Best Of

As a general rule, chimney codes restrict venting appliances that use different fuel types into the same chimney liner. There are some exceptions, but they are fairly specific, and unfortunately there are also installations where the rules were simply not followed.

What you have could be one of those exceptions, or it could be a situation where the system was not installed correctly when the original furnace was put in, and the issue is only becoming apparent now that the new furnace has been installed.

Since you mentioned that you are smelling fuel-oil odors from the basement on the second floor, a couple of possibilities come to mind.

One possibility is that there is damage or a defect in the chimney tile liner around the second-floor level, allowing flue gases to leak into the house at that point.

Another, and in many cases more likely, possibility is that the second-floor furnace is pulling basement air into its return ductwork, and that air may contain oil burner fumes from the basement. If that’s happening, the furnace would then distribute those odors to the second floor through the supply ducts.

If you can, please post some photos of the new furnace, the other furnaces, and how they are vented into the chimney. It would also help to see how the ductwork and return air connections are arranged.

That will make it much easier to narrow down what’s going on.

As I have said before, the first 5 to 10 minutes in the boiler room is for observation only. Your eyes and ears may tell you more than the next hour will. Proceed slowly, that room and the equipment in that room are not going anywhere. That equipment is waiting to talk to someone like you. My 2 cents.

Never tell them the high number when talking about savings.

We used to sell a modernization package on old boilers that included a new oil burner, draft control, and vent connector to the chimney base (smoke pipe), combustion chamber, and controls, including the cad cell relay to replace the old stack relay. With the job we could achieve 80% efficiency with no problem. We would guarantee 75% efficiency in the contract. When compared to the 50% and 60% numbers we would get from the pre-1960 oil burners that was a huge savings for half the cost of switching to gas heat. Savee a lot of loyal customers from switching to gas heat over the years.

EDIT:

Another consideration is that by reducing the input, you are also increasing the run time. so the actual gas savings may not be what you think. 500K for 30 minutes per hour is the same as 400k for 37.5 minutes per hour.

Another idea:

Perhaps you could say that the adjustment may have reduced their gas bill. You would be interested to know by how much, so they might compare last year’s gas bills and then keep track of this year’s bills to see if they realize any savings. By asking them for the numbers, you are letting them know that you expect there may be some savings, without stating a specific amount.