As I mentioned in my posting earlier: this happened since I changed out my AO Smith "skinny" hot water tank storage heater (natural gas) to GE, which, IMHO, is more efficient (less frequent heating in order to maintain the same water temp). With less frequent heating of the hot water tank, the pipe gets "cold", and even with pilot lights idling on both units (heater and boiler), when the boiler kicks in, the pipe was simply too cold to let the exhaust gas to rise up (to the chimney).
Both my hot water tank and the boiler are not power exhaust type (not common in our area), and because all of these units were fitted under the wooden staircase crawlspace (thus the call for something apartment sized call "skinny", which, according to a lot of hot water tank installer, comes with no more than 1" of insulation typically).
I'll try to post some pics later...
Q.
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