C Gallas : With a true Zone 7 climate you may be able to use a
solar chimney to continuously suck dead stall air out of different places within your home.
Of
course the
solar chimneys ability to move cold Air with a high moisture content and thus heavier will be diminished.
Lets talk walking up to prospective new homes. At this point you need to show the Realtor you are in charge and its time to start working for you, faults
can be used to knock down the price ! You are going to look at the roof and ask how old while eyeballing the amount of overhang and the condition of
the gutters and eaves. More modern houses with requirements for setbacks from the property line often have smaller Overhangs to put a bigger house on
a small lot. Good overhangs and gutters are your 1st line of defense of your foundation! Down spouts should run continuously from the eaves down and 2
-3 feet away from your house or into a foundation Drain, Is the entire house perimeter landscaped to drain standing water away from the foundation all
the way around the house ? Can they BE landscaped to run water away from the house? Are the outside concrete foundation walls insulated outside, was
the foundation waterproofed, and perforated drain piping buried in coarse gravel installed
at the footings and running down hill to day light !
We will discuss the basement after you grasp the idea that all houses breath, and all houses breath the same way, breathing warm moist conditioned air
out -from the top most places of the house and cooler air in at basement and 1st floor cracks and penetrations! This is something to understand at a
basic level when you get to properly tighten up your house google cold climate housing and search that site from information on
stack effect and
whole
house stack effect !
Basements and crawl spaces, over 30 million basements and crawl spaces were built to the then correct code but need serious tightening up! Do not buy
a house with a finished Basement and a sump pump, The only exception would be where the original owner installed the sump pump and it has never
run since it was installed! Trust your nose on this one! Again we want a dry cellar and with all the care that the foundation got your basement should be
dry, a few cracks well patched is not a problem, nor are painted walls, be very leery of multiple mismatched coats showing where some one tried to seal
the sub grade portion of basement walls with a waterproofing coating !
Crawl spaces, again concrete is not waterproof, with a high water table it
WILL leak moisture to its surface and increase the moisture content of
your air the same holds true for dirt floors!
At 70% moisture content mold starts and stops, at 90% Humidity Rot starts and stops!
The ground under a crawl space should be clean, have a carefully installed vapor barrier that covers that floor and up the side walls widely overlapping
sheet edges, with all penetrations carefully sealed with construction adhesive and heavy duty tape support piers should be wrapped carefully in vapor
barrier and well sealed, above the Virginia Penn border constantly open vents from the cellar space to the out doors is a left over from cheap oil !
The top of the foundation is called the sill the wide flat beam that sites on top of it is the sill plate the perimeter board and the individual floor joists that
the floor is laid on sit on it and are nailed together, old code allowed the 'Box beam' where two floor joists meet the perimeter board to be insulated with
fiberglass insulation, regardless of temperatures water vapor will travel from areas with high concentrations of water vapor to areas of low water vapor
therefor the fiberglass insulation will be damp and the perimeter boars at outside temps will collect condensation most of the year, with frost which ruins
the r-value of the fiberglass insulation much of your heating season !
Todays codes require going back in there and pealing back removing fiberglass insulation and putting in hard foam board and spray foam to seal the
cracks and penetrations. All Electrical should be looked at for safety,and all pumping checked for leaks and where they penetrate the outside way or the
floor above carefully sealed ! Additional insulation to further insulate the crawl space should be on an outside wall, but it can be done on the inside usually
as a last resort !
This is one of the few places where almost all of the u-tube videos are good, again the people at cold climate housing research center know their stuff !
Maritime Climates always leave you dealing with high levels of moisture problems, the affect is increased when warm moist air makes contact with cold
basement surfaces, gas clothes driers and the newer model gas
hot water heaters can easily be gimmicked to run just the fan motor acting as blowers to
push air out of the basement. Many places in new england have problems with radon gas, there are fans to evacuate low lying areas of basements to
reduce your exposure ! A sure sign you have problems is any house with heavy water condensation on the window !With all these areas carefully looked
at and addressed! you should fairly if ever need to run a dehumidifier
With a house with problems running All/some of these various fan/blowers run on sunny days, actually any low humidity days, is a temporary way to buy
time where you are now or in a new home ! This just requires the will to do so, a quick morning check on the weather chanel and the expectation that You
will end up replacing a fan motor or two periodically !
This should help you house hunt, fight for a good price, and allow you to move in with your eyes wide open ! For the good of the crafts! Big AL !