Was over at my wife's sister's house... She has a ranch style house, with the furnace in a "closet" in the middle of the first floor.
The forced air output is therefore "down" into the ductwork in the crawlspace area.
I've noticed that the air around the louvered doors is really warm, and opened them up to take a peek. The entire furnace bottom metal ductwork area is resting/sitting on a perimeter "rail" that is about 1" off the floor area.
Therefore, all of the "forced air" being blown down, is also escaping from around this "rail" and therefore reducing the air pressure at the vents, along with making the "heating closet" nice and toasty for the cat & dog.
I was thinkinig of wrapping the entire perimeter with metal tape to contain the forced air - and make it follow it's correct ducting path.
the furnace in a "closet" in the middle of the first floor. The forced air output is therefore "down" into the ductwork in the crawlspace area. I've noticed that the air around the louvered doors is really warm, and opened t hem up to take a peek. The entire furnace bottom metal ductwork area is res ting/sitting on a perimeter "rail" that is about 1" off the floor area. The refore, all of the "forced air" being blown down, is also escaping from aro und this "rail" and therefore reducing the air pressure at the vents, along with making the "heating closet" nice and toasty for the cat & dog. I was thinkinig of wrapping the entire perimeter with metal tape to contain the f orced air - and make it follow it's correct ducting path. -- / _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ No Good Deed - Goes Unpunished
I can't visualize it, but apparently the duct work is not connected to the furnace. Very strange. The other issue I'd consider if those rails are adequate support to hold the furnace securely. You don't want the furnace to move and crack a gas line........ If it's secure and you can seal it with aluminum tape, then that may be the easiest option. But it's not how it should have been installed to begin with.
The furnace is on a 1" rail, or what it seems you're saying, the rail is 1" off the floor??
Is the rail a complete rectangle, but the furnace bottom isn't flat, or the rail is just four pieces laid down with gaps between them?
How much space is there between the sides of the furnace and the walls? What about the back of the furnace and that wall? Maybe you can use something that will work longer than tape, and/or maybe you'll have a hard time closing all four sides.
In return for telling you this, I want you to come back and tell us everything you learn by fiddling with it and by reading this forum, which I just noticed.
formatting link
I hate webforums but there seem to be some pros there.
I SUSPECT it originally had a fabric "bellows" joint to isolate the furnace from the ductwork for noise abatement. What happened to the bellows???? Who knows. I'd try wrapping it with real "duct" tape (the aluminum stuff"
I should have thought of that. That's what the rail the OP refers to is, what's left of the bellows** There should be a top and a bottom set of continuous metal rail, each bent into a rectangle. The top part might be still wrapped tightly around the furnace "flange" so that it looks like the furnace is resting on only on the outer wrapped part, and not the flange that is part of the furnace and is inside the wrapping. (sorry that this isn't clear.)
Or maybe the bottom part is wrapped tightly around the duct, and that is the part that the OP sees.
Maybe someone took one of the two ends off, with what was left of the cloth.
Or maybe the fabric part is still there, tucked inside, but part of it has holes.
**There's another name for this iirc. It's on my other harddrive. They are about 4-6 inches long, one inch at each end is metal with the cloth attached, and 2-4 inches between each end is just fabric, (rubberized cloth?? Something air won't blow through.).
I'll take a better look next time we are over there. It just seemed so strange to have it really warm in the louvered closet area, and lacking some air pressure around the 1st floor vents.
BTW, I have two of these things, one about 18" above the furnace on the hot air side, about 4" of rubber-cloth only, that also provides for an offset between the furnace and the heating duct. And the other on the cold air side, about 2" of rubber-cloth only, Both are in good condition on the sides I can see, and they're 34 years old. Like he said, they're to keep the vibration of the furnace from affecting the ducts and the house. I think all well-installed furnaces have these, but I've only noticed them in my house and the identical townhouses next to me
If it makes your family feel any better, I was behind my furnace (can't go there now that my waist is 4 inches bigger, but I can still see from the side) which is in the basement and sits on the basement floor, and I saw down at the floor level in the rear panel of sheet metal a hole as big as a hamburger. It's gotten wet back there during maybe half of my 16 water leaks into the basement, up to 1/8 or maybe 1/4" deep, but I normally just replace the cardboard boxes sitting on the floor. I never thought to look at the furnace (which is a little rusty on the side but no holes)
Because the main fan is down there, blowing into that box, I'm recirculating some unheated air before into the basement before it gets to the heat exchanger. (But the furnace still doesn't run much and I can come home when the furnace is set back to 50 degrees and it's 68 within 2 hours.)
Maybe they should leave the door to the furnace room open, or take the door off until something is done. They can put their kids artwork on the furnace, if it's not meltable.
With that many leaks I'd consider a more permanent solution to the wet cardboard problem. Either using plastic boxes or plastic/vinyl strips to get the boxes up high enough so they keep getting wet.
Of course fixing the cause of the leak would probably be the best idea, but only you know what that would involve.
Thanks for the ideas . I was going to do that -- I even have some boxes -- but I don't like the curved outside or curved inside of vinyl boxes, and new plastic boxes would be too clean or fragile for my crap. New boxes are free, but it's sometimes hard to find the size I need. Sometimes I just let the old ones dry in place. Also, I think I've ended the leaks.
I did use pieces of fence pickets to raise two wooden tool boxes off the floor, in the family room. The boxes are 50 years old or so. I've also glued a wood strip in the doorway to keep the water out of this room. (It's only gotten to this room once, or maybe twice, and it's never been more than 1/8th of an inch in this room, next to the laundry room,
There were almost as many causes as there were leaks.
Not in the right order:
Three times basement sink drain overflowed when rain raised level of stream out back so that it went higher than manholes (two of which the county put in waterproof manhole covers for me, although he said it wouldn't help.) and flooded the sewer. Used checkvalve in drain, which helped a little, and a rubber stopper, with a 1x2 sitting on the stopper with 80 pounds of shelf etc. sitting on the 1x2. That worked except the one time I did the laundry and forgot to replace the stopper and 1x2 afterwards.
Did the laundry without removing the stopper and 1x2. I forget if that overflowed or not.
Cold hose to washing machine burst. Woke up to hear water running in pipe. Must have just started since damage small, considering. Got stainless steel clad hoses.
Cold hose to kitchen sink on main floor, after I used car vacuum hose instead of the right thing.
Water heater sprang leak, slow leak at first, but I thought the floor was wet because of basement sink overflow a day or two earlier. Didn't suspect WH.
Vinyl hose to furnace humidifier sprang leak, just from age (5 years) Switched to copper.
Aquarium tubing from kitchen sink to planter at the far end of the living room forgotten and left on when I went away for 3 hours.
Sump pump working fine but couldn't keep up with water filling the sump (only once in 30 years. It wasn't even raining that hard, but I guess the ground was soaked.)
Something broke between the toilet cutoff valve and the toilet in the powder room on the main floor. Water spraying all over. Good thing I was only out for an hour. It made all the vinyl tiles in the powder room loose, but before I replaced them, I stood on them as part of going in and out and they all settled down and look just the way they did.
I always forget one or two, but maybe the total is 12 or 13, not 16.
Oh, yeah, ongoing wet floor from AC condensate. It was supposed to go in the tray right under the condensor, out the hole in 1" PVC pipe (if not PVC, whatever is white) , down 3 inches, to the left to the wall, down the side of the wall to the floor, across the floor at the base of the wall to near the sump, away from the wall to the sump. But the water didn't go that way. It overflowed the tray, and came out the bottom of the furnace. I forgot--that was the cause of the early rust. I cut a hole and looked inside. Never saw anything that showed anything. I cut off the pipe and blew through it, all the way to the sump. Didn't seem clogged to me. I connected a garden hose to it and flushed it out for a few minutes. Water came out very fast at the sump end. No sign of obstruction. Reconnected . Still leaked from under furnace just like before, nothing came out of pipe at sump.
Finally I redid it, so instead of going down 3 inches, it goes down 14 inches or more at first, over to the wall and down another 25 or 30 or whatever inches. Since then it never leaks from under the furnace.
All my 108 neighbors have an arrangement similar to my original arrangement and none of the ones I asked have had leaks from under the furnace.
And this one never made it to the basement, but when my brother visisted and took showers in the bathtub the water came out at the light fixture in the dining room, down the chain, and filled the globe around the lightbulb. Never reached the lightbulb or bulb might have broken, but I had to empty the globe and sometimes it dripped a bit on dining room table. After 4 or 6 years or so, the leak stopped. I think the dead skin and other dirt from his body (or mine?**) filled the space where it was leaking. A half dozen or more neighbors had this same problem but they're not as patient as I am and they're probably scared of electricity so they had the leak fixed, through the dining room ceiling. I left mine alone, no sign of a leak. .
**Only his showers did this. Not my many baths afaict.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.