Combustion Analysis

Ask any other home inspection company if they will report on the condition of the heat exchanger in your furnace. They will tell you, “no.” Inspecting the furnace without checking the heat exchanger is like inspecting a car without checking the engine. It’s the most important part, and when it fails, you need a new furnace. A deteriorated heat exchanger is the most common way that unsafe levels of  carbon monoxide enter a home. The CDC reports 20,000 visits to Emergency Rooms and more than 400 deaths annually from Carbon monoxide poisoning in the U.S. Without the use of a combustion analyzer, the condition of your furnace is based on the home inspector’s best guess. Your furnace is too important to be guessing about its condition. That’s why we use combustion analysis.

Not only will we give you a good idea about the health of your heat exchanger, we will also tell you how efficiently your furnace is running.  We will give you other measurements that are indications of how well the furnace is running as a whole, such as the stack temperature and the excess oxygen. Using this information, we’ll be able to tell you whether your system is running fine, needs to be repaired, or needs to be replaced, without the extra time and expense of hiring an HVAC contractor. No other home inspection company can make that claim.

Like all reputable home inspection companies, we follow a national standard of practice. That standard dictates what we must do during our home inspection, and combustion analysis is not on the list. The only things the national standard requires a home inspector to do is identify the type of equipment and tell you whether or not it is running. You probably could have figured those things out on your own.

Anytime a home inspector goes outside of the standards, they are legally liable for whatever piece of equipment we are testing, in this case, the furnace. Most home inspection firms are not willing to accept the liability involved with combustion analysis. We are. Gerard Home Inspection has made the determination that the use of this technology provides such an incredible benefit to our clients that we are willing to take on the risks. This service is provided at no additional cost.

This is just one of many ways that we above and beyond for our clients. We hope you allow us to show you the Gerard difference on your next home inspection.