Anything in the garage or eleswhere, depending on the circumstances, should have combustion air. My boiler is in the garage and it is pretty tight. I made sure there was combustion air. When the boiler is running hard ( when it is cold out) youcan feel air being drawn through the duct.
Keith
Maybe the first issue is to make that room “not a garage” by definition would lack of a garage door be enough ? install a double door to load in wood and take the garage door out. It seems to me if a car cannot fit into the space it cannot be a garage anyway.
Good thing we don’t have inspector looking for that around here as I know quite a few people with wood stoves in garages, large sheds and pole barns.
i will have to wait to hear what the building inspector comes back with, like i said he is kind of a friend of mine, so i know he will try to work with me. but at the same time i cant do anything that would put him in a bad position. i pretty much invisioned what tony mentioned. maybe a french door type set up. i kind of hate to lose the garage door though, although i had planned on a nice new one this fall. the only problem i face with framing out garage door area is the fact that my house is brick. there are a lot of houses in the neighborhood that have turned the garage into a room, and from the outside, did an awful job with some type of siding, and it looks terrible.
I found no restrictions to boilers in a garage (assuming that its not a “hazardous location") in the 06 international mechanical code or the building code.
In fact, in the mech code, there was no reference to solid fuel boilers at all.
if you have a driveway just put some of those concrete type things used in parking lots infront of that big door (garage door) and lock that door. who is to say if its a garage if you cant enter it with the door obstructed like that. not to sound smart but just hang a sign saying (this is my boiler room thanks for asking). but for real you should be good if the one wall connected to your house is a fire wall and you cant enter the big door with any motorized vehicle. i do see your point of not getting someone u know in trouble for soming shaddy.i just cant believe that it is this complicated of a issue. good luck
i think most of it is going to come down to what the building inspector is comfortable with. i am fairly confident he is not going to come back to me with “nope, cant do it.” i would say he is going to say, “ok, heres what you need to do.” he knows that i dont use it as a garage - my vehicles will not fit in the garage without doing considerable damage to the house/vehicle. but if i were to sell the house, thats a different story. i think just like many people have said here, its going to be a matter of preventing a car from entering the garage. i am going to give him few days to look into it, dont want to bug him too much. but i will definetly post the outcome here, maybe to help someone else out in the future.
Yep, I found it in the 2006 edition of NFPA 211
Standard for Chimneys, Fireplaces, Vents, and Solid Fuel-Burning Appliances
Under Chapter 12 Solid fuel burning appliances
12.2.4 Solid fuel-burning appliances shall not be installed in any garage.
I think that its about the door. There are plenty of garages that have been converted into living spaces. If there is a “garage door” like the kind that a car can get through, then its a garage. If there is a man door, even a twin 3’0” (6 ft wide) then its a room other than a garage. (IMHO)
I’m waiting on a decision from the State Fire Marshalls Office concerning a garage wood boiler installation, I should hear back on this Thursday. I have talked w/ several Buidling Inspectors about this & they don’t see any issues but the jurisdication does fall with the Fire Department.
In order to keep an installation legal the proposal is as follows:
Frame off & build a boiler room inside the garage with the only access to the “boiler room” being from outside the garage. The room would be big enough to maintain the clearances as stated by the manufacturer. The installation would be classified as a “confined space” therefore air for combustion would be required. This would prevent any flammable vapors or fumes inside the garage from being ignited by the wood boiler.
We’ll wait & see what the big guns have to say about this.
Frame off & build a boiler room inside the garage with the only access to the “boiler room” being from outside the garage.
If the walls are built to fire-code, and a proper fire-rated door is used, it shouldn’t be an issue even if the room opened into the garage. The fire wall would separate it from the garage, just like the house itself is separated from the garage by a fire wall.
>If the walls are built to fire-code, and a proper fire-rated door is used, it shouldn’t be an issue >even if the room opened into the garage.
Sorry, I believe that’s wrong.
Under the building code, which refers back to NFPA 54, “any room” that is accesable only thru a garage also needs to have the source of ignition 18” above the floor.
So if NFPA 211 will not allow a solid fuel boiler in a garage, building a room with a door that opened directly into the garage IMHO wouldn’t fly. The issue being the possibility of igniting gas fumes & vapors.
>If the walls are built to fire-code, and a proper fire-rated door is used, it shouldn’t be an issue >even if the room opened into the garage.
Sorry, I believe that’s wrong.
Under the building code, which refers back to NFPA 54, “any room” that is accesable only thru a garage also needs to have the source of ignition 18” above the floor.
So if NFPA 211 will not allow a solid fuel boiler in a garage, building a room with a door that opened directly into the garage IMHO wouldn’t fly. The issue being the possibility of igniting gas fumes & vapors.
Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I meant that it could also open into the garage, not that it should only open into the garage. If it opens to the outside as well as to the garage, it’s no different from the rest of the house.
I’m dealing with this right now with a building in Grafton county at the moment. Large garage (36x72) with a partial second floor 14-feet wide running along one of the 72-foot walls. Rest of it is open up through, although there will be a freestanding second floor added to much of it for storage, later on. The second floor area being put in right now will be a residence. And the owner wants to heat with wood, in addition to oil, and store several thousand gallons of fuel on-site since the road isn’t accessible to large trucks for a good portion of the winter. And have a commercial-grade kitchen, which means we have all sorts of issues with ventilation to keep fumes from the garage from infiltrating the residential sections. Much fun was had by all!
So you are potentially going to build a room in the garage, with access to the outside ? Then you will have to go outside to fire and load it? That will really be less than optimum.
You said that you don’t use it (the garage) for your car anyway. It would be easier to remove the garage door
and replace it with a piece of wall and a man-door. Then you have weight for the claim that its not a garage. problem solved
the whole room should be big enough concerning combustion air (average construction), but if you have to put it in a little room it has to be done right. If you need to size intake air vents, i can look it up for you in the mechanical code. Either way there is a specific calculation to figure it out. The input needed is the size of the garage and the btu rating on the boiler, 1 opening or 2. I think thats it.
theres a few different senerios that are going on here, i have not called the building inspector back yet. i am still mulling things over before i call him. i really want to be able to keep my garage door for 2 reasons. (1) it opens up, i have a vehicle backed up to my garage door, and having a mandoor would be somewhat of a hassle. (2) the houses were built with garages - some people have converted the garage into a den. i really dont like the look of the covered up garage door. i.e. brick doesnt match, siding is gay.....i would honestly prefer to leave the garage door, nail it shut, paint the windows black, and fram a wall behind it. then i would have to move the mandoor around the corner, which would be more work to put in.
I like the idea of a concrete barrier or steel pipe set in concrete making it impossible to get a vehicle into the garage. To me, that gets the desired job done and is relatively easily removed later (like, right after the inspector leaves........). But I’m not an inspector.
