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Posted by Bubba on October 3, 2006, 12:10 pm
On 03 Oct 2006 10:11:58 -0500, t@toddh.net (Todd H.) wrote:
>diegoNheather@gmail.com writes:
>> I purchased a home in Maryland 6 months ago. During a heavy rainfall,
>> I happened to glance into one of the air ducts and saw about 2-3 inches
>> of water. These houses are about 40 yrs old and built on concrete
>> slab. I have had 4 or 5 different people out here and no one can tell
>> me for sure what to do. The waterproofing company suggested a 20k
>> trench to be dug around the home. The HVAC people said to cap the
>> vents and run the ac in the ceiling. (this is a two story home). The
>> other HVAC guy said he would dig up my floors and find the leaking
>> pipes. The other two guys said that they would just "live with it".
>> Please tell me is if you know of ANYTHING else to try. Thank you!
>
>Howdy Diego,
>
>Sorry to hear of your problem. That sucks!
>
>I'm also sorry to see you've met alt.hvac's pair of village idiots.
>Perhaps you, like many others that came before you, actually assumed
>this would be a place to get reasonable hvac advice. Sadly they're
>long on quips and short on helpfulness (among other things, at least
>so say the ladies).
>
>The alt.home.repair newsgroup has a broader spectrum of folks, a
>higher percentage of helpful ones, and a much lower percentage of
>completely unhelpful 'tards. I've added that group to the
>distribution on this message and set followups to alt.home.repair.
>
>Can you describe the grading around your home? Do you have positive
>slope away from the house? If not, a properly constructed swale
>around the house will certainly help water penetration during a heavy
>rain, but on a slab, that does seem like a hell of a lot of work to do
>when you aren't protecting a basement. Of course, it's no shock the
>waterproofing company quoted you on the only work they know how to do.
>:-) The overhead re-routing of the vents seems like an inventive
>workaround, but for the heating season at least, having the vents on
>the floor would likely give you more comfort. And god knows what it'd
>take or if it's even possible to get a larger duct trunk up to the
>first floor ceiling to cover the whole house's heating/cooling load.
>
>How often does this water penetration happen? If it's infrequent
>enough to be mitigated with a shopvac I'd be tempted to go that route
>absent any better ideas. Though I'd also be worried about the
>ductwork rusting out entombed in a thick layer of concrete.
>
>I might also have a few more foundation specialist types out for their
>thoughts and other quotes on improving drainage away from your
>foundation that won't cost $20,000. Of course I'd first make sure my
>downspouts nad gutters are doin their thing and downspout extenders
>are being used to get that water well away from the foundation.
>
>A photo of the home that shows some of the grading situation may be
>helpful too for folks to toss out suggestions.
>
>Good luck!
>
>Best Regards,
Bravo, Todd! All your engineering specialty (oh yeah, lets dont forget
about that computer expert background) and your answer is a shop vac!
Your a genius, man! Pure genius!
Im glad to see you've ruled out that $20,000 bid without even knowing
the company nor even seeing the house or the actual problem.
Now, before you go off on your next tangent of: "well at least I tried
to help the poster..........."
It works like this:
Im not a foundation expert and I cant see the job from here (even with
my crystal ball set on "high").
To the poster: Get 3 estimates and stop listening to"dickless
wannabees" like Todd that have no more expertise on the subject than I
do on performing brain surgery on him.
Bubba
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