LLigetfa mentioned things that I have never even heard of! I did note he is from Canada and it does not surprised me that Canada would have issued far more code than here in Connecticut. Someone in CT can go into Preston Trading Post, purchase a very nice wood stove, bring it home, install it, and may or may not be breaking some code somewhere, but I would doubt if anyone would even take notice unless he kills himself, has a chimney fire (fire department is called in), or the tax assessor pays him a visit and sees it.
Question:
What is a HRV?
I have never even heard about a Neutral Pressure Plane? Other being a very impressive sounding engineering term, keep in mind that I am only an electrical engineer and have no understanding of why I have know where the NPP is in my home. I have no attic so what would be the consequences? Does that make the NPR move upward or downward and which way would be better. Goodness, if something bad is going to happen if my NPP is off its proper mark, please tell me what horrible thing to expect, and if it would be possible to get my NPP back to where it should be?
You are right on the mark when you claim that most do not properly seal off hot air leaks, but here in CT we did have a free service in which a representative would come to your home and present you with an infrared pictures taken of the outside of your home. You could very clearly see where you had hot air leaks. I am not joking here, I really do not know where this service went or if it is still done, but I have never met anyone who has had it done.
I own a dedicated air kit (OAK). Unfortunately, I did not know it even had a name when I figured out I needed one and had to make it up myself. I did have a couple of problems with its operation though; the first mistake made was I did not place a screen on the outside of the feed pipe, so mice used it as a giant sliding pond right into my basement. The second problem is I had forgotten just how high the snow could fall here in Ct during a bad winter and it buried the input pipe. The final problem was I had placed the input way to close to my side shot (a force draft blower for my oil fired furnace) and was sucking on some exhaust fumes along with the cold air to provide oxygen to my wood furnace. It did not take me very long to fix the above problems.
In this section you do mention NPP again. This time I am quite serious and am not joking around and really have no idea of what you are talking about. I live in a modified A frame. My wood fired furnace is in the basement. The bottom of its door is about 20 inches from the concrete floor. My furnace does not throw smoke into our living quarters unless something is very wrong like a neglected or missed chimney cleaning.
Perhaps what I think you mean by an OAK just might not be what I have assembled. Since I have no idea of what you are talking about let me explain what I have assembled. My wood furnace and oil burner are so close to each other I could place my hands on both of them at the same time. I have run a pipe to the outside to bring air in for either the wood or oil furnace. The pipe terminates between the two furnaces. Only one furnace will be used at any given time. There has never been a need to run both simultaneously and come to think of it, I have no idea of what would happen if I tried to run both but I suspect it would work out fine if I used a larger air intake pipe. Whenever I run one of the appliances, cold air is definitely finding its way in from the outside. Very easy to tell since all one has to do is place his hand an inch or two from the inside edge of the pipe. Since this pipe is not directly connected to the either appliance (not 100% dedicated to either but probably comes pretty close since I only run one at a time) it is impossible for the air intake pipe to bring smoke into the house. The side shot is fairly directive and now is nowhere near the air intake and the top of wood furnace stack is 35 feet from the air intake (that is what happens in an A frame). I have no idea where the NPP is, or care, because as long as one of my appliances is operating, exhaust fumes will be leaving my home via the side shot or chimney and the draft created by either insures there is a negative pressure. In addition, I do not get smoke into the house when I fuel the wood furnace (door is open) although I do suspect the efficiency is down in the mud when I am refueling it.
When it comes to damaging your home by improper use of a vapor barrier I did present an extreme case so Ray could easily understand my explanation. I never claimed that is the only method in existence.
I am not sure why you took such an obvious offense at my post but if it makes you happy then be my guest! I would be apologetic if I knew what I had said that upset you! Please understand that what you have for code in Canada is probably tenfold what we have in the states. Not saying what you have is better or worse, since I have not bothered to study either one. Since this post was to help RAY out, I realized I have diverged way too far from helping him out and so have you. In America we have always had the freedom to do what we may including killing ourselves through stupidity. However, we are catching up very quickly, we now have paralleled your medical care system, have extremely restrictive gun control laws, our lawn mowers will not work unless we hold on to them, and we cannot paint the bottom of our boats with tin based antifouling paints. Although in Connecticut, we can still purchase a 30,000 BTU kerosene heater (made in China) from Amazon.com, bring it into our living rooms, light it off, not open a window, and be found dead of oxygen starvation the following morning.