Terence McCann

Great pic Erby. Ifin it don't fit apply more pressure (and apply a lot of Great Stuff so the water doesn't run to the floor below).

What is the main source of heat for this home? Is it a hydronic system and if so is this the boiler for heating? A few things: The piping is awful, looks like a hack put the boiler in. I love the poly tubing for the makeup water. I don't see a backflow preventer. It's hard for me to make out but is that boiler sitting on a wood floor? Is that the T/P valve is on the right rear of the boiler? Does the flue have proper clearances? Is the city water galvanized or just silver painted copper? Any makeup air to the "boiler room"? I'm sure there's a lot more wrong here. Best thing they can do is get a good HVAC contractor out there. To the main question though, I don't think this boiler is supplying hot water for potable use. It looks like it's a three zone system. Did you find three or four thermostats in the house? On the bizarre chance that they are taking boiler water for potable use; run a few faucets and see if the makeup water line to the boiler starts to get cold. In any case I'd dig around more on Sunday to nail down the source of hot water. Let us know what you find.

Did you state that a plumber needs to repair the plumbing under the sink or did you just note a leak? In older homes, that have original cast, once you start repairing one section you may find other parts that are weak and need replacement even though they weren't leaking at the time. When I find a leak in these homes I always write that there may be more damage found during the repair (not cya, just fact). I also talk about it face to face. I agree with W.J. though and would take this opportunity to turn the situation into a positive. Meet with the unhappy customer, explain your position (once and don't be argumentative) and then say you'll pay for the repair. I would rather be out 150.00 than have a customer telling others not to use our company.

When I first started the business I set appointments to meet with all the mortgage companies that would see me. It was a lot of cold calling but well worth the effort.

Love my UltraStinger. When a customer asks to use it I suffer from separation anxiety.

Hmm... You make a much better home inspector (although I had a slight grin [] ).

I see it done all the time Chad & just keep movin' on.

Holy cow, if Bill hasn't seen it before must be one of a kind.

I tested a home where the final reading was 15.8. The home had a small basement with crawl spaces on either side. The crawl spaces had dirt floors. Question is what method would they use to mitigate the home? All the ones I have seen deal with a standard basement with a concrete floor, vent pipe under the floor etc.

We have a boat load of bank owned property here. Seems like 1 out of 4 inspections is on a bank owned property, some nice homes too. The numbers are really up.

Rule of thumb is you can oversize the evap by 1/2 ton. This use to be standard practice for better dehumidification. If you go much larger you run into the problem of not boiling off all the refrigerant and bringing back liquid to the compressor (3 ton evap, 3 ton expansion valve, 2 ton condensing unit). If you used a 3 ton evap with a 2 ton expansion valve then there would be the problem of to high of a superheat coming back to the compressor (to much coil and not enough refrigerant).

That's correct.

Most of the dirt around diffusers is caused by poor housekeeping. Carrier put out a good video on air flow patterns around diffusers (dealt mostly with their modu-line style diffusers). You can have a bad heat exchanger and never see dirt around supply diffusers, would be nice though wouldn't it?

Hey Bill, just got back from a weeks vacation. The wife and I went hiking in Hocking Hills, Ohio. Great scenery - Old Mans Cave, Ash Cave & Cedar Falls to name a few. Beautiful terra-forming caused by retreating glaciers. You were right when you called it "twinned". If you Google "Carrier Twinning Kit" you'll come up with quite a few good links. Two furnaces with one condensing unit. I've only seen two of these systems in action and that was many years ago. Off the top of my head: As long as you have a full column of liquid to the TXV (expansion valve) and as long as the super heat is correct everyone should play nicely (however flow rates through conventional tee's is the problem). I'll keep digging to see what I can come up with for a piping diagram. The twinned systems do work though.

After great conversation with the retired owner of a Carrier dealership I stand corrected. As Jim had mentioned, the condenser surface area is much larger than the evaporator so, in the heating mode it is capable of extracting more heat than the evaporator is able to reject. High head pressure is the result. I had thought that the evaporator, being multi pass, would be able to keep up. Wrong. He said that while starting it to make sure the reversing valve worked wouldn’t do any harm running it for too long could result in damage. Moral of the story: If you stray from manufactures recommendations you are on your own.

I knew my statement would bring everyone out of the woodwork. The constant is temperature and pressure. As most know; if you leave a can or refrigerant in a garage (out of the sun) you can tell what the ambient temperature it is by measuring the pressure of the can. In my 80 degree example it doesn't matter if the unit is running in a/c or heating. I wouldn't hesitate to run the a/c if it were 80 in the house and 80 outside, all the unit sees is temperatures and pressures (almost). The true unknown is superheats and sub-cooling (at least to me). I have never put on a strap-on thermostat to measure these in the heating mode. While the temperatures and pressures will remain constant I'm not sure what the sub-cooling from the evaporator and the superheat from the condenser coil would be. This is why I wanted to talk to a my friend that works at Trane before commenting. In the end it's always proper to defer to manufactures recommendation so, if they say don't do it, then don't.

A heat pump is nothing more than an air conditioner that is running in reverse. The compressor doesn't reverse flow, it is accomplished through the use of a reversing valve. So, in the heating mode the evaporator becomes the condenser and the condenser becomes the evaporator. Let's say it's 80 degrees outside and inside the house it's 80 degrees as well. You wouldn't hesitate to turn the air conditioning on when it 80 degrees inside and outside would you? So, if you put it in the heating mode the evaporator is outside and it 80 degrees, the condenser is inside and it's 80 degrees, same difference. I run them just to make sure the reversing valve works (I have found a few that were defective). Once it starts blowing heat and I get a delta T I stop the test. I have a call into a few of my contacts with the manufactures, that I still have from back in the day, for some official looking documentation. Once I get it I'll post it here.

I guess you can use the term head to refer to pressure however head pressure is typically used in reference to circulating pumps. On most smaller systems the city water supply valve is set to 12psi. This is a simple PDF explaining why 12psi: http://www.bellgossett.com/literature/files/4247.pdf As we fill and vent the system, with the circ pump off, we fill to a static pressure of 12psi static pressure. On systems that have an expansion tank with a sight glass you try to get the water to fill about half way in the sight glass using the airtrol. Refer to this PDF for more information on the B-G Airtrol system: http://www.bellgossett.com/literature/files/599.pdf Now that we have the system filled and vented we can now run the pump. Pump head should not be confused with static pressure. Another simple pdf: http://www.bellgossett.com/literature/files/4264.pdf We had a good discussion here a few years back on whether a pump should be on the return line or supply line. Although it might not make much difference on a small residential application with fractional horse pumps it makes a big difference with commercial application and bigger motors. If you pushing water into the boiler you automatically raise the pressure inside the boiler. Add heat, which expands water, and now you're flirting with causing the safety valve to weep (30+psi inside the boiler). When you pull out of the boiler the you're not artificially raising the pressure inside the boiler. This problem really comes to light when a heat exchanger starts to leak on a boiler that should still have a lot of life left in it. As the relief valve weeps it is draining water to get the pressure down. Most building custodians just keep adding water to the boiler or the automatic fill valve does it for them. As a constant supply of new water comes in the mineral deposits drop out at the bottom of the heat exchanger in the form of scale. If anyone has taken apart a section of boiler there will surely know what I'm talking about. As the scale builds up it acts as an insulation barrier between the water and the heat exchanger. Now all we have to do is add heat, keep the water from carrying the heat away and now the cast cracks due to over heating. Unfortunately, most companies chalk it up to a defective heat exchanger with out troubleshooting the entire system. This is another PDF that talks about pumping away: http://www.bellgossett.com/Press/Counte ... 2001-A.pdf Go to http://www.bellgossett.com/ and spend an hour or so browsing their PDF, you'll be glad you did. Well, looks like I strayed from the path again, what else is new? If my car speedometer shows MPH as well as KM/H shouldn't it be a speedsometer? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

[:-graduat

Need more information about the job. Where are the ducts located? Where is the air handler located? Is the air handler vertical or horizontal? Is the water on the inside of the duct or between the duct and insulation wrap? What kind of condensate removal system was used (condensate pump)? Did you observe any condensate coming out of the unit itself?

Thanks Steve, very informative. Attached is a picture of the entire home. Image Insert: 67.65 KB

Nice work Chad. How old is your home? 1900 +-?

A few questions Mike: On your friends house, how could you tell by looking at it that there were moisture problems? With the moisture detector, scan the exterior or interior wall at the places that are prone to problems? In my 4th picture should there have been weep screed at the bottom? I need to get some training on EFIS and stucco applications, not my strong suit for sure.

Thanks Chad, appreciate it. There is very little EIFS up here as well (first home I've seen it on). It was a bank owned repo built in 2003. The craftsmanship on the rest of the house was sub-standard. Someone decided to take the dishwasher, garbage disposal and all the kitchen cabinet pulls. The air conditioning wouldn't start but the final nail, for the potential buyer, came after we looked in the attic and it was black.

Up in this neck of the woods stucco is almost non-existent so I have very little field experance with it. I did a home this morning that, I believe, has a stucco exterior. I looked for weep screed but didn't find any. I have attached a few pictures of the exterior to get a few opinions. TIA. Image Insert: 51.11 KB Image Insert: 35.37 KB Image Insert: 37.46 KB Image Insert: 55.17 KB