kurt

Take an establishing shot, i.e., pull back and show us what we're looking at, then give us a close up. Is there any amount of dampness or moisture that collects in any of the locations where you see the red stuff? It looks like there might be a little blackish staining on the wood next to the duct, which usually means some amount of moisture. I sometimes see a strange reddish moldy crap on shower curtains. There are molds with a reddish tinge, but they aren't going to grow without moisture.

I don't recall anyone ever having been chagrined in here before.

I agree. There's lots better ways to do this stuff than conventional approaches. As far as hitting R values, I've done stuff like put foam board on the interior under the drywall and 6 inches in the rafters. I like foam board. I don't like fiberglass particularly. And, R values are just one thing. How tight is the building? Tightness rules, AFAIC.

Joe talked about this at the PA seminar.....fundamentally, insulation with ventilation works in this sort of elementary assembly. The NC climate isn't extreme enough to warrant the expense of doing anything else.

Ventilate. Ridge vent and continuous strip soffit inlets.

It's a brand of "bubble wrap". Delta FL www.cosella-dorken.com/bvf-ca-en/produc ... cts/fl.php

What do you think about Delta and putting a continuous duty fan on it ala radon reduction system? We did one like that where it was a soaker; it worked. I don't know if it was overkill, but it was effective. We thought about putting a miradrain mat on the wall and tying it all together, but then we couldn't get to the foundation for future "parging". So, we left the foundation bare.

That's me. Machine in the kitchen. I'll allow as to how I've used my tablet effectively when going through big apartment buildings and I'm just inventorying stuff w/very basic notes. I built a little checklist in Filemaker that runs on my iPad, and it works OK. I still don't like carrying an electronic device while I'm inspecting though. It's distracting.

Yeah, and some run water like a sieve. I don't see many of those. Ours are usually just damp with the sand sifting out.

They do seem dryer; I'll grant you that. That is, until it peels off and you see what's really going on under there. They're damp. Almost all of them. We have some around here where the soils are sand, like pure silica sand dune sand, remnants of the Ice Age glacier. Those guys are just fine and dandy. Dry as a bone. Then, there's others built in areas that are filled in swampland and a city built on it. Those boys are a mess, and all one can do is slather them to keep the sandy mortar from sifting out. No one size fits all with stone foundations. But, most of them are damp.

Everyone gets to do what they like. I don't like walking around with a tablet. It gets in the way of thinking and acting like an inspector. It looks official and inspector-ly though.

A couple things.... I've never looked at an old joint that didn't have a multitude of these issues. It all settles into wherever it's going to spend it's life and it pretty much stays there. Notching a couple of old growth joists isn't something I'd do nowadays, but it doesn't ever seem to hurt anything all that much aside from some settlement that no one seems to care about and that's not ever going to cause any real issues. Do this stuff in new engineered lumber, you can get houses falling down. Do it in an old house with old growth timber framing....and it's just another thing to deal with when you remodel it again someday. I wouldn't call them butchers. They didn't know any better. Wood framing practice and technology was maybe a few years old when this place was built. No one had done this stuff before, i.e., built a wood house and filled it with pipes and wires.

One can say all of what I've said because we're getting information in bits and pieces and I'm commenting on what information I have available. It's why I asked you to break it down into parts so we could figure it out. I still think they're ripping you off because of what Tom said and Kibbel reiterated and clarified. It's a stone foundation. Chipping and diddling around with it isn't going to change the equation of dozens of millions of mold spores on every square inch of it. Biocides, as much as we like the idea of them, aren't all that effective; go ahead, pay for it, but it's not worth whatever you're paying. You could do the same thing with a dollars worth of bleach. And, however much water is part of their application immediately becomes the basis for more mold collection and growth. IOW, biocides don't do much in the long, or even short, picture. Whatever mold they "remove" will instantly be replaced because mold spores are floating around everywhere all the time in great profusion. Tearing out the current finished basement will help and get it to the point where you can, more or less, control it. There are methods for finishing your basement so it is clean and reasonably mold free. Some of us could describe those methods if you're interested, but they're not cheap and there will be some disagreement amongst those of us that would comment. But, there's ways to do it. I think you're confused because what you're hearing in here contradicts what you're reading in popular media and being sold by shyster morons jumping on the next big thing and trying to drag a buck out of it. What we have to say is boring. No sensation, no craziness of weird people, no multi million dollar lawsuits, etc., etc. The actualities of mold are pretty simple and basic. Simple and basic doesn't sell newspapers or get folks unable to find useful work a paycheck. IOW, what you're hearing in popular news media and sales pitches is self serving tripe. Mold is not good. It can be bad in varying ways, but it's only bad in very high concentrations, which you may have had and that you're now getting rid of. There's also the possibility that member of your family may be in the infinitesimally small percentage of the population that are genetically predisposed to have major problems with small amounts of mold, but that's something to pursue with your doctor, not a mold removal contractor or a bunch of home inspectors. So, you and your family are probably going to be just fine. Just don't waste a lot of money on crap that morons in the mold business are selling you.

They're using tablets as the all in one data input, camera, press a hot button on screen and comments appear, notepad-izing method of inspecting, which most folks that have been doing this for a while know to be pretty lousy. No amount of logic or practical experience will ever convince tablet loving inspecto-philes that tablet inspecting methods are lousy. If they do this job long enough, they'll figure it out, though. It kind of has to come as an epiphany. Epiphanies often happen after one drops their iPhone/iPad into a sump, or off a roof.

A disagreement on that one..... Parging does next to nothing to reduce moisture migration through the wall; plugging a leak from the inside is backwards and the usual cement used for "parging" is absorbent and conducts moisture quite nicely. We know moisture moves through cement like thin shit through a tall Swede. If cement didn't conduct moisture, there wouldn't be any need for damp proofing foundations, drainage plane mats, or any other moisture proofing of foundations. The simple presence of entire industries devoted to keeping moisture from migrating through concrete should be proof enough that cement isn't waterproof. There are a lot of ways for correcting and controlling moisture migration through old stone foundations, but parging definitely isn't one of them. The term parging, like tuckpointing, has been bastardized to mean smearing any kind of cement on any kind of masonry. Parging was originally a high lime content mortar that acted more as a poultice for "nourishing" the old masonry than as a moisture barrier. The lime acted somewhat as a moisture barrier.....he miracle of lime and carbonatation (not carbonization, that's for fizzy drinks), slowed moisture migration, but it didn't prevent moisture moving into the foundation. Time and ignorance eventually eliminated lime and folks imagined there was some kind of magic to new mortars that kept out water. I don't know why they thought this. No one ever used to think this. For reasons I do not understand, engineers like modern mortars. Modern mortars, applied to old stone foundations, have little use other than keeping the old sandy mortars from sifting out of the walls and to stabilize the foundation. That's about it. Moisture reduction....nope. They make people feel good though because it's all nice and clean looking. Today's parged stone foundation.....pretty wet, but with lots of pretty new cement smeared all over it...... Click to Enlarge 62.44 KB

You've got combinations of stuff that guarantees you will always have mold growth. 1) Old stone foundation. I don't care how dry you make the exterior, you're always going to have some amount of moisture in the wall as there isn't any damproofing on the exterior of old stone foundations. Wet moves to dry; damp soil will readily transfer moisture from the exterior to the interior. 2) You didn't tell us in the first post that you've got drywall, framing, carpeting, and other finish materials in this old stone foundation basement. It's all organic material, i.e, mold food. Putting mold food into an old stone foundation basement guarantees mold growth. As soon as you place all that vapor absorbent material against the old stone foundation and on the concrete floor, you restrict vapor movement, moisture accumulates, and mold grows. 3) No amount of chipping, cleaning, pointing, fiddling, or fussing is going to rid the property of mold. It's always there. Giving it food and water will make it grow. You probably can't get rid of the water (or vapor), but you can deprive it of food. That means you tear out the basement and you certainly don't live down there. Sorry to break the news to you. You can't finish old basements like yours and think it's going to ever be mold free. I see this on an almost daily basis, including today. All that moisture that migrates into your house used to evaporate harmlessly into the house atmosphere and dissipate. When you wrap the foundation in absorbent and vapor retardant materials, the moisture accumulates, and you get mold. A couple additional points..... The type of mold is immaterial. The fact that anyone is making a big deal out of any particular type of mold indicates these folks are shysters. The fact that these shysters are also trying to chip and scrape their way to a mold free property without informing you of the impossibility of your making an old stone foundation finished basement mold free....means they're even stupider than I originally imagined. I think you got a real problem, but these folks aren't helping you. They're ripping you off.

Hold it a minute..... Explain what's going on here in simple bullet points. Who did the test? What were the "test" results? Did the tester recommend the "repair"? How did this "problem" come to light? Has the source of the moisture that's allowing mold growth been identified? (It's obvious, but I'd still like to know) From your initial explanation/question/existential cry into the wilderness, it sounds like a bollixed up solution to a problem that may not exist. Calm down and explain what's going on as clearly as possible.

Is that how they grow strawberries out there? It's definitely for growing something, but I've never seen berries done like this.

It's a janitorial slop sink faucet. See that little "hook" on the spigot? It's for hanging a bucket and the brace is to keep it from breaking from the weight of the bucket.

What Hockstein said. What's 2.95? Percent?

And yeah, what Tom said. Ventilate the place. Get exhaust fans working. Open windows. It's not complicated.

You got the conditions. Bunch of stinky young people....check. No one's cleaning anything.......check. Not running furnace, stale air...check. Crap piled in closets and probably everywhere else.....check. Open crawlspace putting constant moisture into home atmosphere....double check. Since it's a rental, you're not going to do what really needs to be done which is install a GOOD vapor barrier on the crawlspace floor. Running a dehumidifier isn't going to do much of anything until you restrict or address source issues. The windows are a factor, but they're just the indicator, not the problem. Or, call a mold consultant and spend money learning basic high school physics....wet moves to dry, hot moves to cold, moisture condenses on cold surfaces (windows!!), etc. and elementary hygiene (which you already apparently know). A few fundamentals.... http://chicagohouseweb.com/mold-testing ... fallacies/

Yeah, or that. Or, wiring it so both elements fire at the same time. The 10 gallon mini primer doesn't make much sense in my view. I'm always interested in experiments and results, but it just seems like dinking around to me.

Really. I don't know as if they'd have any appreciable savings from dinking around with 10 gallon "primer" tanks. Maybe, but I doubt it. If they were short with a 40 gallon tank, and I think they will be, they should just spring for another 40, set it up in series or parallel as one believes, and when house guests arrive, turn on the 2nd water heater. A 10 gallon unit is well on the way to the cost of a new 40 gallon unit, and the installation costs are about the same; why not spend a little extra dough and get a real tank and turn it on and off as necessary?

What do they use those tunnels for?