Flues carry away deadly carbon monoxide (CO) so you don't die. Yet the amount of CO in the spent gas from your furnace, hot water heater and other gas appliances is usually no more than enough to give the wife a head ache, if that wasn't enough. Yet there are worse dangers lurking in your closet that CO. Much much worse.
Fire! the greatest hazzard, comes from flames shooting up the pipe. Just try to grab the pipe. Once I was trying to scale a rather steep widowmaker and I gently grabbed a flue and before I felt it I heard it. Pssst, like a cat, OMG.
On the ceiling there needs to be a ring that centers the double walled pipe away from the sheetrock and lumber framing. I've seen these look like they were burned and imagined that they were close to ignition. Blast off.
Sometimes the coo-coo roofers cut off the double walled pipe at the roof line and install a single part flashing that incorporates the base and cap as one and is made of galvanized steel. This is in violation of most statutes dealing with voluntary manslaughter. Only luck can save you now.
This steel is doomed because the major by-products of spent gas is heat and water, something that quickly turns steel into rust. Of the sixteen types of know iron oxide we are dealing with ferrous oxide. Didn't Bozo notice that everything was once composed of aluminum, a somewhat more resistant metal to the forces of extreme heat and continual water vapor attack. Don't believe me? Next time it is freezing go outside and look up at those two silly metal pipes sticking out of your roof and tell me you don't hear "I think I can, I think I can. (for those who have done done their duty to the species that is a reference to Thomas the Tank Engine, a steam locomotive analogy.)
The cheap roofer put a $10.00 flashing on there instead of a new $50.00 flashing kit composed of a double walled pipe extension, a base flashing, a rain collar, and a type B gas cap. It looks like Thomas' a little instead of the Coolie type that is peaked. Rather than inform you of the problem he has caused marital problems and has lowered your children test scores.
Have I ever beaten a dead horse more than the damage done to plywood decks, compressed insulation, and all the ills of a humid attic? Well try as you may to vent out this mad cloud of water vapor, old man Winter is keeping the squirrels warm in your attic.
The base flashing also centers the frying hot double walled pipe, unless roofer boy replace it with a low cost single wall pipe, so that it doesn't lean over and touch the plywood and as the Cars sang, "burning down the house."
We'll take a pause here while you run outside and look at your killer. Run back in, get the kids and call 911. hurry.
We're back. Sorry for the alarm but did you know that few flue pipes have any strapping holding them in place? When we go on roofs we often find them loose. Some cities, like Plano, require a postmortem on the roof so they don't have to perform one on you.
The NRCA says that a roof cannot be replaced without the flues being disturbed. This disturbs me too. The National Roofing Contractors Association, founded in 1886, before I was even born, knows its stuff. Think of members like cops and non-members as criminals. The cops have the advantage of organizing and sharing and disseminating the knowledge acquired over the decades. The robbers get in pick ups and steal insurance money, ruin homes, marriages, and make little children sick.
Call somebody to give you an attic inspection today. Well, it's Sunday so do it tomorrow but if you call today I'll probably answer. During the Cowboy game I might not. Yeah, I'm going to watch it. Habit I guess.
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