Trouble on the Roof

Alan (California Radiant) Forbes · June 19

One of my customers here in Berkeley called me that his carbon monoxide alarm was alerting him to high levels of CO in the mechanical room . I picked up ~500ppm at the boiler with my analyzer, but wondered how it was getting into the house.

After shutting down the boiler, the owner told me that he had a new roof done in January and when I checked the termination, the new top had been pushed down so far as to almost completely block the flue.

I see this often enough.

ratio · June 19

But, it looks so pretty!

HomerJSmith · June 19

Doesn't appear to be a B-vent cap. Replace the B-vent, but I don't have to tell you that. I would go over code and increase the vent height, some. Paint it with copper paint for looks.

EBEBRATT-Ed · June 20

Many of you if you worked on oil have installed oil tank vent piping. When I was in business for myself I had an oil company call me because the driver had overfilled a 275 gallon tank and it bulged out and was leaking.

What happened was these two houses had a "community driveway" one driveway between the two houses and the driver got confused and started filling the wrong tank which was already filled.

Most vent caps either screw on a pipe thread or more commonly for a 275 they go on the pipe with a set screw and the vent cap has a little stop on it so you can't push it down too far.

Well, the tank that bulged had an old vent cap with no stop so it was down on the pipe with little room to vent. Never saw another vent cap like it.

It worked ok when it only had to vent air through the small gap but with the tank full it could not vent oil fast enough and it over pressured the tank.

mattmia2 · June 20

@EBEBRATT-Ed maybe it was a piece of fence hardware.

did that start life as a trash can lid or a flat cap?

Trouble on the Roof

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