Combustion Air

[reaperman]

I have a interesting situation I haven't been able to resolve. I'm in my second winter in a brand new home we had a builder build for us. Also the second season of burning a wood furnace for primary heat. The situation is: the bottom few inches of the weather stripping around the front door (on the door frame), freezes up when the temp gets cold (10 degrees or cooler). The weather stripping has a vinyl outside and some kind of soft spongy material inside. The very bottom of the stripping doesn't have the vinyl coating, and is left open. Well it's obvious that moisture is wicking from the bottom of the weather stripping and moving upward until it freezes. When this happens about 3" of stripping is froze and rock hard, making the door hard to close, without a good slam. This keeps the door from closing 100%. So a layer of ice will then start to form between the door and the rest of the weather stripping, creating a thin ice layer to raise up 4-5 feet up the door. Of course I contacted the builder last winter, they came out and found the adjustable strip on the bottom of the door wouldn't adjust properly and replaced it last April. Well by then it was too warm to see if this solved the problem. I talked to him again last week and he mentioned the wood furnace must be pulling in air through the bottom of the front door. He figures without having outside air feeding the furnace this may be the result. He may be correct. Have any of you had this happen?

My wood furnace is in the basement, the only air fed appliance in the basement, other than my LP furnace which has a OAK. The electric cloths dryer is upstairs, water heater electric, air to air exchanger has its own fresh air intake (of course). The basement is 1300 sq ft, as is the main level. I have good draft chimney draft (aprox 26' SS 6"), never any backdraft or smoke when firedoor is open. I know the furnace is pulling air from somewhere and the home is new and therefore tight. The front door is the only regular door in the house, the other three are sliding glass patio doors. So I have nothing to compare to. A couple of minutes with a hair dryer and then squeezing the water out of the stripping is my only remedy so far. I dont want to put a OAK in if I dont have to. But I may expermint with some conduit I have coming into the basement for satellite tv. Thanks

 

[jgoodnow]

the home is new and therefore tight

That may be true, but not necessarily.

One thing you could do is to have a blower door test. Professional energy auditors and some builders do this. The test will give you a measure of your "air change rate," which is the number of times the entire volume of air in your house changes per hour. There are normals for good, fair and poor houses and your auditor would be able to compare your house with the normals to tell you where you stand. You can also go around your house with a smoke pencil during the test to pinpoint air infiltration problems.

If the test indicates that you have a tight house, then you know you would benefit from an outside air kit for your furnace. One downside of getting the test is it may cost about the same as getting an OAK. The advantage is you'll have an accurate diagnosis of your situation.