Ok, well there is 4 apartment buildings, consisting of 3-4 apartments each. All, are single floor buildings. All, have the same type of truss framing from one side of the building, to the other. All, have no type of ventilation, at all. All they have is a louvered vent on one side, and one on the other. But, there is no ventilation under the eves, nor any vents. The attic spans from one side of the building, to the other, without any walls or breaks.
I've been having A LOT of compplaints about dampness in the sheetrock, especially around the bathroom area. Come to find out, previous owner had installed 1/2" sheetrock for general purpose walls, none for damp locations (the green colored rock). Well, I changed out a few of them. Still, there's some damp spots, soft spots, and the entire attic is just plaing damp, humid, and extremely hot.
The bathroom fan vents do work, but none are ducted to the exterior of the building. For one thing, the insulation surrounds these fans, instead of having some 6" all around of the fan box, of free space. So, I do believe this is a fire hazard, and am going to change this soon. So, all the vents throw air straight into the attic. So, I'm planning on ducting all the bathroom vents and range hood vent straight out of the building.
The range hoods are also vented straight into the attic, with no duct work to throw any of the air to the outside.
I recently replaced a bathroom vent fan when the tenant was cooking. The vent fan was approx. 5 ft. from the range hood vent. Jesus christ, the amount of damp, humid, hot air that came after she was cooking was unbelieveable, and I think this is the reason why most of the walls, around the bathooms, are this way.
I was planning on installing a whole house fan in each apartment. So, 3 or 4 per building. Plus, installing an attic fan, roof-mounted type, 1 on each end of each building.
These are 23 year-old buildings with hardly any insulation left over. They used the black-type, black cotton-looking type of insulation (name escapes me right now). There is probably no more than 3-4" of it left.
Anyone's input greatly appreciated.
[This message has been edited by DSpanoudakis (edited 09-01-2005).]
