David Meiland

My initial take on this was high-resistance connections. I've been pondering whether or not I know a HVAC guy who could determine that. I shared my concern with the owner's contractor, who lives a few houses down. He turned off the breakers to this unit. I advised the tenant that she could get cheaper heat from space heaters, so she started calling friends to borrow some. Tomorrow morning I'm going to call the owner and explain what a mini-split is.

Here's a visible light image. I'm not an HVAC tech and was only there to check out a high electric bill for the utility. There was very little air coming out of the registers. I opened the cabinet to make sure there wasn't anything blatantly wrong, like a dead body blocking the airflow. I wouldn't know where to start with a multimeter. Sometimes I put an amp clamp in the panel to see what a system is drawing, but that's usually when I want to know if a heat pump system is operating the heat strips in warm weather (which is very common around here). There were major problems here. Warm air was gushing out of the floor hatch to the crawl space. I couldn't get more than a few feet into the crawl, because ductwork was blocking the way, but I suspect a disconnect somewhere down there. The most amusing thing--this furnace once supplied a detached garage a few feet from the house, as well as the house itself. There had been a supply duct running through the great outdoors from one attic to the other, now removed. There was a return duct sucking air from outdoors in the gable of the house, in addition to a couple of returns in the house ceiling. The tenant has been paying >$400/month for electric heat and has been freezing. Click to Enlarge 45.18 KB

I have absolutely nothing to go on here--just snapped some images because I had the imager in my hand, and looking for comments. This is a "Wesco" electric furnace in a 1950s ranch house. It's fed by a pair of 50-amp breakers and was drawing roughly 11 Kw, based on clocking the meter, no amp clamp used. I was impressed by how hot these wires and connectors get. I recognize that they feed the elements, but it still seems high. Also looks like only one (two?) of two (four?) elements is working? Click to Enlarge 38.2?KB

FWIW I asked this question because a client of mine called and asked if I could send someone to change the batteries in all of his alarms... large house, probably a dozen of them, many up high. I know they are several years old. Based on comments here I told him to count them up and I would send an electrician out with that many new units. No point in all that ladder setup to change batteries on old units.

And if you buy the place, figure out why there's enough moisture in the attic to support life forms...

I feel like such an idiot for calling them SDs in my original post, when they clearly are not. How I've gotten through life to this point I don't know...

Is there a standard recommendation for replacement of typical builder-grade AC-powered battery-backup SDs?

Widely accepted best practices call for a WRB, and in this case it was omitted. Only common exception would be ZIP sheathing, or locations like Tucson.

Indeed, and the wetness doesn't appear to go around the corner much if at all. Interesting image.

Not sure I'd call that humidity... looks like wet drywall, greenboard, or possibly CBU there.

Just curious, do you think that house has WRB behind the vinyl, or is it just straight to the OSB?

Was that carbon fiber put there to stop water intrusion? If so, I think whoever sold that deserves a beating.

That unit should be able to supply a single fixture at full flow easily, so it shouldn't have to throttle back as you experienced. There are a lot of moving parts and chips in those things, and a lot to go wrong, but it sounds like it worked at the other fixtures. We had a problem similar to what you describe on a recent remodel with major replumbing and a water heater change-out. I don't have the full details, but one of the existing shower valves didn't like it. This did not have to do with debris, it was related to the internal pressure balancing device and was a known issue to the plumber.

Next you're going to tell us that someone discovered that moss could be used to bleach wood...

I have seen remediation companies use "injecta-dry" machines to blow hot air into cavities to dry them. but the holes were smaller.

That's a deck-mounted unit. I would switch to curb-mounted on a 2x6 curb if you can, although it would require some interior work.

What type of skylight? Some are curb mounted and you can simply unscrew the existing and install the new. Others are deck mounted and have flashing tied directly into them, so you would need to strip shingles and replace them if you wanted to remove an existing skylight. Last year I re-flashed an incorrectly installed Velux 3048 curb-mounted unit on a 5:12 roof with architectural shingles. Remove the light, set it aside, peel back the shingles, tie in new felt, re-flash and re-shingle. Took a day. I bought one bundle of shingles and the Velux flashing kit, provided a bit of 30# felt, some coil stock, etc. About $750 including the materials, disposal, etc. Around here it could be had for under $500 to over $1000.

I do blower door/IR inspections often. IMO it's the fastest way to definitively identify the air leakage issues and write a scope of work for someone to fix them. Yes, you can do it without the IR part, but it will be slow if the building is at all complicated, there are high ceilings, etc., and you will probably miss stuff. You can do a fair amount of it without the blower door, too, but frankly, if your business is to find, describe, and possibly fix this stuff, why bother doing it without precision tools. I don't want to miss anything, and I don't want to be there all day. Set-up and execution are quick and the fees pay for the equipment, or else your business plan didn't work. This is not a home inspection thing, although I think it would be a great adjunct for home inspectors (Kurt's correct comments about getting buy-in from the customer notwithstanding). I tend to get calls from people who know they need something done (they have comfort issues, often severe) so the buy-in is already there. We have mandatory blower door testing on new homes, so in those cases I am usually giving the builder a brief report on what they can improve. In other cases I am the contractor and we apply a certain amount of energy improvement stuff on just about every job. You can also do a lot with a blower door and a home-made spray rack if you want to find water leaks.

I don't think IR is going to help much with moisture on/in split-face block, unless it's really wet, in which case I think you're going to be able to see it visually. Interested to see what Kurt says.

There's a lot of Dr. Who available for streaming on Netflix. I would amend your consulting agreement to reflect the need for high speed internet instead of a DVD player.

Agree with Ben, the time to do this was before any tile was set. Install the tile backer board an inch or so back from the extent of the tile, install drywall up to it, tape/sand/prime/paint the drywall, install the tile, using caulk that matches the grout at the edge of the tile. It will take very skilled drywall finishing now that it's already tiled.

$75/hour is painfully low for the hassle of participating in a lawsuit. I would try to double that. If your experience is like mine, you will be asked many questions that vary slightly, and your responses compared, looking for inconsistencies. Listen carefully and ask them to repeat if you're the slightest bit unclear what they mean. Think even more carefully about your answers, give them slowly, and add nothing extra. It is very different than normal conversation, and very taxing. You can sit there for hours on the hot seat. It's hard to see how you'll be considered a witness to fact. The opposing side will want to know if, in your opinion, there is any possible alternate interpretation of anything. As soon as that happens you're an expert. If I had any question about that I would ask the judge to clarify my role right away.

We easily heat our 1100 foot 1935 single story with a small central woodstove. It is tight and well insulated, which is critical. About 2/3 is open plan, the rest bedrooms/bathroom/laundry. They stay within a few degrees. I see a lot of houses here that have a woodstove as primary heat, maybe a bit added by baseboards but often not.

You can get reasonably accurate temperatures from shiny metals with IR if you know the emissivity of the metal and the background temperature of the environment. Some low end IR imagers and even some of the IR thermometers are adjustable. It is very easy if you can put a piece of Scotch 33 electrical tape or even masking tape on the metal as a target. Not sure I would do this with a hot exhaust pipe, maybe just use a thermocouple on it, or drill the pipe and put in a flue probe. I suppose the pipe could be hotter than the gas inside it due to conduction from the burner, but that would seem to be highly variable with the design of the unit, and would certainly vary a lot with exactly how far from the flue connection you take your reading. I don't see how the gas being "in motion" has much to do with the pipe being heated. If the gas is at a reasonably steady temperature, then equilibrium will be reached, taking into account the temperature outside the pipe, the emissivity of the pipe, etc. I'd still like to know more about what exactly the manufacturer means when they say the max exhaust temp = X. Where and under what conditions?

Not something I know much about, but if they state that there's a max exhaust temp, is that right at the exit from the box, or could it be further from the box, perhaps at the closest point that vent pipe could enter combustible construction given minimum clearance? And I assume it states degrees F and your are measuring F, to state the obvious. It doesn't seem likely that your unit is that far out of calibration. Sorry, no real help here...