LarryLeveen
Member
Our current furnace is stupidly placed and eats a lot of important space in our smallish 1200 sq. ft. 1.5 story house. FWIW, we live in the usually mild Pacific NW where it doesn't get very cold, but there is a lot of rainfall (see below). I want to replace a gas-fired forced air furnace (and gas water heater -- see below). Considering various options -- staying with same type of furnace or going with a boiler and radiators, etc. What I'd like to know is what kind of limitations should I be aware of in terms of _placement_ of such units.
Our "utility room" is a walled-in area between the house and the (formerly unattached) garage. It probably has minimal insulation, and is outside the foundation, sitting on a slab of unknown depth/thickness. This area could be used, but is also very small, and contains our washer and dryer as well as an aging gas tank-style water heater that I want to replace as well. Thus, I was interested in addressing both space heating and DHW at once and gaining useable space in the house and, hopefully in the utility room too.
I was wondering if having the replacement unit(s) outside of the heated space (say, in our unheated and uninsulated garage, or in the attic) is a big problem. Due to the rainfall, I was concerned a horizontally-mounted force air furnace in the crawlspace -- a neighbor had theirs damaged by water accumulating there during a deluge a few years ago when power was knocked out (which took out the sump pump).
Our "utility room" is a walled-in area between the house and the (formerly unattached) garage. It probably has minimal insulation, and is outside the foundation, sitting on a slab of unknown depth/thickness. This area could be used, but is also very small, and contains our washer and dryer as well as an aging gas tank-style water heater that I want to replace as well. Thus, I was interested in addressing both space heating and DHW at once and gaining useable space in the house and, hopefully in the utility room too.
I was wondering if having the replacement unit(s) outside of the heated space (say, in our unheated and uninsulated garage, or in the attic) is a big problem. Due to the rainfall, I was concerned a horizontally-mounted force air furnace in the crawlspace -- a neighbor had theirs damaged by water accumulating there during a deluge a few years ago when power was knocked out (which took out the sump pump).