HELP!! new(er) house, cold cold weather, condensation and mold

[lalaland]

Help! I have a house that is in its 3rd winter. Extra insulation in the walls when it was built, low E windows.

I do not have a heat exchanger. Do have a high velocity exhaust fan. There are two of us, and the water condensing on the windows is really bad this year.

I know there is a relation between temp of house and humidity level. I have increased the air temp up to 70 (used to keep it at 62) and am running two ceiling fans 24/7. Running the exhaust fan as much as I can stand it, which is about 10 hours a day.

MOLD is starting on the corners of the house, interior walls. MOLD is starting on the windows, and now today showed up on the edge of the wall where it meets the ceiling, mostly on the south side of the house.

Steel roof, steel siding. No interior source of fresh air.

Any suggestions? HELP! I am so upset that this is happening, last year all I had to do was wipe the windows dry twice a day.

It is brutal cold today, -23 this am, but warming up to -10, but water problem was present all winter with temps in the low digits above zero.

Forgot to say: no shower, I run the exhaust when running a bath, dryer is vented outside, only the stove uses propane gas, house is heated with infloor heat run with an electric boiler, I have a wood stove, but water is dripping from the ceiling where the stove pipe exits the roof.

I've read all the sites about humidity, I don't know what I can do to reduce it. Should I buy a de humidifier?

 

[MorelCabin]

Whoa! Sounds like this cottage I am temporarily in at the moment...in this case it is the heat source...propane space heaters. Propane is a very wet heat. Your woodstove should be drying the place out.
Who did the roofing? Metal rrofs are terrible for condensation, especially if they can't breathe right, no ventelation. That's where I'd be looking next I think.

 

[Farmfresh]

You are definitely suffering from an over insulated house that does not properly breathe.

Start first in the attic space. There should be plenty of air circulation through that space. You want the attic space to be cool and breezy. Many very insulated homes have the problem that the insulation between the ceiling and the attic has completely blocked the vents in the soffits. There should be free flow of air from the base of the rafters across the roof decking and then out of either a ridge vent or top of the end wall vents. This circulation allows the house to breathe.

Insulation should be faced, with the vapor barrier facing the inside of the building. This keeps moisture from outside the house from meeting the warm air inside of a house and then condensing within the wall space. Only homes where the warmest air is usually outside of the house should be insulated in any other way (in that instance the vapor barrier is on the outside example in hot humid Florida).

 

[lalaland]

dang, farm fresh, you're right!

I don't have any roof vents on the top of the roof. Will go around the house tomorrow and see if there are any soffit vents. There is a crawl space in the attic, not enough for a person to do anything by lie down near the peak, as the roof is barely peaked at all. this is only a 780 sf house.

There is a vapor barrier on the inside and the outside too of the insulation - I remember Mark, the guy who built the house, being angry with the inspector because the inspector was requiring the house be wrapped in tyvek - Mark was saying it was going to create too tight of a house. Guess he was right.

I've opened a window about a 1/4 " to provide some fresh air/dry air, and washed all the window sills with old fashioned home made lye soap to get the mold off. The corners of the walls (exterior corners but on the inside) got scrubbed of mold too - and the paint is soft there with moisture.

not good that you have to wash with water when you have too much moisture! couldn't think of anything else to do, although i kept that rag as dry as possible.

it seems the windows are dryer already, but that is mostly on the southside and it was sunny today.

think the propane stove is adding to the moisture....

I am not a happy camper.

 

[big brown horse]

Sorry lala, that sounds like a royal pain in the arse. Our windows also get drippy in the winter. I wipe them down constantly. I doubt it is from over insulation though. This house was deemed "under insulated" by the inspector...but I didn't care b/c I lived in TX for 35 years and I was hot my whole life. I don't mind it being on the cool side. But the window thing is a pain. :/

 

[newmochick]

Hi Lalaland,

I have read that tea tree oil is a natural/organic mold inhibitor. I don't have the directions in front of me but it doesn't take much (it is expensive). Suppose to only need to apply it once but you have to live with the smell for awhile. If you can't find anything on the net, let me know and I will try to dig for the information.

 

[Farmfresh]

It might come down to removing some of the siding and piercing the Tyvek at some point, but I would not rush into that just yet.

Work on the problem upstairs first. Warm moist air will automatically rise - if given a chance to escape it will.

With a low peak and a metal roof a ridge vent would be the ideal solution with a few good free flowing soffit vents. A small house does not need many - nor do they need to be large.

My house has a main floor of about 1000 square feet and probably 5 - 1 inch soffit vents down each side and a couple of roof top "cap style" vents on each side of the roof. My house has a 1/2 story above the main floor so the attic space is two separate knee wall attics. I still need to add a ridge vent above the 1/2 story roof but since this is a little used space right now and some of the last of the horrible blown in insulation is there, there seems to be enough natural air "leakage" that we haven't had a problem with that. Remember my house was built in 1928 so is none too tight.

We added the soffit vents, the cap vents and additional insulation, which is now about R 40 and the floor between the 1/2 story and the main floor is also insulated (unfaced blow in insulation). Before the corrections were made we had a "water line" all around the top 6 - 8 inches of our interior walls. We also had water spots on the ceiling that looked like a roof leak, but was caused solely by condensation.

Added to say: We have foam "air tunnels" that slide down to the soffit vents and end above the insulation line. With out spacers like those the insulation can block the soffit vents making them functionally in operable.

We also re-did all of the windows in this old house. They were the old window weighted double hung windows and leaked like a sieve. Since they had not had the top sash dropped down (at one time the top sash went down and the upper sash went up) in probably 60 years they were pretty well stuck (and painted and CAULKED into place) so I cut the cords and removed the sash weights for the upper windows and then completely filled that space with foam in insulation all around the windows - leaving a gap big enough and clean enough to still allow the lower sash weight to operate as it was intended. (but well greased and on all new cords!) That stopped a lot of condensation we were getting at the base of the window and dripping around the sides of it.

Just remember where cold air meets warm moist air it will condense. You have got to have a way for the moisture to get out and prevent cold air from getting into the warm.

By the way that same moisture problem is what lie at the root cause of frost bite in our chickens. The chicken exhales and otherwise produces lots of moisture. When the moisture can not escape it settles on the skin (comb and wattles) and then freeze.

 

[Beekissed]

For now, you might try some of those humidity absorption thingies that folks put in basements. Also, I've read that a small lid with salt in it placed on the windowsill will absorb some excess moisture.....supposed to ward off evil spirits too!

We have the opposite problem....too dry of heat with the wood stove, so we have to keep a kettle of water on the stove most of the time to cut down on static electricity and stuffy noses.

 

[lalaland]

oh Beekissed, what I would give for a static shock right now!

That 1/4 inch the window was open last night (-21 this am) was nearly blocked by frost this am when I woke. My fault, I had turned the exhaust fan off as it is too noisy for me (I hate the refrigerator drone too, but that's another story).

Water dripping off all the windows - so the improvement yesterday was just because it was bright and sunny.

newmochick, I do have tea tree oil and will add it to the wash water next time I wash off the mold, which should be today or tomorrow.

I think I have got to buy a dehumdifier. And in the meantime, I'll open a second window on the other side of the house to add more dry air and will keep that dratted exhaust fan running to help a) pull cold air in and b) draw moist air out.

Farmfresh, I walked around the house and think the only vents are these soffit vents which look like a grater - itty bitty tiny holes -. The steel roof soffit panels (I have an overhang, maybe 30") have three flat panels, then three grater hold panels, then three flat, three grater - so there are lots of them but the openings look extremely small.

I do think it is cold in the attice because of the way the water condenses at the stove pipe plate (stove pipe goes into a kind of flat metal box on the ceiling) and drips.

Maybe today I'll waste wood with a huge fire and keep the stove door open and the fire screen in place.

still pretty darned cranky about this (ok, I know, this isn't the end of the world ).
thanks for everyone's ideas and thoughts. Keep em coming!
Rebecca

 

[Farmfresh]

They might be big enough soffit vents IF the insulation is not packed up so that they are being blocked. Often times that is the case. Also that covers the air intake up there, now you need an exhaust point at the peak of the roof or at the highest point in the gable ends.

I would stoke up that fire today it will really help dry you out a bunch.

IMO the dehumidifier would be a waste of money. You need to correct the ventilation problems instead of burning more energy running a dehumidifier.