Water from vent fans means re-install for owner

Q. Last winter, in the very cold weather, I had water dripping from the vent fans in the second-floor bathrooms. After inspecting the attic, I found a heavy build-up of ice on the inside of the roof. When it warmed, the ice turned to water, causing not only the vent dripping, but the wetting of all the insulation. I had all of the insulation removed and replaced with R-38, and the contractor indicated the cause was a lack of venting, so he installed baffles in between all of the joists. This year I inspected the attic and found the inside of the roof was wet. Any suggestions?

Arlington Heights

A. You haven't said where the ducts from the bathroom fans vent out. Are they going straight up through the roof or to a ridge vent? Or do they run up and out to a soffit or gable vent? All of these setups are wrong. Since water is dripping back into the bathrooms from the vents, the vents are obviously on an upward slope of some kind, so condensation runs back into the fans. You need to reinstall the vents in the manner I've described in many previous columns. Here is a repeat:

The best way to vent bathroom fans is to use Schedule 20, bell-end plastic pipes with a slight tilt toward the outside. (The bell end should be facing the fan side, not the outdoor side.) This is accomplished by setting the pipes on small blocks that diminish in size as you move away from the fan. Terminate the pipes through the wall with aluminum jacks. (Avoid plastic jacks, as they all seem to break in time, allowing cold air, bugs and mice into the pipes.) Finally, tuck 4-inch-thick fiberglass batts snugly on each side of the pipes, and cover them with more batts. This will retard condensation that should only occur near the end of the pipes and drain outside through the jack.

For the ice problem to be so extensive, there is a tremendous amount of moisture in the attic, and it is doubtful that it is all due to the bathroom fans' venting. No ventilation system will be able to handle it. You need to find the source of the moisture penetration or leakage and deal with it. Ask your utility company if they do audits or recommend someone who does.

Q. I read your column about sealcoating an asphalt driveway with interest. We had a new asphalt driveway put in Oct. 23, 2007. This included taking up all the old asphalt, putting down a new base and adding new asphalt. After the first frost, we noticed small stones coming up from the asphalt in spots and potholes started to form. The installer has not been responsive to our calls about this problem. Why is this happening, and what should we do to remedy the problem? Your recommendation was not to sealcoat until the driveway is 2 years old.

Via e-mail

A. You have been royally ripped off! For these problems to develop so soon after the driveway was laid can only mean that you were grossly taken advantage of. The fact that the stones came up from the asphalt indicates that the hot mix did not have enough oil; in other words, it was too dry. The potholes are far worse. This should never happen so soon on a private driveway with little traffic. It indicates that the asphalt mix was/is too thin. Gather samples of the broken asphalt and save them. Take plenty of photos of the damage. Call the paving contractor and demand that the driveway be redone or that your money be refunded. You are unlikely to succeed, so you choices are to file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Division of the attorney general's office. (That won't cost you a thing, and it may or may not lead to a satisfactory resolution.) Or hire a lawyer and hope for the best.

Q. My house has a crawl space. The surface is crushed stone covered with plastic. The plastic is covered with years of dust, and I was wondering if I could cover it with another cover of plastic. Or do I have to remove the existing plastic cover first? The crawl space is dry with no water problems.

Via e-mail

A. Go ahead and cover the old plastic with a new layer. The new layer will be protected from the stones by the old plastic and its layer of dust.

Q. I have a question about installing a metal roof onto part of my cabin in Northern Pennsylvania. My cabin has 25-year asphalt shingles on the primary gable roof.

A small 6-by-8-foot mudroom addition with a shed-style roof was added and tied into the gable roof. This small mudroom addition has rolled mineral paper as the roof covering because of a lack of adequate slope to support the use of asphalt shingles.

Also, the roof of the mudroom is made from 2-by-4s, and that ties into the primary gable roof of the cabin. The mudroom ceiling has 3½-inch fiberglass insulation between the 2-by-4 roof joists.

This mudroom has existed for over 25 years. It seems that the new generation of rolled mineral paper on the roof of the mudroom addition completely wears out after just a few years. The mudroom addition has no roof ventilation, and since it's made from 2-by-4s, I don't see how I could add any ventilation.

I was told that I could purchase metal roofing for this addition, and they sell a conversion piece to tie into the asphalt shingles of the primary gable roof. Are there any considerations I should be aware of by converting the shed-style roof from rolled mineral paper to metal roofing material?

Austin, Pa.

A. I assume that the mudroom roof is tied into the eaves and is a continuation of the existing roof, but with a much shallower pitch. If you screw metal roof panels directly over the existing roll-roofing, you should be able to use the conversion piece to flash the metal to the asphalt shingles. Be sure that the design of the metal panels will allow you to do so without affecting the asphalt shingles by lifting them too much and risking that wind-driven rain will get underneath. Do not remove the roll-roofing; a water-repellent membrane is needed under metal roofs to catch the inevitable condensation that develops on their underside.

Q. We have lived in our townhouse for seven years now and have experienced water problems in our basement for the past four and it is getting progressively worse. When we purchased the townhouse, it was approximately 13 years old, and the previous owners never even had a sump pump in the pit and -- to the best of our knowledge -- never had any water in the basement. When we have torrential downpours, our sump pumps cannot keep up with the water flowing into the hole. Our main sump pump (Little Giant) -- along with the battery backup on top of it -- sits in the main pit that is in the back of our basement. Together, these pumps handle about 5,000 to 6,000 gallons per hour and can barely keep up, and, in the case of the rain we had this past Saturday, some water rose over the French drain not far from the pit. The water level gets very high in the pit but has not overflowed yet. The water we get in the basement is from the overflow from the French drains (most of which comes from the back of the house). Since we have had so many water problems, we recently had another pit drilled on the other side of the basement (in the front of the townhouse) and installed another pump.

This pump also turns on during the extreme downpours, but the water level does not rise significantly like in the other pit. My husband and I have spent several thousand dollars on plumbing expenses to control the water damage inside. However, no one has been able to solve our problem. This is taking over our lives; we panic when we hear a rain forecast, and we need to get to the bottom of the problem. We have contacted a few engineering companies who could come out and assess the area. However, a substantive report of the exact problem could cost thousands. Here are a few other facts you should know:

• Coincidentally or perhaps not, when we finished our basement four years ago, the problems started. There is an injector pump (next to the main pump), which was installed when we put the bathroom and wet bar in the basement. We have been told by various contractors that the installation and presence of this is not the problem. Could the drilling for this injector have caused any problems resulting in our excessive leakage?

• We are an end unit, and no other units attached to us get any water in their pits to even turn the sump pumps on. In fact, some don't even have sump pumps.

• Long, narrow puddles appear in the back of my house and the other units that I am attached to during the hard downpours. They dissipate when the rain stops.

• The water from the pumps is led outside to the leaders that also contain the water from the gutters. We have had professionals test the leader lines to ensure they were not clogged. The gutters also are clear, and the land appears to be even between my unit and those I am attached to.

• If the rain is not torrential, my pumps can keep up and in some cases may not even go on. The torrential rains are unfortunately occurring more frequently. Could our problem be a grade deficiency?

Via e-mail

A. Let's review the facts: No water problem in the basement before you bought the townhouse, and nothing for the first three years you lived there. Leakage began after you had a sewer injector put in to handle the waste from the bathroom and the sink you had installed in the basement. This sewer injector is near the back wall of the house, not far from the first sump hole. Leakage occurs mostly at the back wall of the house. You mention French drains inside the basement; are you referring to a trench filled with stones at the base of the walls? The water coming in during torrential downpours overflows the drains, which is not far from the sump pit, but not the sump pit itself. The water in the second sump pump pit does not rise as high as it does in the pit at the back of the house. The sump pumps discharge the water into the same pipes as the downspouts.

Given these facts, as well as the fact that the leakage occurs very fast during a torrential downpour but not during normal rainfalls, overtaking two powerful sump pumps, this is my take:

In drilling for the ejector pump, the earth in the area was disturbed and a channel was created allowing the water from the foundation drains that carry not only the roof water, but also the sump pump discharge, to flow into the stone bed under the concrete floor. It comes so fast, and in such a volume, that it overflows the stone drains you refer to as French drains. The fix may be difficult.

First, have a competent contractor check the grade around your unit. Raise it gently where it is flat or low. Disconnect the sump pump discharges from the foundation drains, and have them dump the water onto splashblocks (gently sloping grade should move the water away from the foundation.) If this does not solve the problem (and it probably won't, considering the extent of it), consider altering the downspouts to discharge onto splashblocks as well. This should work unless there is so much water percolating in the ground, but, in that case, the leakage should not come on as abruptly as it does now; it should take several hours to a few days. Let me know if this works.

© 2008, United Feature Syndicate, Inc.