National Company! I'll guess Delta Mechanical. It all depends upon the guy doing the work. You should not have 5" on the vent connector. You should have 4" B-vent. The inch diameter you pick up will allow for proper grading of the flue. Your best bet on liner will be to install B-vent all the way down. You should have a bottom capped tee at the bottom of the stack as a drip leg. Yours is the worst condition for a Category I furnace, long vent connector and exterior chimney. If you go with a chimney sweep for the liner, as I said, chick out the Chimney Sweep Guild for a "real" contractor. You are correct about getting taken on this. There has been all kinds of fraud in this field. Perhaps it would be best to make the installing company come through on this. MAKE SURE, if you have them do it with B-vent that they screw the joints together with screw that does not penetrate the inner aluminum liner. A seemingly small but important detail. Also have them use a metal tape on the joints. They can drop the tee and vert portion into the flue and work back to the furnace, finishing with an adjustable length at the furnace. I am glad that you liked the salesman, but I would not let him off the hook on this. If he is a good guy you can help him become better by insisting that he come out and look at the system. You never install a Cat I furnace where a masonry chimney is going to be used. It is "the" reason to go to the condensing furnace using PVC for the side wall venting. As well, you pick up another 15% efficiency. You will be helping this man if you have this conversation. Nationally, once you cross the Mason-Dixon condensing furnaces are 95+% of the market. As you move south, the view is the heating load is not as high so, why buy the more expensive (efficient) equipment. Net/net, regardless of intent, you got stiffed here by nice but not well informed people and your inspector pencil whipped the permit. Perhaps that is a bit tough. they did fail the inspection initially. Salti, heck, we don't argue. I enjoy reading your posts. In my experience, if you were hitting 80% with the old furnace you "grabbed the brass ring", unless it was an oil furnace and the better brands have almost always hit the 80% mark. Is it oil? If it is gas and old, I really am surprised. The reason the codes changed since '91 is that by being mandated to deliver a min efficiency of 78% up from those 60% figures is that by putting the heat into the house there was less energy available to drive proper venting of the new appliances in masonry. Proper venting meaning getting the flue gases out as a vapor and not having them condense (approx 3.2 Ph) on the walls of the flue. You can hide a lot of design issues with a high stack temperature. With high exhaust temps you gained velocity. With 78% you didn't have a chance. Even at that, it was interesting seeing the code changes over the years. Every four years with the new edition of NFPA 54 the restrictions became more and more stringent until about 10 years ago they finally said, "masonry chimneys do not work and do not use them". Also, be aware, if you are hitting the 80% combustion efficiency" that is not remotely close to system efficiency. You have probably seen my fairly frequent posts on googling, "doe duct leakage". If you want to get the best out of your heating dollar, seal the duct system. Residential duct systems in the US are terrible. It is the "crazy aunt in the back room" that no one in the industry wants to talk about. It is a big deal and it is finally coming to light. What I have always said is the unitary manuf (Carrier, York, Lennox, Trane, etc) can put all the technology they want in the box. They simply cannot deliver it…due to duct leakage Happy Heating!

The reason you cannot connect a water heater to the furnace flue is because the furnace flue it too big. All natural gas, heating oil and to a lesser degree, even wood contain trace amounts of sulfur. When the sulfur burns it produces sulfur dioxide (SO2). In an exhaust flue the trace amount of sulfur dioxide combines with water vapor (H20) and produces Sulfuric acid (H2SO4). If the sulfuric acid is allowed to remain in the flue it will corrode metal pipes and etch the mortar in the masonry chimney. If a flue it properly sized there is enough heat energy in the flue gases to insure an adequate draft to expel the gases to atmosphere however if the flue is too big the flue gases cool off to quickly and there is no longer a sufficient draft to expel the flue gases. The can result in two serious problems: 1.If there is not a sufficient draft there is a high risk of carbon monoxide gases entering the living structure. 2. It results in excessive condensation and acid formation in the flue stack. Under the IRC when connecting a water heater to a masonry flue the maximum cross sectional area of the flue may not exceed 7x the cross sectional area of the flue connector on the water heater. The UPC limits it to 4x the cross sectional area of the water heater flue connector. Typically a water heater draft hood flue connector is 3" therefore the cross sectional area would be 3.1416(1.5 x 1.5) = 7sq.in

He is a professional HVAC guy they have been in business for generations, father and son etc. They have worked on our heat and ac since we moved here. And most of my neighbors. He has been trouble shooting the problem, and has tried all of that. In fact he even called in another HVAC person he knows from another company. Mike thanks, he only changed that part once and it was because I asked him to. I Appreciate that. Of course he didn't ask his customer to troubleshoot for him. I did that all on my own because I thought perhaps there would be Nice helpful people here on this forum that would actually have a real suggestion. I have been on various GW forums for years and years, I have worked on the computer help forum and others, I volunteer my help on many other very professional computer help forums. Apparently I was very wrong about this one. I don't understand if it's such an easy fix why it can't be mentioned rather than insult me for simply asking a legitimate question. I may seem a little upset, I am a senior lady in a wheelchair and I am cold, no the heater is not coming on currently, sorry. Thanks

Dedtired, a tankless water heater will not run out of water even if you have multiple guests and extra showers, but the main sell on them (from what I have seen) is that they use far less energy because they don't have to heat 330-50 gallons of water and keep it hot all the time. A tankless heater heats only the water being used on demand. They also don't have a large tank that can rust or develop leaks and flood your home. My AC is 5 years old this week. We had installed those units to replace the existing ones in our home -- we hadn't been very happy with either. The newer unit needed a new coil for the second time in a few years -- and one of the coils put in was the wrong part with the wrong coolant. Required the entire AC and heating system to be replaced. It was such a mess that we decided to cut our losses and pull both systems and start completely over. We went from $150 service call to something that added some zeros and then some -- but we got rid of such junk, got a great system relocated in our attic so the service is easier and safer, complete with some new ducts, gas lines, a little vent work -- and the owner monitors phone calls from home after hours and helped us trouble shoot one evening to avoid a service call the next day. We went to a 2 speed system that runs high for cooling and low when it needs to dehumidify -- a great feature in a humid climate, and it is more energy efficient. And quieter -- never hear that kick and push of air when it runs. Don't miss it. We didn't have to replace the second system, but I have never regretted the decision. It's been great and I have an AC company I trust again.