While watching an episode of "This Old House" last night I noticed they now have a new structural integrity test that they can run on a completed home. In this instance an exhaust fan was installed in the front doorway and the CFM of the exhaust air was measured to determine how draft tight the overall structure was. This was a large three story home with a full basement and they drew less than 2,000 cfm which is pretty low. This tells me that the natural flow of fresh air through that house with all the windows and doors shut in the fall and winter months would be like living in a walk-in refrigerator with a furnace. There seemed to be some implications that this might become a standard test on future homes to determine FHA saleability. I begin to wonder whether cooking and heating with gas would even be safe or whether the build up of CO and depletion of oxygen might become a problem. A local family was very nearly killed a few years ago when a forced draft furnace created enough back draft to fill the house with smoke and co from the smoldering embers in a fireplace, and a gas fired water heater.
Dale in the Flatlands.
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