Attic Furnace Enclosure

How to build a furnace enclosure.

Attic furnace enclosure.

If you don t have a crawl space or a basement then it can be a challenge to place a furnace on the ground floor of the structure. Well mainly it s a way to save space. An outdoor unit which houses the fan condenser and compressor and an indoor unit which holds the evaporator and fan. A while back i wrote about the incompatibility of putting an atmospheric combustion furnace in a sealed attic.

Attic furnaces take advantage of the closer proximity to use shorter lengths of air. The good news is that some installers understand this problem and seek to address. A furnace in the attic is a design that works for all homes. Air ducts lose a fair amount of heat through leakage so shorter lengths are more efficient.

But you could put only one in this attic. Attic hvac systems save space. So why put an hvac system up in the attic at all. Divide that number by 50 to find the maximum capacity appliance you could put in the attic and you get 64 000 btu hr.

A furnace can suffer from a drop in energy efficiency if it s in an unconditioned space such as an attic. Most of the issues that furnace might experience in an attic are due to extremely cold weather in this poorly insulated space. If the attic has a floor area of 800 square feet and an average height of 4 feet for example the volume would be 3200 cubic feet. That would be a medium sized furnace.

A furnace can be installed various places in a house in a basement an attic a garage a ground floor utility room or outside the walls. Most often the attic is sealed by installing spray foam insulation at the roofline thus bringing the attic inside the building enclosure and turning it into conditioned space directly or indirectly. High efficiency furnaces aren t usually recommended for an attic. The rods need to be of sufficient length to allow for proper clearances from combustible materials.

Most updated central air conditioned homes have a new air conditioner split system meaning the ac is broken up into parts. It will not require long lengths of pipe to deliver heat to the rooms as a basement furnace does. Furnaces in basements. When you place a furnace in the attic to take advantage of its.