Is this even legal to vent a area this way?

[Elixer]

The object on the right is the furnace, and the object at the other end of the gas pipe is the water heater.
The exhaust both go first into the bright silver pipe, then they feed into the pipe that has this hole cut into it.

Supposedly, this is to vent this area, since it is getting very hot in there.
This seems like it is asking for trouble with monoxide and whatever else.

 

[Blain]

Is the exhaust from the furnace? It's hard to tell from the picture.
Can you back up and snap a pic, where we can get a better visual on the whole area?

 

[Elixer]

Yes, furnace & water heater exhaust pipes feed into the bright silver one, and then those feed into the pipe with the hole.

Sorry, no more pics, wasn't my place, I was just doing a job there, and noticed that hole in the pipe when a tool rolled into that area, and I never seen anything like that setup before.
I asked the super of the apartment complex, who let me in the place, as I was leaving, why was it like that, and he just said, "don't worry about it." and closed the door on me.

 

[mizzou]

Just thinking about it...that air that comes into the pipe is warm from your gas furnace and gas water heater. It is possible the hole below the entry of the exhaust may aid in sending it up and through the top of the chimney/pipe....but it could also send it down and back into your living space. Vents need air movement to work. No movement, no venting!

I've heard HVAC guys tell me that old chimneys are just terrible to expel exhaust gases because the large empty space takes forever to heat up and send upwards, so the gas just sits there and eats away at everything it touches. Get an appropriate sized pipe and it will vent very well.

It may be that hole is just your "cleanout"

 

[readymix]

probably in there to prevent flame rollout or the pilot getting blown out in the case of downdraft, assuming the appliances don't have the typical draft hood/diverter. flue pipe field alteration, or buy baffeled inline tee.

 

[TheBigEarl]

Hard to tell from the pic without seeing the whole thing. Rooms with gas fired appliances that don't have a means to pull in combustion directly from the outside are required to have a high and low vent in the room to allow fresh air to enter for the burners. So that might be why the one duct has a hole in the bottom of it. But if that's what its for, it should not have any exhaust gases routed into it, as they would be sucked right back into the space.

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's a weird setup, what are we looking at here, is that inside the furnace chassis? Idealy furnace exhaust is a closed system and should not be shared with anything else. You have an outside intake and an exhaust. Looks like they rigged this setup so that it uses inside air for combustion then exhausts through the same pipe as the water heater? The problem with this is the exhaust from one appliance could backdraft into the other. It could cause flameouts and other issues. Water tanks don't tend to be closed systems (though I think they should be) and are usually passive so you definitely don't want to do weird stuff with the exhaust. The other problem with what they did is that when the furnace runs it will now create a vacuum in the house, causing cold air to come in. Less efficient that way.

 

[who?]

The intake to the furnace has to be outside of that room so that it doesn't suck CO into the air going to the rooms.
Is there an air gap between the water heater and the flue?