I wish I could help...

I just saw your post, and wanted to pop in to say !

I'm sorry you're having problems with your beautiful new home...



I sure hope someone in here can help you.

condensation and may be compromised and starting to ruin the drywall. If I had the money I would finish off the attic with baffles and battens and see if that solved all my problems, but I can't afford that.

Doe the vent for the stove run up in the cold attic? Is it rigid sheet metal vent pipe?

Is this a single story or two story?

Do you have a whole house humidifier?

New construction? How old? When was it built?

metal. It runs under the attic floor for a small length then goes up through the roof. It is surrounded at the base by blown in insulation that feels slightly damp and greasy. So I think there's a leak in the piping somewhere?? This is a single story home, but there is a saddle roof over them main roof, so the vent runs up a bit higher than it would have otherwise. No humidifier in the house, though we do have a dehumidifier for the basement that we use during the summer.

The house is 2 years old. Newly built modular. The cracks were the worst beneath the laminated beam in the great room. Both the boards were severely warped by the moisture, the carriage bolts were rusty, and there was some evidence of mold and mildew between them. When I removed the white batting that had been stuffed between them, it was soaked. The builders had to come back to fix cracks due to settling after the first year anyway, so they also tried to address the major breaks in the drywall along that beam section by screwing the beam boards together and filling the lower space below with foam insulation from a can, then refitting new fiberglass insulation over that. Unfortunately, the problem seems to be repeating itself.

There are pics of the attic and the roof in my journal somewhere, if that helps: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/GreenPartyVoter

Do you use that vent often? When you cook?

I don't think it is a leak in a pipe. Those vent pipes are often not sealed anyway. Seems more like sweating of the pipe when the warm moist inside air hits the cold pipe in the attic. The water probably works its way back down the pipe.

Do you think the pipe issue caused the moisture issue with the beam?

By beam do you mean an engineered product like a laminated beam or is it 2x10s or 12s fastened together?

Sometimes those laminated engineered beams can expand and contract at a different rate than the other lumber and cause drywall problems.

I wonder what drywall mud they are using for the repairs. I know the pros like to use the premixed (see the bucket in the guest bath picture) stuff because it's easier to work with. My brother and I fight about this. I like to use the stuff you mix by hand with water for the first coats. I call it hot mud. It dries a little harder and less likely to crack. I've dug out cracks in the bucket mud and refilled with the hot mud with success. We are not drywallers - we do kitchens and baths so we do a little drywall.

Sometimes not enough moisture can dry out framing lumber too much. Especially in a new house. I know some builders require the humidifier be run at certain percentages at certain heating temps.

Anyway. Very cool house!

remove the older loose insulation around the pipe, the greasy stuff, with a new bag of fluffier stuff. Hopefully those two things will help.

Interestingly the only thing that came up about humidity from the builder/seller was that we need to run our bathroom fans at least 20 minutes after each shower, otherwise we would run the risk of mildew and mold due to moisture being kept in. (Younger son has literally made it rain down the walls a few times when he has taken hot showers in a cold bathroom.)

I often have condensation on the windows in the house during the spring and fall when the temps change faster than the humidity drops. Do not have this problem in summer or winter.

I have a hygrometer that I move around the house to check on things. My bathroom is often between 60 and 70%, which I think is too high. Lately, it is at 55% or less. We have a new pellet stove, which is drying the air out. The great room has been under 50% a few times when I have checked it lately. It will be interesting to see where it lands once we get into the deep of winter when the air is at its driest. I may have to do something about a humidifier then, or at least put something on the pellet stove to keep things a little less dry.

Still, the wetness of the insulation in the attic between the two boards that make up the beam concerns me. When I noticed the problem last spring, instead of being like this || they were more like this )(.

I insist on a timer for customers.

I use a 60 minute push button countdown timer in mine. I set it for a minimum of 60 minutes when I get in the shower and will often re-set to an hour after showing or on the way out of the house.

The timers also have the advance of not being left on all day. Or all week when you are on vacation. I think some localities require timers for that reason.

is they're probably aesthetic - house isn't going to fall down, they're just ugly.

To check up on the guy fixing the insulation:
The key element in dealing with condensation in your ceilings (and walls) is the vapor barrier. It's a sheet of plastic-like material that keeps the water vapor on the "warm" side so it can't reach the cold air and condense. If you're in a temperate climate, it should be under the drywall, in front of the insulation. (If you're in a very warm climate - think Miami - then it'll be on the opposite side of the insulation. I'm gonna treat the rest of this as if you're not in such a warm climate)

It was either a very large roll of material that was stapled in place before the drywall was installed, or it is the paper-like facing on the warm side of fiberglass bats. You should not have such material on the "cold" side (attic side). The attic side should just have "raw" insulation. There also should not be a vapor barrier in the middle of the insulation. (often people will add faced bats when upgrading their insulation, which is wrong. Need to use unfaced in that situation.)

The cracks themselves:
The cracks are probably happening because the people who installed your drywall did not properly account for expansion of the drywall as it heats up. They should have left a small gap between the panels so that they have room to expand - the panels expand with heat, and if they're too close the only way they can expand is into the room, creating a crack.

To fix this, you can create room for that expansion. Use a utility knife, router or other convenient cutting tool to trim the drywall where it is cracked so there's room for expansion. The gap should be something like 1/8th of an inch or a tad larger. Don't go bigger than a 1/4 inch, because that will make it harder to finish the drywall. Then you'll need to apply drywall tape and drywall compound to cover up the gap. It's easy to do, and there's lots of resources on the web describing how.

The microwave condensation is probably being caused by the range vent in the microwave. There should be a small door inside the vent that prevents the cold outside air from reaching the microwave. That door might be stuck. The "easy thing to try" is to use something like a shop-vac or other vacuum to try and clean out the vent from the outside. Beyond that the fixes start to heavily depend on how exactly the microwave is installed and vented, and your abilities with tools.

that turned up under the beam in the great room. You can look that reply over and see if that tells you anything helpful. I don't remember seeing a vapor barrier under the drywall when the guy made repairs to the cracks. (We're in Maine, so it's mostly cold except in summer when it is hot and humid.)

I will mention the idea of how to fix the cracks to hubby. That's more his thing. I am a danger to myself, even on a low ladder. LOL

I will also see about trying the shop vac on the vent. Hubby did the install, so we're wondering if something is slightly misaligned somewhere. (Especially as the house has shifted somewhat over time, as evidenced by some doors which close during the summer and others which close in the winter.)

The lumber also expands and contracts with heat. So you've got drywall, then you should have a vapor barrier, then insulation and lumber.

The lumber's cold, so it shrinks. That moves the drywall panels closer together. But the drywall is hot, so it expands. Since it can't expand within the plane of the wall, the pressure forces it to move in the other plane and you get a crack.

Now, that's assuming that the drywall covers the entire ceiling. If you have exposed beams, they may have only drywalled between the beams, and you are talking about cracks where the drywall meets the beam. If that's the case, you probably have a differential expansion issue - drywall expands and contracts at a different rate than lumber. To fix those, clean out anything loose in the crack, and then fill it with painter's caulk, also known as acrylic caulk. The caulk is flexible enough to deal with the differential expansion, whereas drywall compound is not. Use a putty knife to make the surface of the caulk flat so it looks like the drywall runs to the beam. Do not use silicone caulk, like you would use to seal a shower. Silicone caulk does not paint well and you can not use a putty knife to flatten it - it's too sticky.

As for the bow in the lumber, that's probably fine - every single piece of lumber used to build your house is bowed. Construction-grade lumber is never straight. The bow starts to become a concern when it's bowed a large distance, but that would be producing regular canyons instead of mini canyons - the gaps would be pretty huge and misaligned significantly.

On vapor barrier:
It would be difficult to see the vapor barrier through a crack - it's not really wide enough to get a good view. The best way to check is to go to the attic, and pull out some insulation and look*. You'll either see the back of the drywall, or a vapor barrier. If you don't know the difference, the vapor barrier should be loose enough to feel like it moves a tiny bit if you push on it, whereas the drywall will be completely solid. If you are still unsure, pull out more insulation until you have passed where two pieces of drywall meet - the drywall is either 4 foot by 8 foot or 4 foot by 12 feet. If you can't see that there are two pieces of drywall at a joint, you have a vapor barrier.

*Note that if your insulation is faced fiberglass batts you will not be able to pull it out - the batts overlap on the drywall-side of the lumber and are stapled there. If you have fiberglass insulation and it does not come up with a gentle tug, you can assume it's faced with a vapor barrier.

If you have a lot of dampness around the beam itself, they may have failed to properly install the vapor barrier across the beam. If the beam is covered with drywall, the only way to check is to remove the drywall, unfortunately. The vapor barrier should either cover the beam without a seam, or if there is a seam the vapor barrier should overlap by several inches, and be firmly attached so that it only wiggles slightly. Also if there's a seam, it should be taped.

If they are exposed beams, it's a lot harder to properly do the insulation and vapor barrier - you don't want vapor barrier as the finished surface of the beam, and the beam extends into the cold zone. To to it minimally, the vapor barrier should go a good distance up the beam in the attic and be firmly attached to the beam with staples, and then taped to the beam. To do it extremely well, keep the entire beam on the "warm" side by running the vapor barrier up and over the attic side of the beam, and then add rigid foam insulation to the attic sides of the beam.

Probably not. It isn't like the pipes just butt together - One pipe fits inside the other for a significant distance. To have them separate requires a whole lot of movement.

Easiest fix would be to tape any joints with duct tape** and wrap the pipe with insulation. Hubby doing the installation is actually helpful - he knows how to take the microwave off so you can check the vent door and clean out that end of the pipe if necessary. I'd start with taping joints and pipe insulation in the attic where you can reach the vent pipe. That will likely fix it.

**Actual "Duct Tape" is not the waterproof tape that people normally call "Duct Tape". That's actually "Duck Tape" - as in the animal that quacks. However, "Duck Tape" is trademarked, so other companies used other names, and people settled on erroneously calling it "Duct Tape". Anyway, do not use it on ducting. It can not handle heat. The HVAC aisle of your local hardware store will have some actual Duct Tape. It vaguely resembles foil with an adhesive on one side. I prefer the kind where you have to remove a plastic backing to install the tape - the adhesive is thicker and thus does a better job of sealing. But it is likely that any of them will be up to the job.

foil tape we used on the pellet stove pipe? It's shiny and has a paper on the back that you peel off, and it's rated for handling heat. I have almost a full roll of that sitting around.

Since that tape has to deal with the intense heat from a pellet stove, it should handle the much lower heat flowing through the vent duct just fine.

... be the ticket at this point?

a ceiling full of soggy and moldy batting.

Definitely worth a thought, though.

.... but it's probably better if they breathe separately and not share interior moist air.

Moisture is a real building killer if not managed properly and I'm by no means an expert. I read contractor forums where guys will argue for days and weeks over the best techniques.

You should read some of the epic battles on construction blogs. You think we fight here about pit bulls and Olive Garden? You should read some of the epic fights about how to flash a house or tape drywall.

My friends mom just had to spend $60k to rework all her windows on her 15 year old expensive custom built home in Michigan. All the widow sills were bad and the walls underneathe the sill were rotten from failed flashing.

.... if your problem is in fact excess moisture in escaping in the attic.

I wonder if the plywood traps the moist air before it can evacuate the attic. In other words, is an un decked attic more forgiving? And do you need to be more vigilant with vapor barrier with decking?

storing things up there. (Although I hate that they are facing the extreme temp changes that go on up there through the year.)

That was why I thought maybe baffles and battens to finish off the space would work. In theory, the condensation would stop happening if there was no extreme temperature difference, and the baffles would keep the airflow from soffit to ridge pole moving and thereby protecting the roof. I would have to get some sort of exhaust fan, I imagine, to air out the attic. But even if this was the right thing to do, I don't have the money with which to do it.

There's a gentle balancing act between the amount of water vapor you need to leave the house and too much water vapor leaving the house. Vapor barriers do that, but waterproofing paint would block too much.

I got nuthin' regarding your condensation problem, but I do have a question about the maple floor shown in the photos in your journal...

It appears to be a pre-finished floor. Who manufactured it? It's lovely!

a few warped boards in each box so in the long run not sure how much we saved.

Sadly, the floor has already been beaten to heck by kids, cats, and furniture. But at least I know someday when the house is a calmer place we can refinish it. LOL

over a phone call in a house I remodeled about 14 year prior ,I thought about all the possibles.
Nightmarish. As it turned out it was up on the roof the vent needed sealing. The problem was far more simple than would have been expected. A $20.00 can of roofing sealant did the trick.

i decided to rule out the plumbing stack and vents up on the roof before I started looking around up in the attic or removing the micro wave to start the trouble shooting process.
And yes air got in there too ! Same problem micro wave and cracks ! I wonder if you thought about the vent or vents up on the roof !
In this case the plumbing vent was not very far away form the kitchen vent . The bathroom was behind the the kitchen back wall.Downstains bathroom and mini kitchen directly below in a straight plumbing line. The kitchen exhaust vent, I had the roofer install during the remodel.

Simply it came down to roofing maintenance. A can of sealant.

On that same remodel I threw up ply wood up in the crawl space for storage -so the possibilities were endless as to what the problem could have been. It came down to basic maintenance on the roof. Simple.

They described to me over the phone the same as you wrote- it started out a little and got worse over time. Usually visible after it rains.


Good luck with your project.
Merry Christmas !