Jim Katen

My children and I have been in and out of doctors for various respiratory issues throughout the last year with no diagnosis. Then this was discovered behind my bathroom and laundry room walls. Does it look like I should have a professional mild remediation company take care of it or is it something that I can employ a contractor for? I know there are tons of different types of mold, so I'm not sure how to proceed.....thanks!

P.S. The leak was found behind the wall and has since been fixed.

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You should cut out the moldy section of drywall and replace it with clean drywall.

Now, if it was me, and I had been suffering from respiratory issues, I'd take the opportunity to do some troubleshooting on my own body. I'd save the moldy piece of drywall in a Ziploc bag, take it outside, and breathe deeply from the bag to see what my body did in reaction to it. If there was no reaction, I'd rub some of the mold on the inside of my nose to see if I could provoke a reaction. If the stuff made me sick, I'd go on a mold hunt throughout the house. If the stuff didn't have any effect, then I'd dedicate my resources to looking for other things.

That's a function of door design and construction, pressure differential dissipation, and installation details, not swing direction.

Next time you're up on a high rise observation deck, look at the door design. Good doors perform like curtain walls. Lots of redundant water management.

Of course. But high rise doors aside, a typical single-family commodity-grade inswing door will be more likely to leak than a typical outswing door with a bumper threshold.

Out swinging doors seal better against wind driven rain. Much better.

Still using my small stable of Canon S100 Digital Elphs, circa 2001.

I drop them, get them wet, drag them through the mud and dust, and clean their lenses with my fingertips. Still the suckers keep going and going. When one starts to misbehave, I pop it open, clean it out, replace anything that doesn't work right, and snap it back together. The things won't die.

On the other hand, they could be faster and it would be nice to have a little more tele.

I've been eyeing the Pentax/Ricoh W-series and the Olympus Tough series. Olympus has a focus assist lamp, does the Ricoh? I absolutely must be able to shoot in pitch dark without juggling a flashlight.

Has anyone used the Olympus Tough?

Square has worked flawlessly for us. The transaction is generally approved within 24 hours.

From the looks of it, I'd guess that the mold grows in the warmer months, when the heating system isn't being used and it's damp down there.

When the heating system kicks on, the increase in temperature lowers the relative humidity and things probably dry out down there - unless we're talking about an active plumbing leak or actual water on the floor.

Thanks for the information. I knew they didn't add water, just didn't know if warming a wet joist area would have helped the mold grow.

Warming a wet area will decrease the relative humidity and cause the area to dry - unless there's a dramatic source of water to keep it wet. In that case it will just make the water warm and increase the growth of mold.

What code is the AHJ citing? Am I missing something in the IRC? I see it as a common sense issue but doesn't appear to be in the book.

It seems to be in the code of immemorial custom.

I post the house layout. Now you can see that the sidewalk limit the grade slope between front porch and garage. Please note, the front concrete block between the front porch and garage is dry. So where is moist from?

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Good drawing.

I had something very similar with my house. The water was simply oozing out of a seam in the clay soil. A spring or underground stream, if you will.

I ran drain tiles to the wet spots and haven't had a problem since.

The drain tile is next to the block wall already...

I had a drain tile only about a foot from the wet spots as well. I extended the existing drain right smack dab to the wet spots and they disappeared.

I would not be concerned with that. The pier is elevated enough so it is very unlikely that deterioration would occur IMO.

Yeah, really.

It's not worth the hot air that will be expended on it.

I post the house layout. Now you can see that the sidewalk limit the grade slope between front porch and garage. Please note, the front concrete block between the front porch and garage is dry. So where is moist from?

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Good drawing.

I had something very similar with my house. The water was simply oozing out of a seam in the clay soil. A spring or underground stream, if you will.

I ran drain tiles to the wet spots and haven't had a problem since.

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I don't think that is too unusual. With a new house the soil adjacent to the foundation was excavated and backfilled. This will allow water to enter the soil.

This is very common. Rain falls through the fluff (backfilled soil) and seeps down until it hits the undisturbed soil, then is spreads outward. It can go on for years until the fluff compacts.

Thank you all for your responses!

The two things I forgot to mention are... the house is very old and thus is really drafty (like a corn crib really!) and so I don't think there should be any concern for improper draft. (Re: Trent and Jim's notes).

Doesn't matter. Might even make things worse.

We plan to install more plug-in carbon monoxide detectors that will read as low as 30 ppm. We also plan to install a few propane detectors.

You know, when inexpensive carbon monoxide alarms first started to become readily available, I thought that they were a great idea. A friend, though, told me that they were a terrible idea. "People will use them as an excuse to take stupid risks." I remember wondering whether or not people were really that dumb.

Lastly, in response to Jim, our boiler has a built in propane gas detector and shut off valve and thus will not continue to release propane in the presence of a leak. Thus, there should be no unburned gasses present.

That's good. Is the sensor located at the floor? Does it actually shut off the propane at a solenoid valve outside the house or does it just shut the boiler? You want it to shut the propane outside in case there's a leak at a fitting before the boiler.

One last thought... so if propane sinks and we are testing for it.. and the boiler will not allow more propane to be release with the shut off valve, then how could there be any gas settling in the basement?

Because the propane leak might occur before it reaches the boiler.

Further more, if the fire is on the first floor and drafting up AND we never turn the boiler on when we're lighting a fire, how could there ever be an explosion?

If propane were to leak in the basement, any spark could set it off. A motor, a light switch, whatever. Are you suggesting that it's ok to have a pool of explosive gas in your basement as long as you have a fire on the first floor? I don't follow the logic.

Thanks for all your help! I don't have 500 or more dollars to spend to purchase and then install a side wall vent system and honestly have a lot of very dry wood to burn this winter... so I'm seriously considering firing up the wood stove after shutting off the boiler later this week. Please tell me what else I can do to be as safe as possible. In my humble opinion it's probably safer to do this than drive on the back roads in this snowy weather we're having at the moment []

I'm guessing that your car has anti-lock brakes and air bags. Given the way your brain works, as long as you have these safety devices, you can drive as fast as you want out there.

Before the 2008 NEC, separate buildings could be fed with a three-wire feeder (no equipment grounding conductor) if certain conditions existed. Even then, however, if a 4-wire feeder was installed, you had to keep the grounds isolated from the neutrals.

Since 2008, all new feeders to separate buildings require four-wire feeders and separation between the grounds and neutrals.

Perhaps your electrician is old and hasn't kept up with the changes in the last few code cycles.

I'm a little confused. I think I remember you saying in past posts that the NEC has required ground and neutral separation in subpanels since the 30's.

Not in separate buildings.

I sometimes see this on a north side only. I am in a dry climate and from what I am seeing is this happens during certain conditions where there exterior humidity shoots up and the roof is still cold causing condensation. Typically this is an early spring late winter event. The moisture is actually coming from the exterior of the home.

Not knowing that this case here, but thought I would throw this out for food for thought if you are in an area like Eastern Washington.

I agree. Very common here as well.

What I'm trying to find is something that mentions that neutral wires should be on a "floating bus bar" and that all ground wires should be bonded directly to the panel and/or isolated from neutrals.

The reference that I gave you says that.

Mark's reference has to do with double tapping.

Yes he's an older electrician that just happens to be the president for a large electrical contractor. I doubt he does much active electrical work, pretty much has an office job. I need to find the actual code so I can prove I was correct in what I called out.

250.32(B)(1)

(B) Grounded Systems.

(1) Supplied by a feeder or branch circuit. An equipment grounding conductor, as described in 250.118, shall be run with the supply conductors and be connected to the building or structure disconnecting means and to the grounding electrode(s). The equipment grounding conductor shall be used for grounding or bonding of equipment, structures, or frames required to be grounded

or bonded. The equipment grounding conductor shall be sized in accordance with 250.122. Any installed grounded conductor shall not be connected to the equipment grounding conductor or to the grounding electrode(s).

An exception follows for existing installations where there's no equipment grounding conductor as part of the feeder and where there are no continuous metallic paths bonded to the grounding system in each structure and where there's no GFCI protection on the supply side of the feeder.

Before the 2008 NEC, separate buildings could be fed with a three-wire feeder (no equipment grounding conductor) if certain conditions existed. Even then, however, if a 4-wire feeder was installed, you had to keep the grounds isolated from the neutrals.

Since 2008, all new feeders to separate buildings require four-wire feeders and separation between the grounds and neutrals.

Perhaps your electrician is old and hasn't kept up with the changes in the last few code cycles.

I've been seeing quite a few clear collector boxes lately. Seems like a good idea.

. . . Another member commented that it's probably a wash if the primary heating system is also gas-fired, and that system is making up the difference. If the primary is electric, you have to take the relative cost of electric into account. . .

Why would the type of primary heating system make a difference? These fireplaces are uncoupled from the house.

Because I doubt the efficiency of the gas fireplace in providing heat to the house would match the gas powered heating system.

Marc

Obviously.

I guess I'm really not concerned with the question of whether or not these things provide an economic way to heat a house or supplement an existing heating system. There's little doubt that they don't. I'm just curious about whether or not a blower makes one of these things significantly more efficient that it would be without one.

Commercial office building with six bathrooms and one kitchen as moisture sources. I guess it seems to be working okay. It's location within a complex has some architectural requirements for matching other buildings. They're all done the same way.

There'll be no significant cooking or bathing and no laundering. Really no moisture to speak of.

In the picture, it looks like the cupola spans a rated wall in the attic. If so, there might be a concern about fire.

The difference between natural convection and forced convection is dramatic. I'm convinced there would be a big difference. It's the same idea behind a convection oven, which we know cooks food much faster than a regular oven.

Poor analogy. In a regular oven, there's pretty much no convection at all. In a direct vent gas fireplace, there's quite a bit of natural convection.

I have no doubt that increased air flow will take more heat from the fireplace enclosure. I just wonder if the amount of heat is significant.

i used a moisture meter and identified water in part of the wall.

What kind of moisture meter? If it was a pinless model, you might or might not have identified water. Even if it was a pin-type meter, it might or might not be indicating water. Was there other evidence of moisture to corroborate what your meter told you?

Also, were you measuring from the outside surface or the inside surface?

Where do you think the water came from?

I try to see this in a thermocamera when I was doing a inside scan.

This makes me think that you found the water on the outside surface of the wall with your moisture meter and you're trying to see it from the inside with an IR camera - its not likely to work.

I know it's needded a difference of Temperature called delta T, so I heated all the wall. But it doesn?t work.

If the interior surfaces of the wall are not wet, you're not going to see the water no matter how much you heat or cool the wall.

Do I need to heat al the house?s interior or just the wall?

Wich equipment could do that?

I think you're trying to make the IR camera do something that it can't do: see through a wall. It can only tell you the temperature of the surface that you point it at. Nothing more.

PS. What kind of wall construction do you use in Brazil? Is it stud frame construction, like we use in the US or is it masonry or something else?

. . . Another member commented that it's probably a wash if the primary heating system is also gas-fired, and that system is making up the difference. If the primary is electric, you have to take the relative cost of electric into account. . .

Why would the type of primary heating system make a difference? These fireplaces are uncoupled from the house.