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bob haller bob haller is offline
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Default Speaking of Holmes.... blooper

On Feb 13, 8:50*am, "
wrote:
On an episode I watched this weekend, the one with
the cold bathroom and squirrels in the attic, he and
the HVAC contractor made a booboo..

He examined a gas forced air furnace with a bypass
type humidifier and said the humidifier was installed
incorrectly. *The alleged problem was that the round
duct from the humidifier went to one of the two branchs
of the duct work, very close to the furnace. *They
obviously did it that way because it was the most
direct route and within 2 feet of the main plenum on
top of the furnace.

He said the way it
was installed the humid air would only be going to
part of the house. * He called in his HVAC guys and
they moved it, running it an additonal few feet and
making two more 90s to get it into the main plenum.

Only problem is that he was totally wrong. *A bypass
humdifier just short circuits some air around the
furnace, passing it through the humidifier. *Whatever
goes through it gets sucked in on the RETURN side
and then sent out the hot air plenum where it goes
to all the house.

His mistake apparently was in thinking the humid air
from the bypass humdifier was going INTO the hot
air duct. *Obviously, the airflow is the other way.

On the same episode, he did a couple of other things
that I would consider questionable. *He noticed a few
joints near the perimeter in the basement that had mold
on them. *He didn't check for moisture. *There was no
complaints of water on the basement floor or water
anywhere in the basement at all. * He dug down
to the footers outside then put an inspection cam into
the drain tiles at the footer. *Camera revealed all was
OK. *Don't know about you guys, but before I started
digging to the footers, I'd check for actual moisture in
the joists. *Could have been from some problem like
overflowing gutters from years ago. *BTW, the house
had gutters pitched incorrectly.

Then he found the bareest outline in the ceiling drywall of a
possible electrical box in the foyer that had
been covered up with drywall patch. *The electrician
found a switch in the foyer that went to it. *Don't know
about you guys, but I would have just disconnected the
wires at the switch and left it alone. * He insisted on
opening up the ceiling and then they wound up hanging
a new $10 fixture that wasn't needed and looked like
hell.

95% of the time, he's spot on. *This episode, not so
much......


so what if he had failed to camera inspect the drain system? theres no
way to know why the mold was there. could be a problem in the futu
(

holmes stated at the end mold was probably from too high humidity from
the humidifier. he said to keep the level low