needed to get complete combustion as greater mixing occurs and more of the fuel particles will make contact with the oxygen. WebChoose shrubs that arent likely to grow or spread to an unmanageable size and avoid plants that produce messy berries that may fall into the air conditioner unit where they may cause problems. When planting, allow enough room for the shrub to grow to its mature height and spread, while allowing for an additional 18 to 36 inches between the shrub and the air conditioner unit.