DRYING PAINT with new forced air furnace???

[thespian]

I am a homeowner and we're just finishing up a pretty extensive home remodel project, including hardwood floor refinishing and painting throughout the house, plus a brand new forced air system which replaced the original gravity system from 1916.

Now, as things are winding down, the general contractor wants to run our new heating system at night to help dry the paint and floor sealants. The heating contractor (whom we selected ourselves, apart from the General) is telling us NO -- don't use the new forced air system for that, it's not good for the system, compounds and dust will get into the new furnace and it'll screw it up and void the warranty...

The General is saying it's no big deal, we do this all the time, standard procedure, won't harm a thing, etc.

Whom should we believe? We're not very experienced at this stuff (that's why we hire pros to do it) but now we have the two sides telling us essentially opposite things.

Any help would be appreciated.

~r

[thespian]

Everybody -- thank you very much for your helpful replies.

I got some additional feedback from a client of mine who is also an experienced contractor, and he verified that this is a rather standard practice among contractors here (San Francisco) to use a home's heating system to help dry paint and joint compound or what-have-you.

A little more explanation: in San Francisco, our average temperature is pretty mild year-round. It gets to be about 65-70 degrees during the day and 52-55 degrees at night.

Plus, our marine air here is pretty moist (fog and so forth). So it can be difficult to keep a house DRY inside when the heat isn't being used.

So, it IS pretty common that contractors here in San Francisco will run heat (and/or lights) at night to keep the temp up and help things dry.

That said, my client/friend said that he understood my concerns regarding the new furnace. He suggested that the General needed to be real careful with all the airborne dust and so forth that could possibly get into the system.

So I did as had been suggested to me, I got the General to accept responsibility for the well-being of our new furnace and also to install an extra "pre-filter" over/before the cold air return so that particles don't even make it into our new system.

So, that's solved, the contractor is taking these steps and we've authorized him to run the heater at night to keep the temp up and let the inside of our house dry out.

Thanks again for the input.

~r

[John Grabowski]

I'd listen to the heating contractor. The general is not the one who will be servicing it in the future. If he wants to heat the place for drying he can rent space heaters. I've noticed that after a construction job is finished, there is always microfine particles still floating around and air handler filters get clogged up quickly. You don't want to do anything that will void your warranty. The general probably does do it all of the time, but he also does not see the long term affect it has on the equipment like the heating contractor would.

[Pop]

Sounds easy to me: you'll void your warranty per the heating guy. Unless/until you know different, let the general get his own heaters to run/dry things. I don't think he's right, but he's the one in control of his area until he's done work.

Now, it seems stupid to me that it would void the warranty and I think he's lying or there's something about the furnace he's not telling you. Ymmv, but I think I'd have to have him show me in writing where it would void the warranty and warn him that, if in a couple years you want to do some floor work and it's going to void the warranty, he'd better start ripping it out, at his own expense, right now because that's not the kind of system I bought! Just depends on him and you, mostly.

The straight advice is, the general also should NOT be trying to use ANY of YOUR equipment to do anything! Does the contract say YOU will provide that to him? If no: He took the job, he's got to do what's got to be done, with his own tools and equipment. Maybe that's where the heating guy's coming from, but he's got a lousy approach to it.

JMO,

Pop

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Neither, if it was me, I'd not want to blow around dust particles until the floors are cured. Probably not a big deal, but why take a chance on spreading dirt from a new heating system right now. No telling what may have loosed up in the ducts during installation.

As for "compounds" voiding the warranty, I'm very skeptical. If your climate is typical of mine right now, it won't make much difference anyway. Temperatures above 70, fairly dry, just about optimal for curing paint.

[FDR]

I recall from one of them Hometime shows that they didn't run the furace in the new home until the dusty portions of the project was done.

[Carolina Breeze HVAC]

Depends...if you do that to our units, and its it writing, you just voided all and any warrantys. You have no idea how many times we get called out to fix some GCs idiotic mistakes.....