Hey all.
Non-furnace/AC related question for you.
I live in a multi-unit condo building. It's a 3-story building, with residential units on the second and third floors. Almost every unit has a bathroom on the third floor, and almost every unit has experienced condensation dripping from the ceiling through/around their bathroom vent during cold months. When it first happened in my unit, I thought it was a roof issue and opened a hole in my ceiling around the vent.
The vents all connect to a vertical pipe that goes more or less straight up through the roof and extends about 4' above the roof surface. It is a single-wall pipe, and there is no trap or drain anywhere to collect the condensate.
All of the pipes are also rusting severely at this point, about 25 years post-construction (building was converted to condos in the mid-90s).
We've discussed several solutions. As an experiment, the pipe in my unit was replaced in fall of 2018 with a double-wall "b-vent" type pipe. I have not seen a drop of condensation since.
Other unit owners have gone up to the roof themselves and wrapped their pipes with a combo of pink insulation and foil tape, and they report this has also worked.
The condo board (which I am on) is discussing more permanent solutions for the whole building to deal with both the condensation and rust issues. It seems to me the best route is to replace all of the vent pipes with b-vent, however there is push back from another board member who says that the simple insulation wrap is sufficient and cheaper. My concern with the insulation is that it is almost definitely trapping moisture against the pipe and accelerating the rust issue. Also, since we can't now see the pipe itself, we have no idea when one may have rusted fully through.
Can any of you think of any other solutions I may be missing here? I don't think the way these were designed was ideal in the first place, they absolutely did it the cheapest way possible in the original construction.
Thanks.
Non-furnace/AC related question for you.
I live in a multi-unit condo building. It's a 3-story building, with residential units on the second and third floors. Almost every unit has a bathroom on the third floor, and almost every unit has experienced condensation dripping from the ceiling through/around their bathroom vent during cold months. When it first happened in my unit, I thought it was a roof issue and opened a hole in my ceiling around the vent.
The vents all connect to a vertical pipe that goes more or less straight up through the roof and extends about 4' above the roof surface. It is a single-wall pipe, and there is no trap or drain anywhere to collect the condensate.
All of the pipes are also rusting severely at this point, about 25 years post-construction (building was converted to condos in the mid-90s).
We've discussed several solutions. As an experiment, the pipe in my unit was replaced in fall of 2018 with a double-wall "b-vent" type pipe. I have not seen a drop of condensation since.
Other unit owners have gone up to the roof themselves and wrapped their pipes with a combo of pink insulation and foil tape, and they report this has also worked.
The condo board (which I am on) is discussing more permanent solutions for the whole building to deal with both the condensation and rust issues. It seems to me the best route is to replace all of the vent pipes with b-vent, however there is push back from another board member who says that the simple insulation wrap is sufficient and cheaper. My concern with the insulation is that it is almost definitely trapping moisture against the pipe and accelerating the rust issue. Also, since we can't now see the pipe itself, we have no idea when one may have rusted fully through.
Can any of you think of any other solutions I may be missing here? I don't think the way these were designed was ideal in the first place, they absolutely did it the cheapest way possible in the original construction.
Thanks.
source https://hvac-talk.com/vbb/showthread.php?2225700-Bath-Exhaust-Condensation&goto=newpost
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