LanterDan

A while back I received some useful advice regarding a new church building my congregation is building in which we hit some snags and caused the construction to stopped. It should resume shortly, but in the mean time the building lacks a functional HVAC system and it is winter. Last winter, there was a temporary propane heater setup in the building to provide heat. That heater malfunctioned somehow and filled the building with smoke (No one I’ve spoke can provide any more details than that). This led to what I think was a pretty standard job of BINing and repainting the entire building as well replacing some ridiculously expense “acoustical drapes” or somesuch. All of which of course cost money.

This year we are running two kerosene heaters (don’t know the reason for the change), but people in charge of building committee are afraid of using them lest we have a repeat of last year. Current plan is to have people present whenever the heaters are in operation, which is shall we say, inconvenient. Since this is a church they are requesting volunteers to babysit them at night. I am having a very hard believing that in any other commercial project (in which you generally have to pay people for they’re work) that they wouldn’t just leave them running unattended at night, but what do I know. How likely is something like this to happen again? Any thoughts as to what happened before or anything to prevent it again? Other advice?

The two heaters currently being used are indirect fired heating oil/kerosene (currently burning the later) 320,000 BTU/hr units from Frost-Fighter (http://www.frost-fighter.com/indirectheating.html, OHV-350).