floor furnace safety?

[i2kneo]

Hi,

I rent an apartment with a floor furnace. My son got burns on it.

Is floor furnace legal? I checked the temperature on the grid, it's 400F.

Furthermore, there is nothing to protect the grid, everyone can walk on it. Do you know if I can consider that as a safety negligence from the landlord?

thanks a lot!

[Bill Kibbel]

Vented floor furnaces are permitted by the IRC (national code) if manufactured to UL standards and installed per the manufacturer's instructions. The manufacturer's label also likely has a warning about keeping kids and pets off of the hot floor register.

With wood stoves, space heaters and floor furnaces, kids have less sense and learn slower than dogs.

[i2kneo]

thank you for your answer?

What do you mean by vented?

In this system, there is no fan or other thinks like that. The air only flows by natural convection.

Also, I didn't got any warning or manual from the landlord. There is no label on the furnace. Is it normal?

[Garet]

Both the label and the venting would be found in the space under the floor (usually a crawl space).

[i2kneo]

Thanks again.

I checked again and I don't see any warning label. Is it a fault?

I just read the temperature controller should be in the same room. Is it right?

[Jim Katen]

Hi,

I rent an apartment with a floor furnace. My son got burns on it.

Is floor furnace legal? I checked the temperature on the grid, it's 400F.

Furthermore, there is nothing to protect the grid, everyone can walk on it. Do you know if I can consider that as a safety negligence from the landlord?

thanks a lot!

Floor furnaces are perfectly legal, but they have to be installed properly. The venting is to send the spent combustion gases into a chimney or metal vent and up through the roof. The vents are next to the furnace, under the floor.

Newer floor furnaces have a special low heat setting that you're supposed to use when there are small kids in the household. Try removing the floor grate and looking around for a small fist-sized box. It'll have two settings on it, low heat and high heat. You want to set it to low heat. This will make the furnace cycle on & off much more often, but it'll prevent the grate from getting crazy hot.

Lots of people from my generation have waffle-shaped burns from these things.

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[hausdok]

Yeah,

We had them in two of the houses I lived in before I was 7 years old. I used to drop my crayons and plastic soldiers through the grate, watch them melt and then get chewed out by my mother or father for stinking up the place.

I only stepped on that grate once or twice before I learned to give it a wide berth when walking through a room without my shoes on.

The landlord is no more negligent for having that than if he or she had equipped the home with electric baseboard heaters that got so hot someone burned themselves when touching them; or you are for using incandescent light bulbs in lamps where a kid can reach them and burn themselves on the bulb. Accidents are part of growing up and there's a reason they are called accidents and not neglidents.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[gtblum]

Ya know, I don't want to be a trouble maker here but, every one of your posts had something about whether or not you could hold someone else responsible for what happened to your kid. The last thing I ever want to here about is a sick or injured child. I hate it.

However, me, you, and everyone here were kids at one time and we all got hurt and we all learned about hot because our parents took the responsibility of teaching us while we learned.

So let me ask this. How long did the kid stand on this 400 degree furnace grate? Where were you? Why would you come to a home inspectors forum looking for someone to give you the green light to call an attorney? I'm sorry your child was hurt. I really am. Maybe you need to be more attentive as a parent and learn from this too. You don't need a warning label on the stove, the furnace, the corner of a table or anything else if you have a little common sense.

[Brandon Whitmore]

Gary,

[:-thumbu][:-thumbu]

[Tom Raymond]

I don't want to be a trouble maker here

I believe you may be mistaken about that.[]

The rest is spot on.