Writer’s advice poor on furnace standards

The Jan. 6 article on furnace standards by H. de Marne is the poorest example of response to an important, critical question on an issue that will affect literally thousands — maybe millions — of apartment/condominium owners throughout the country.

De Marne’s response to the question of furnace replacements in existing buildings ignores entirely the concern of owners who would have to spend thousands of dollars to:

1. Create new pathways (in soffits) that would have to be cut through their own apartments in order to get to an outside wall for their 90 percent furnace vents to exit through. In this writer’s building — 64 apartment units — blasting through the exterior (brick) walls with 64 new furnace vents would make the building look like an enormous pin cushion! De Marne also conveniently ignores the problem of complying with most of the building codes that require a minimum distance of 4 feet from a furnace vent to a ventable window.

2. In the absence of venting through exterior masonry wall from the furnace closets in the middle of the apartment units, de Marne ignores again the alternative of venting up through the roof of the buildings. Imagine, a second floor apartment owner having to create new construction to blast through all of the three, four or five floors above them — or 20 or 30 in larger buildings — in order to run a new vent to the outside.

In his article, de Marne misses the boat entirely. Instead of soft-soaping the outrageous costs of new architectural drawings, building permits, totally unnecessary remodeling and reconstruction costs, he should denounce the stupidity of this government mandated law.

He should be in the forefront of objectors to this ill-considered outrage and try to bring some sanity to the legislative nitwits who conceived and implemented it.

Frank Sears

Buffalo Grove