Chimney to power line clearance and other issues...

[Badfish740]

The unexpected sub 60 degree nights here in New Jersey have prompted me to start thinking about getting the chimney for my Englander add-on up a lot sooner. I have some hoops to jump through as far as routing the chimney up the side of the house though. This will be a basement install of course and the only place it makes sense to locate the add-on (as dictated by the location of the oil furnace) is conveniently near a basement window opening-well, sort of conveniently. The issue is that directly above the basement window is a ground floor window, so taking the chimney straight up is out of the question. The wife won't have it and besides I think it would violate building code since it would be an obstruction to an egress window, not to mention it would look like hell. Here is a photo showing what I'm up against:

Beginning from the bottom you can see the basement window where the chimney will exit the house. Two 15 degree elbows will easily take care of the needed direction change to dodge the window, but that opens up a new can of worms. Moving the chimney over is going to place the pipe fairly close to the main power line coming into the house, which attaches near the top of the gable vent. It's better illustrated in this picture:

The black line that can be seen running down the right side of the window is inconsequential as it is an unused cable TV line that can be moved or removed (I have a satellite dish)-as can be seen more clearly in this photo, the issue is the power line which is attached at the peak of the roof above the gable vent. My plan is to hug the right side of the window as tightly as possible (perhaps even overlapping an inch), but I'm guessing that the chimney pipe will still come with 12" of the power line. I can't find anything in any literature that addresses this issue at all-is that because it really doesn't matter as much as I think it does?

 

[Badfish740]

powervent the oil furnace & use the chimli 4 woodstove

I see what you're saying but I'd rather not go the powervent route. It's one more thing to break/need maintenance, plus my next door neighbor is kind of close-the last thing I need is for them to start complaining about oil fumes. As it is I'm purposely going to make my chimney fairly high (I have a feeling that I'll need it for draft purposes anyway) so as to make sure that smoke exits far and away from anyone's house. Any other suggestions?

 

[firefighterjake]

powervent the oil furnace & use the chimli 4 woodstove

I'm a bit shocked to admit this, but Pook's suggestion actually makes a lot of sense.

If your boiler/furnace can do it, a direct vent system (not a power vent) is a pretty simple system. In my own home I went with a direct vent system and it actually works well . . . well works well when it fires up . . . which is not all that often in the winter since I run my woodstove a lot. No neighbors to complain . . . but quite honestly it's a newer, well-tuned system and not really that messy or smelly (not that I would stand at the end of the pipe sucking up the fumes though.)

 

[wendell]

I'm a bit shocked too.

If your stove is big enough, maybe you won't even be running the furnace that often?

 

[Badfish740]

Ok-I'm becoming more interested in this powervent idea, but I need more information. First off, from what I've read thus far, powervents are usually only used on the newer high efficiency furnaces-off the top of my head mine is about 4 years old (it was there when I bought the house)-no clue on efficiency or BTUs, but I can check when I get home. Anyway, I found this while browsing through the McMaster-Carr catalog as I thought maybe they would carry something beefier than the average residential grade power vent:

http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/115/0617

Max flue gas temperature is 600 degrees F. Would that do the trick? If so, great, but now for the next issue-what would it take to make the existing masonry chimney suitable for solid fuel use? I'm guessing a stainless steel liner? Anything else?