A Shower Without Walls

Love your big, comfy, vintage bathtub?  Wish you could have a shower as well as a soak?  Well there is a creative solution that I came across during a recent Ottawa home inspection.

In all areas of the house, including bathrooms, you want to control the flow of water.  This is to prevent flooding and water damage.  In a shower, you typically need some sort of wall surround to keep the water in.  The walls are usually covered with ceramic tiles or acrylic sheets.  You only have to worry about one side, the one you get in and out of.  And that is usually taken care of with a shower curtain.  But what happens when you want to add a shower to a free standing bathtub?  There are no walls on any side to contain the water.  Often this means remodelling the bathroom and installing a more conventional bathtub-shower combination.

But there is a way of getting the shower into the existing tub.  Instead of tiled walls catching the shower spray, there is a circular rod that lets the shower curtain do the job on ALL sides (see picture).  The rod also supports the shower head and supply piping.

While quaint and full of charm, this solution is more of a challenge.  If all the gaps on the curtain are not closed, or worse, if the curtain bottom is not sitting inside the tub, you can get serious flooding and water damage.  It goes to prove the old adage, where there’s a will, there’s a way.  But take care.

More Rusting In The Furnace

Back in October, I told you about the “Furnace Humidifier Gone Bad”.  I described the humidifiers I regularly come across during my Ottawa home inspections and how they are not only unnecessary in modern homes, but can be harmful.  Well, the water from the humidifier is not the only threat to the furnace.

You will remember that the sensitive part of a furnace is the heat exchanger.  That is the part of the furnace that surrounds the fire chamber.  The heat exchanger captures the heat from combustion and transfers it to the air that is blown by the furnace.  The heat exchanger also ensures that the exhaust gases are safely directed to the outside.  In a high efficiency furnace the gases are expelled through the exhaust pipe with the aid of the induction blower (that’s the round black thing in the pictures).

Another source of water in a furnace, besides the humidifier, can be from the furnace exhaust.  The products of combustion from a properly performing gas furnace are carbon dioxide and water vapour.  With older, inefficient furnaces, the exhaust is fairly hot and the water vapour is easily blown out of the house through the chimney.  The newer, high efficiency furnace captures more heat from the exhaust.  The water vapour in the exhaust is relatively cooler and condenses into water.  That is why these high efficiency furnaces have a drain to get rid of the condensate water.

The biggest threat to the furnace is water.  If the water is not drained away and it leaks into the furnace, it can damage some of the furnace components including the induction blower, some solid state circuitry, and even the heat exchanger.  (See the photo.)  You do not want water anywhere near the heat exchanger.  A rusty or cracked heat exchanger generally means a new furnace is required.  These furnaces also contain some solid state circuitry.  You want to keep water clear of these if you don’t want to replace an expensive circuit board.

Wishful Thinking Is Not Enough

In the real world, something is either done right and works, or done poorly and doesn’t work.  No amount of hoping and wishing can change that.  When assessing a home during an Ottawa home inspection, I see many examples of wishful thinking.

A good example of this is shown in the photo.  Here we have a structural beam with one end completely rotted out.  Rather than replace the beam, a difficult and expensive proposition, someone tried to support the beam end with a small stud wall.  And, after the stud wall sank, they tried to level the beam with wood shims.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the next time this was inspected, there would be wads of chewing gum and duct tape somehow incorporated.

Improvising a fix to a serious problem never provides a reliable solution.  Hope is no substitute for technical design.  When you need to repair, replace, or provide reliable support for a key structural element, just do it.  There is no getting around it.  It makes for a safe and reliable home in the end.

Foundation Wall Rot

I pointed out in a previous blog that the foundation plays a vital role in holding up the house.  And most homes that I inspect in Ottawa have poured concrete foundations.  Concrete is one of the better construction materials having good strength in compression and being fire resistant.  Concrete is a composite construction material composed primarily of aggregate (coarse gravel or crushed rocks), Portland cement, and water.  The ability of a wall to last and provide reliable performance relies largely on its particular formulations and its surrounding environment.  The concrete in older foundation walls (over 60 years) was often formulated with a lower cement content.  This reduces the bonding ability of the concrete.  These older walls also have no waterproofing protection.

As it ages, the concrete wall can deteriorate and lose some of its ability to resist lateral forces (the earth pushing sideways).  This is caused by water seeping through the wall and washing out the binding cement.  A significant factor affecting the wall’s longevity is the amount of water that passes through the wall, contributing to the deterioration.  The less deteriorating water, the longer the wall life.  This means that a dry wall environment can provide good long term performance.  On the other hand, a cracked, leaky wall may not provide reliable service.

Repairs to these walls can only be effective when done on the exterior.  Any attempt to repair and cover the walls on the interior will inevitably fail and fall off (see photo).  At some point in the future the foundation may require (major) remedial work to reinforce the wall.  Eliminate any water migration through the wall (foundation water proofing).  Provide proper drainage around the foundation.  Repair the foundation wall.  Provide and maintain viewing access on the interior at strategic wall locations to monitor and assess the wall condition and performance.

Ceiling Mystery

One of the most common questions asked by clients during a home inspection here in Ottawa is: “What is that?”.  And usually there is little that can stump this experienced AccuChex home inspector.  After over 24 years, I have seen it all, almost . . .

Recently, a ‘thing’ protruding through the upper bedroom ceiling of a century home turned out to be quite a mystery (see photo).  It was some sort of wood plug.  There was a fair bit of water damage in the area.  So much so that mould appeared to be growing there.

There most likely was an old space heater chimney (a wood stove pipe) going through the ceiling and roof at this location.  The wood stove was removed when the central heating was installed.  Whoever removed the pipe didn’t take the time and care to patch and seal the ceiling properly.  They thought something like the bottom of an old wood pale would do.

This emphasizes the point that home repair shortcuts never make sense.  It is easier and cheaper in the long run to do the job right to start with.