i'm curious - how many of you have a wood stove, or other heating appliance in the garage? along with a #2 oil burning furnace, i have two wood burning appliances in my house - living room fireplace insert and basement wood stove, but in my garage i burn k1 in a direct vent heater.
i recently had a knock-down-drag-out with my homeowners insurance company. a few months ago they did an on-site inspection, and i recently got a nice letter from them telling me that they did not allow wood burning appliances in garages where vehicles could be stored, and i needed to disconnect the wood stove or my policy would be cancelled. i promptly contacted them and told them that there had never been and never would be a wood stove in my garage, and i was told it was all taken care of. about three weeks later i got the cancellation notice because of my refusal to remove the wood stove, and also my failure to disclose something about the oil furnace in my house. this was a new one - they had never commented about it until then. apparently they thought i was sharing a flue with the stove(s) and the furnace.
five years ago when i moved in, they got the low-down on the oil furnace as it was the only source of heat - it is power vented through the side of the concrete foundation. the following year i installed one wood stove and filled out a questionnaire. the following year i filled out another questionnaire for the fireplace insert - both wood burners are in their own flues with nothing else in the flue. the next year i filled out a questionnaire on the direct vent k1 heater i installed in the garage. the following year i had to fill out more wood stove questionnaires because they had lost the record of them. this year i get the inspection, the nasty-gram, and finally the cancellation.
the kicker is that it's all because of inept employees and poor record keeping on their part. they had all the information, misplaced it, asked for more, and were somehow unable to file and interpret it. then when they did the inspection they sent someone who was good at taking pictures, but then had no idea what the pictures were. he had clear pictures of the house, with a two flue chimney and a power vent through the foundation wall. he also had pictures of the garage, with no chimney, but with an intake/exhaust pipe from a direct vent heater, along with fill and vent pipes labeled "k1 only". even armed with all of this information he was able to decide that the garage had a wood stove but no chimney to vent it - i guess i just let it smoke the place up and open the windows to vent? he also decided that the furnace was exhausted into the chimney even though he had pictures of the power vent. he did not want to see anything on the inside of the house but would rather make assumptions - wrongly.
sorry to digress and vent all of that... but anyways, how do all of you do it? are there that many companies out there that don't care about stuff like that? even my k1 heater had to be installed at a height off the floor of the garage because it was where vehicles could be stored. i wrote this after seeing a thread about installing a waste oil drip into a wood stove. with the grief i got just for a wood stove that never even existed i can only imagine a home brew oil burner attached to it. i'd have a little more understanding if my insurance company was headquartered in a large city, but it's actually headquartered in the same rural state as me, in an even more rural part.
by the way, i chose the safety forum because the primary reason for their concern in a garage is gasoline fumes igniting. just figured i'd see what the safety conscious people here thought about the whole subject.
i recently had a knock-down-drag-out with my homeowners insurance company. a few months ago they did an on-site inspection, and i recently got a nice letter from them telling me that they did not allow wood burning appliances in garages where vehicles could be stored, and i needed to disconnect the wood stove or my policy would be cancelled. i promptly contacted them and told them that there had never been and never would be a wood stove in my garage, and i was told it was all taken care of. about three weeks later i got the cancellation notice because of my refusal to remove the wood stove, and also my failure to disclose something about the oil furnace in my house. this was a new one - they had never commented about it until then. apparently they thought i was sharing a flue with the stove(s) and the furnace.
five years ago when i moved in, they got the low-down on the oil furnace as it was the only source of heat - it is power vented through the side of the concrete foundation. the following year i installed one wood stove and filled out a questionnaire. the following year i filled out another questionnaire for the fireplace insert - both wood burners are in their own flues with nothing else in the flue. the next year i filled out a questionnaire on the direct vent k1 heater i installed in the garage. the following year i had to fill out more wood stove questionnaires because they had lost the record of them. this year i get the inspection, the nasty-gram, and finally the cancellation.
the kicker is that it's all because of inept employees and poor record keeping on their part. they had all the information, misplaced it, asked for more, and were somehow unable to file and interpret it. then when they did the inspection they sent someone who was good at taking pictures, but then had no idea what the pictures were. he had clear pictures of the house, with a two flue chimney and a power vent through the foundation wall. he also had pictures of the garage, with no chimney, but with an intake/exhaust pipe from a direct vent heater, along with fill and vent pipes labeled "k1 only". even armed with all of this information he was able to decide that the garage had a wood stove but no chimney to vent it - i guess i just let it smoke the place up and open the windows to vent? he also decided that the furnace was exhausted into the chimney even though he had pictures of the power vent. he did not want to see anything on the inside of the house but would rather make assumptions - wrongly.
sorry to digress and vent all of that... but anyways, how do all of you do it? are there that many companies out there that don't care about stuff like that? even my k1 heater had to be installed at a height off the floor of the garage because it was where vehicles could be stored. i wrote this after seeing a thread about installing a waste oil drip into a wood stove. with the grief i got just for a wood stove that never even existed i can only imagine a home brew oil burner attached to it. i'd have a little more understanding if my insurance company was headquartered in a large city, but it's actually headquartered in the same rural state as me, in an even more rural part.
by the way, i chose the safety forum because the primary reason for their concern in a garage is gasoline fumes igniting. just figured i'd see what the safety conscious people here thought about the whole subject.
