The best figure I've come up with so far is fifteen million flueless in the USA, bearing in mind their population is now (BBC country profiles) 308.8 million with 3.15 people per square kilometre. The UK has a population of 61 million with each square kilometre shared by 251 people; flueless are called vent-free in the USA.
What is abundantly clear, as I suspected, is that the ventfree.org trade association has had something of an up-hill struggle rolling out vent-free products and anything written here today is largely based on what was discovered there. If some of the stuff is a wee bit out of date, that is their problem.
It appears that California is the only state still dug-in like ticks on a hound, refusing to budge on vent-free. That said Arni is not the sort of guy you'd want to get assertive with. I strongly suspect they could not afford them anyway given their current financial woes so it's maybe a bit academic. As for the remainder, restrictions and there are many, take unusual forms. New York is my favourite (I love it) but I'll leave that to the last.
Restrictions
My clear impression is that vent-free are by default not particularly welcome with officials (you make your own mind up), widespread restrictions often being driven by what you can have (grudgingly) rather than what you can't have (if you know what I mean). Some I would not have guessed. Restrictions / permissions include:
- Geography is obviously one and many cities within states do not accept them. The remainder again can occur within geographical areas. All a bit messy.
- Homes tied to propane
- Homes in areas with a reduced population
- Homes built before 1980
- Ventilation caveats
- Some allow bedrooms and bathrooms others do not
- In Montana (allegedly) officials are confused as to the use
of vent-free appliances
- Manchester (New Hampshire) not permitted but that is my fault I assume
- Basements (down)
- Above certain altitudes (up)
Their vent-free state by state guide is a whopping 23.23MB excel file for some reason, in the land of Microsoft®. I have trimmed that down here (thanks to Microsoft®) into a 105KB PDF file, without losing anything. If you want the original click in the links column. The state by state PDF properties file is dated early 2007 as is the New York sizing guide PDF.
Health warnings
Seriously though folks, it is abundantly clear that the authorities stateside have got the subject well nailed down. Stark warnings are delivered to consumers at the point of sale on boxes (and I biffed the B&Q CEO recently with a returned box of not-as-described). It also seems vent-free are not permitted unless there is an existing primary heat source. Furnaces they call them, not boilers. They don't mess about like the dithering UK.
Building codes may demand the provision of (theirs are better) CO detectors whereas we only seem to get to that point after someone has become another gruesome statistic. Time the UK insisted on CO detectors with all flueless and open-flue products.
Which reminds me, via the new HVCA heating-helpline portal there is a gas safety section which links to the never-heard-of-it-before becarbonmonoxideaware.com website and as I suspected from the pompous .com TLD that resolves to CORGI. They are still listed separately as the gas safety watchdog (tut tut). Interesting to see who is a member but more interesting to see who is not a member of becarbonmonoxideaware.com.
I'll forgive them. At least they have an image of my favourite American Kidde CO detector on their gas safety home page. Nice to see they agree with me on that.
These things are all relative and the anonymous author of the RGE advertorial should do their homework next time before they start trying to impress us by name-dropping. The fact that there is so much finger-wagging and nervous chin-stroking in the pioneering west tells us all is not as comfortable as some would like to deceive us into believing.
Size matters
It's even worse in New York, who define their homes (I love this one) as either loose, average or tight and complex rules exist for those who insist on vent-free. New York, where size matters, it does so more for vent-free. So if you have as much adventitious-allowance (draught) as a mud hut you can have a bigger vent-free. But if your gaff is as tight as lycra you may struggle. If someone wants to play about with the sizing guide and a vent-free calculator to show me up, then by all means do so Tony; I'm on my second pack of anadin-extra.
What I particularly like is the distinction they draw between between vent-free with thermostats and (are you listening HSE) those without. Those without present an obvious risk as they run indefinitely as the Welsh (tragedy) flueless gas fire did.
In the Welsh flueless gas fire tragedy the gas flow to the burner was unrestricted. Better makes and models were restricted at that time. Essentially therefore a cheap and as it tragically turned out, very nasty product.
