John Nugent & Sons

There is no other way to summarize my review other than "John Nugent & Sons tried to fraudulently sell my 91-year-old mother a new furnace." They did this in the most despicable way possible, by injecting fear into her mind. Fear that her furnace was emitting carbon monoxide levels that were unsafe, as well as the ludicrous claim that flame roll-out from the furnace was a possibility. They came out on a service call for a furnace that had died. The technician replaced the igniter and fixed the problem. Then he performed some carbon monoxide measurements following a protocol that I had never seen before.

I've been in the homebuilding and residential construction consulting business all my life. More importantly, for ten years (2009- 2020) I was an accredited building scientist, holding the Building Performance Institute Building Analyst designation. BPI is the leading residential building science accreditation for people working on existing homes. BPI-BAs are trained to perform Combustion Appliance Zone Safety Testing, commonly referred to as a CAZ test. This is testing on atmospheric drafting (as opposed to sealed combustion) appliances such as furnaces and water heaters. I write this review to both warn people away from John Nugent & Sons and to direct consumers to independent experts who can assess their atmospheric drafting appliances correctly, and without the inherent conflict of interest of a company that wants to sell you a new furnace no matter how big a lie they must tell the consumer. Google home energy auditors or simply go the BPI website and search for these folks by state.

The John Nugent & Sons technician, using a testing protocol that is nowhere to be found in any BPI testing, measured 15 ppm of carbon monoxide in my mom's home and told her that per company policy he had no choice but to turn off the furnace and provide her with space heaters until she had her furnace replaced. He tried to scare her into thinking this was a serious health concern. He went one step further in his "fear tap and dance" by mentioning the possibility of flame roll-out. Flame roll-out is the worst outcome of severe back drafting of an atmospherically drafting gas appliance. I was there listening to this and since I know how leaky (ie- drafty) this house is I knew from experience that you could likely never cause this furnace to back draft.

The CAZ testing protocol to assess if there's a carbon monoxide danger from atmospherically drafting gas appliances is complicated but suffice to say John Nugent & Sons did none of these steps. They include testing for a baseline atmospheric pressure, spillage and draft, as well as putting the entire house into a state to induce a worst-case depressurization scenario. These tests must be performed and given a Pass/Fail determination (with the exception of the baseline pressure), in order to assess the carbon monoxide levels. John Nugent & Sons did none of this and tried to pass themselves off as experts and scare her into buying a new furnace.

Two days after this incident I was able to get a BPI- Building Analyst into my mom's home to perform a CAZ test. Now remember, Nugent & Sons measured 15 ppm carbon monoxide and told my mom they needed to immediately turn off the furnace and replace it. Carbon monoxide detectors don't trip unless they measure 70 ppm of carbon monoxide over 1-4 hours, or 150 ppm over 10-50 minutes, or 400 ppm over 4-15 minutes (Nugent & Sons measured for approximately 20 minutes and the highest it got was 15 ppm of CO). A well-tuned gas stove puts out 5-15 ppm of CO, measured near the stove. The BPI- Building Analyst I hired did a full CAZ test and found the furnace to be completely safe. He measured the CO level in the flue at 23 ppm and determined it is virtually impossible to back draft this CAZ. I know this was a long review, but I'm so mad at this blatant attempt at fraud that either I warn consumers away from Nugent & Sons here or I go tell my story to the Fairfax County district attorney and see what they will do with this information.