Booster fans could help make up for weak airflow
Q. Do you recommend booster fans to push more air to rooms farthest away from the furnace? I've tried adjusting the dampers, but that doesn't seem to solve the problem for the longest runs.
If I were to build another house, I'd make sure I either have two furnaces or one centrally located in the basement.
A. You should try it; these booster fans should work fine if there is no obstruction in the duct system.
There should be no need to have two furnaces if one is properly balanced with the right size fan and ducting.
Q. You recently answered a question regarding a bathroom not having an outside wall. This was published in the Daily Herald
Isn't code that all full bathrooms must either have a window or vent? It sounds like both bathrooms, including the one in the basement, were DIY projects and not professionally performed. Just my 2 cents.
A. Codes vary, but bathrooms should indeed have some means of ventilation. The bathrooms in question may have been DIY jobs, or the house may have been built before the modern codes were enacted.
Q. My contractor, who designed my new kitchen, talked me into using Corian countertops because, as he said, they do not stain.
Well, I spilled some frozen blueberries on one of the tops and now there is a faint purplish stain in spite of the fact that I wiped up the spill right away.
I have tried every imaginable cleaner I have, but nothing touched the stains.
Are they permanent, or do you know of a way to remove them?
A. Even though you wiped up the spill right away, as one should do with all spills, fruit stains and newspaper print ink are very tenacious on Corian tops.
But they are easy to remove using a Clorox pen. The pen is an oversized toothpaste tubelike plastic container with a wide tip at one end and a felt-like tip at the other.
Using the appropriate tip, apply a small amount of the contents onto the stains and rub it in gently. Let it sit for a few minutes and wipe it off with a damp paper towel. The stain should be completely gone.
Q. I was wondering if you had any information on the Rainhandler gutterless system.
A. Not only do I know about the Rainhandler, but we have it on some of our eaves. I have also recommended it to a number of friends and clients who love it.
The Rainhandler (www.rainhandler.com) is an ingenious set of horizontal louvered strips on a frame that is installed as low as possible on eaves' fascia boards.
On houses without gutters - often the case in cold areas of the country where ice is a severe problem - the Rainhandler disperses the water draining off the roof in a wide shower, instead of draining off the roof as a sheet that digs a moat into the grade and can lead to basement leakage.
It does not collect leaves for long, as they get blown away by the wind, and it can stand the weight of a lot of icicles, as I have seen at a client's house with a poorly performing roof.
I had them installed in the back of our house to eliminate seasonal gutter-cleaning on a roof that is two-and-a-half stories high.
Gutters are still appropriate where it is not desirable to have water drain onto the ground, such as on sidewalks or driveways, and where the roof is clear of ice dams. If a roof is not performing well because of inadequate attic insulation, the gutters and downspouts could fill with ice, freeze up and suffer heavy damage.
Q. I had a new high-efficiency Carrier furnace/AC unit installed about three years ago so when I retired I could go south for the winter. I live northwest of Chicago, and in the very cold, i.e., single digits or below, the intake becomes blocked with snow, which I think is formed by sucking in the water vapor from the exhaust vent.
The vents are about six feet from the ground and located about one foot apart. The exhaust vent has a 90-degree downward fitting, and the intake has a 90-degree horizontal fitting facing away from the exhaust vent. After the first blockage, I put a 2-foot PVC extension on the intake vent, but it still gets blocked by snow.
I now am trying to prevent it with a piece of lumber about 16 inches wide resting on the ground and leaning at an angle against the exhaust vent. I do not know yet if this will work. Any thoughts on how to prevent the snow from forming and blocking the air intake, which shuts off the furnace?
A. I don't see how snow can be the problem with the vent pipes six feet from the ground.
I think your problem is more likely the exhaust being drawn into the intake because of the way the exhaust vent is terminated.
A 90-degree elbow on an exhaust vent pipe is unusual; it should be either a preferable 22 1/2-degree elbow or, at most, a 45-degree elbow, and the pipe should extend out of the wall and not terminate close to the wall.
Both the exhaust and intake pipes should be screened.
It sounds as if your problem is caused by the exhaust being directed close to the wall and being sucked into the intake pipe. But it is surprising that this is still happening after you extended the intake pipe by two feet, placing the intake three feet from the exhaust.
Try removing the 90-degree elbow from the exhaust, extend the pipe about one foot and terminate it with a 22 1/2-degree elbow facing in the opposite direction to the intake pipe.
Q. Last winter, I noticed that when we had a snowfall that exceeded a couple of inches and the temperature stayed below 32 for a week or so, the corner of the roof where the downspout is would begin to overflow when the temperature did exceed 32. It does not appear to back up in heavy rains. The bathroom/shower fan is vented out the soffit about 10 feet from this corner. The interior attic roof is beginning to look wet without any leakage occurring. The full exterior of the house is brick. Is this from venting through the soffit? If venting is the issue, is it better to rerun the venting through the brick on the side of the house (no soffit) or through the roof?
A. It sounds as if the two issues are not related. My guess is that the overflow at the corner of the roof where the downspout is may be caused by the fact that the downspout froze up during the extended cold period.
When the snow melts as the temperature rises over 32 degrees, water cannot drain through the downspout because it is ice-filled.
Since water does not back up in heavy rains, the downspout appears to be able to handle the roof drainage when there is no snow on the roof.
One solution may be to change the downspout to a commercial type, which has twice the cross section of a residential spout.
But that may not be sufficient. For the downspout to freeze up, there must be some heat loss through the attic, which causes the snow pack to melt from its bottom, filling the gutters and spouts with ice.
You may want to consider an energy audit to determine if the attic needs some tightening up and more insulation.
The second problem is the bathroom fan venting through the soffit. Whenever the bathroom fan is vented through a soffit, the steam coming out is directed back into the attic, causing the wetness, which may eventually allow mold to develop. It can also, over time, cause other, more serious problems, affecting the roof sheathing, etc.
Bathroom fans should not be vented through the roof, except in hot climates, because condensation in the vent will run down and damage the fan, the ceiling and wet the insulation.
Unfortunately, you may need to redirect the vent through the brick of the side of the house with no soffit.
Two woodpecker solutions: "I have read your column for years and I love it!
"I had a pesky woodpecker that was either going after box elder bugs or marking its territory (which I learned from you). I hung a small wind chime on the side of my house on the cedar siding that had all of the activity. The wind chime was active even in a slight wind. It must have been a factor, because the woodpecker stopped punching holes in the back of my house. It never came back. Thanks for all of the great info!"
And here is another:
"In your column today in the Daily Herald, someone was asking what could be done to stop woodpeckers from attacking their house siding.
"One solution a friend of mine tried was nailing small nails to the siding and crisscrossing fishing line attached to the nails about 1 to 2 inches away from the siding. My friend claimed it worked to deter the birds and the birds moved on to another neighborhood."
• Henri de Marne was a remodeling contractor in Washington, D.C., for many years, and is now a consultant. His book, "About the House," is available at www.upperaccess.com. His website is www.henridemarne.com. Email questions to henridemarne@gmavt.net, or mail First Aid for the Ailing House, Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.
© 2015, United Feature Syndicate Inc.