Re: Honeywell Environcare Hepa air filter

[Guest guest]

Barb,

Is there any way you can attack the problem from the outside, by reducing

the amount of water that drips into the ground from roof, extending

rain gutters,

increasing the grade around your house or putting a sheet of plastic under dirt

to channel falling water away etc?

I think that water in a basement is a serious issue.

Whatever you can do to cut it off at the source - it will help.

The solutions you are mentioning dont sound to me as if they will help

as much as preventing that water from getting into the walls in the first place.

Is your home on a slope or is it in a gully or near a stream?

If not, you can probably

deal with the problem the way I described.

If its on a slope, groundwater tends to pool on the uphill side and

(ugh) migrate

down under the house if it is blocked by a foundation. If there is a

lot of water,

that is a very difficult situation. A place I lived in a few years ago

had that problem

and it would lterally flood UP from below when it rained..

Very quickly.. so quickly that you could see (and smell) the water bubbling up

through cracks in the floor.

If you have a problem like that it may make more sense to put the

basement outside

of the building envelope, insulate the **** out of your floor and all

pipes, and seal

everything, and add a vent and a fan going 24/7 out..

powered ventilation blowing out to suck air from the now-crawlspace

out all the time..

There is a dissertation on the net that has a wealth of information on

the pros and cons

of various crawlspace solutions.. Ive posted the URL quite a few times..

its the one with " article6 " in it I think. If you can't find it, let

me know, I'll dig it up.

The other papers on that site are all valuable too.

Good luck!

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 6:06 PM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

>

> There is a portion of house foundation that can't be repaired properly

> and is damp and cracked and some mold, not fuzzy on the wall, but

> indoor air person noticed and there is some odor, so I thought putting

> a hepa air filter there and changing filters every few months would

> keep the 'spores' from getting up into house. (I know other particles

> are important too but that's all I can do right now. I may drap off

> that part of basement with heavy plastic also, not putting plastic up

> against wall, because that would increase moisture level of wall but

> drap off the corner and put air filter inside of drapped off area.

>

> Any ideas? Thanks

>

[Guest guest]

Live. It's on a hill top. Yard in front of house does slant very

slightly toward the house though which I will be correcting somewhat

by building up soil line right in front of house. It's on my 'to do'

list at least, which is very, VERY LONG!!!

As for the foundation, we dug it down to about 20 inches and repaired

it from outside, repaired the cement and coated with with tar and

then stuck a large sheet of rubber onto the wet tar. I did that in

another small area of foundation and it works great. However, the

main source of damage is at the very bottom, where roots from a very

large, probably 80 year old Water Maple got into the foundation. We

know that because it happened on the other side of the house also.

The roots are in the way of repairing it all the way down, so we

repaired the top 20 inches and then built the soil up as high as we

could when we finished, up to bottom of basement windows, but that

wasn't very high. I could, and may now, add plastic but the problem

is that the large tree roots have gotten into foundation there. The

tree roots made cracks in cinder blocks and then water is attracted

to holes in 'cinder blocks'.

There is a service that will inject something into each cinder block

space a 'filler' of sorts so that there is no spaces in cinder block

to collect water, BUT I figure with the tree roots which have broken

some of foundation cement and then drilling into those cinder block's

open spaces to inject this stuff, it may be too much destruction of

the foundation cinder blocks. The other side of house foundation had

same problem but was much worse, from another tree just like this one

but planted even closer to house. On that side of house, I repaired

the foundation wall completely about 8 years ago. There is a whole

new wall on that front west side of house. The house was put up on

hydrollic pumps to hold it while wall was poured. Problem was that

afterwards tree died due to the destruction to it's roots. That

doesn't sound too bad since it caused the problem but several years

after tree was taken down - a couple years ago - water started

forming under the garage floor which is right there! I think the

tree roots which were very large, like small trees in size, have

decentigrated and probably their disappearance may have left a 'gap'

under the house/garage area there which is attracting water. I will

have to dig up garage floor now and see what problem is and this will

be very expensive, so I don't want other tree to die...as much as I

wish it weren't there.

I have to stop doing so much work to house because I'm beginning to

realize it is just a money pit now. It's hard to get to that point,

for me anyway, where I stop saying " yes, I can - repair it " and give

up, but I think I'm coming up to that despairing realization. It

needs someone with more energy and primarly more cash than I have.

It's not a burner but it does need alot of work.

The water on side of house that is still needing work, comes down in

gutters that run underground to the hill in the back and empty, so

water isn't from house run off. However a little plastic there in

addition to the small slope we built up might help a little so

thanks. I'm going to do that.

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

> Is there any way you can attack the problem from the outside,

[Guest guest]

Live, didn't you buy a reasonably priced hepa air cleaner? I thought I

heard you say that once, or perhaps not a hepa. I'm not sure I need a

hepa. I want something that would just capture spores that may be

coming from corner of basement foundation to keep them, or some of

them, from getting picked up in house air, until I can do something

more permanent.

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

> Is there any way you can attack the problem from the outside, by

reducing

> the amount of water that drips into the ground from roof, extending

>

[Guest guest]

Yes, I have a Whirlpool AP450 and it works well. It was a life saver

when we were

living in the place we got sick in and I used it when we were having

our attic done,

because of the dust, but luckily, I haven't needed to use it in quite a while.

But it works well, we picked it because it had won the Consumer Reports test

and it pulls in a lot of air and is pretty quiet considering how big it is.

If its on the low speed its barely audible. The only negatives I can

think of are

not unit specific, basically, it has a activated charcoal that is very

thin and although it does catch dust and prevets it from gong ito the

HEPA, its basically useless if you think of it as a charcoal filter

(which, actually, it isn't advertised as, so I really shouldnt be

complaining) Its like those " charcoal " AC filters.. fairly useless.

I would prefer to use a washable piece of very thin foam.. If I start

using it again..

(I really should have ths last fall, because I got sick this last fall

- I think its mold in the air from the leaves......)

Its a great cleaner.. we paid around $200 (I think $199) and it came

with one filter which lasted a long time..

(especally considering) The filters cost around $60-70 mail order and

we are on our fourth one..

Its easy to clean, easy to open and wipe it out and if you are feeling

ambitious you can even remove the wheel to hose off/vacuum.. not

hard..

I do that with my HRV also, I have become adept at disassembling it,

wiping it down, and putting it back together.

At some point I will probably photograph everything and post a how to.

Really, Barb, I would strongly recommend an HRV to you. Sure, nobody

in many parts of the US has heard of them, but they are great..

I really think ours paid for itself last summer.. Its hard to tell

exactly, because we also had our attic done and foam put in (BTW, its

working really well.. we have the second best insulated house in this

neighborhood, if you go by snow melt on roof..)

BIG reduction in heat in summer and cold in winter..

Between that and the HRV, we were able to cut AC use a huge amount..

Its hard to say exactly how much but before we got the HRV, our attic

would get up to well over 100 degrees.. (measured by IR optical

thermometer) Post foam, it never got above around 85, even on hot

days.. with no AC up there..

But it really shines in the winter.. When people go on about how they

have to live outside, I sigh because we basically have fresh air all

of the time.. the air inside is exchanged many times a day..

As I speak, its probably below freezing outside, I'm sitting in the

living room, HRV supply around eight feet away, blowing fresh air into

room, I dont even feel any draft at all.. The temp of the air coming

out of the HRV is probably at least 55 or 60, (and we keep our house

between 68 and 72..)

We are spending well under $200 a month on heat and gas! And we are

warm.. and we have fresh air all the time..

You know, its easy to be skeptical but its for reall.

YOU PROBABLY COULD EVEN ADD A SUPPLY AND RETURN TO YOUR BASEMENT AND

IT QUITE POSSIBLY MIGHT MAKE THE AIR THERE HEALTHY. (I would put them

on dampers, though, until you worked the finer details out, so you

could turn the " zone " " on " or " off " (This is easy, just buy registers

that close.)

I would add a dehumidifier down there, though, for the summer.. and

reduce the flow with the dampers..because as you said, they do bring

in humidity on humid days.

We almost never turn ours up, we leave it on low all the time..

sometimes cycling on 15 min per hour, (at night or if its VERY cold)

sometimes on all the time..

Its made the air much cleaner.. I really couldn't live without it.. seriously..

THEY REALLY SHOULD BE STANDARD EQUIPMENT ON ALL HOUSES AND APARTMENTS..

Blah blah blah...

I'm sorry, I can see how I must bug people sometime.. My wife didn't

thnk the HRV would work... But now, we both love it.

People come over to check t out and several of our neighbors have bought them..

If you try it and it works out, you will totally thank me..

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 8:21 PM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

> Live, didn't you buy a reasonably priced hepa air cleaner?

[Guest guest]

Washable piece of foam: I was going to put fabric I buy at fabric store

inexpensively around outside to help keep inside filters that are

expensive to replace cleaner, longer but washable foam sounds like a

winner.

--- In , LiveSimply <quackadillian@...>

wrote:

>

> I would prefer to use a washable piece of very thin foam.. If I start

> using it again..

[Guest guest]

Make sure its VERY fine and tight open cell foam or it won't work well

enough to keep the smaller gunk off the HEPA.

Its hard to find foam thats not so dense its too restrictive, AND is

dense enough..

You can also HEPA vacuum HEPA filters... if you are really cheap..

(not such a great idea unless your vacuum filter is washable)

I am hoping we start seeing washable HEPA filters soon.. I don't see

why they aren't available.

On Sun, Jan 25, 2009 at 10:03 AM, barb1283 <barb1283@...> wrote:

> Washable piece of foam: I was going to put fabric I buy at fabric store

> inexpensively around outside to help keep inside filters that are

> expensive to replace cleaner, longer but washable foam sounds like a

> winner.