You can't dream this stuff up...

Jack

I'm moving west next year to the foothills of the Sierras and have a house in CA which my daughter has been kind ;) enough to occupy until my wife and I get there. This is an old stage-coach station. If the walls could talk! Well built on a raised foundatiuon with a 12-18" crawl space. It will rarely get into the teens but the 20's are pretty regular in the winter. 1000 ft more elevation and you are into mega feet of snow. Previous owner had a propane Cat I furnace installed with a Carrier 2.5 ton condensing unit.  I have often said that you need to tear a house down to add "good" duct work to a building. Ductwork that actually conditions the space, in other words. The home inspector, who was very thorough, could not reach the furnace. I knew I was going to change it out and so let it go as the system is less than 5 yrs old. The air flow in this system is ridiculous. Hurricane in one room, no air in another. Proves my point, is the best I can say about it.

I put a Rinnai EX22 in last year and heated most of the downstairs. I'm adding another this fall and that will take care of the place for the most part. When I was out this past summer I roof mounted a 2 ton with dual 12k evap Fujitsu mini-split heat pump for the upstairs with a Tjernlund Airshare and downstairs did a single 12k Fujitsu HP with another Airshare. I represent all those products. This week the contractor came in to run the tubing, power and finish the install. This guy does excellent work. The only problem was getting one line set under the building to the downstairs evap. He removed the b-vent to use the hole for the line-set and I asked that he secure the furnace gas line. All good. He called me yesterday and said he has never seen a worse install of a heating appliance than this Horiz furnace. He is trying to fugure out how they got it in there. Max crawlspace there is about 14". So what did they do? They dug a hole and put an atmosphereic Propane furnace in it. Given that propane tends to pool and there is no way anyone has touched that furnace since the installation, and it is sitting in the dirt we are fortunate that very bad things didn't happen. It ends well though. The carport is full of all the ductwork which has been removed, the Carrier unit is on the way to the dump with the ductwork and when I get out there I have to figure out how they got the furnace in there so I can get it out. This will be a miserable but oddly pleasing sawzall job I suspect. I consider myself very lucky that nothing bad happened.

bob_46

crawl space

You bring back many unpleasant memories. You don't need a sawzall just a few hand tools in a bag , slide in there and take it apart. A light is optional, it helps to see what you are taking apart but also allows you to see all the stuff down there that you don't want to know about. Good luck.