Our House Is Alive!

Our house now breathes. With this basement finishing project, we put in a door to our furnace room where previously there was no door. The furnace room is located just north of our new family room and south of an existing bathroom and west of our new office area and east of an existing laundry room. The furnace room door opens to the new office area.

Way back our friendly building inspector (he really is friendly and helpful) told us he wanted us to bring in outside air to the furnace room and put in 20" wall openings, one high and one low, both to the office area and to the laundry room. To fulfill the outside air requirement, we put up an insulated 6" flexible tube going from the outside to the furnace room. Of course, we did this a while ago before the ceiling drywall was up. Now the room and the house "breathe" freely.

Just yesterday I got to putting in the wall openings for room ventilation. These are just holes cut in the partition wall with sidewall grilles to make it look nice.

All of this is simply to make sure the furnace and water heater in the room have enough oxygen for combustion (they are both natural gas). They call this combustion air. Without enough combustion air there can be a buildup of carbon monoxide, and that is never good - especially in a house. Building code has calculations for the square inches required for openings to the room based on the size of the room (cubic feet) and on the total BTUs of the appliances in the room.

This was the first hole cut - the low opening between the furnace & water heater room and the laundry room.

Here both holes are made in the laundry room. I don't know if you can see, but I painted the inside of the wall (exposed studs, exposed drywall, drywall cut surfaces) a flat black in order to make it less visible through the grille. This may not have been so much needed if I would have just had the bottom hole, but was very much needed for the top hole where you can see right through the grille. I tested out hanging the grille upside down, but it was actually easier to see through.

Finished with the grilles here.

The top hole has been cut on the office side (opposite of the laundry room side).

Here again I painted flat black. These wall openings had a stud down the middle. You may also notice I cleaned out the room because all that crap was in my way.

Finished here.

Of course, every little project seems to have its own snafu. The last grille I was going to put on was missing the packet of screws needed to attach the grille. I have screws but these have a white head to make them less visible. So, I had to drive back up to The Home Depot for a quick exchange.