Go out to the lowest part of your property and look for water, it has to drain somewhere, you can run water in the pipe for a few minutes and sometimes actually hear it running.
Should drain near access to a storm sewer, usually to the street on the low side of your property.

The system is 6 years old and was running fine when they came out a little less than a year ago for maintenance.

My parents' water softener might not be working (based on dishwasher performance). What's the best way to test? Internet tells me put water in a bottle, add some soap and shake--soft water will have lots of bubbles, hard water will not. Is that accurate enough to diagnose for whether or not to call a plumber? Should they splurge and spend $10 on water hardness test strips?

$10? I know they come in a large set, but <$5 at Home Depot seems doable.

lolCanada tho

Have you considered slats?

My furnace has a humidifier that I just recently turned on for the winter. After doing so I noticed some condensation on the windows, window sills and on the wall in one of the bedrooms in the basement. I turned down the humidifier some. Today I noticed some of the pillow cases and sheets were damp on the bed in that room where they touched the wall and some condensation still on the windows and sills so I turned it down further. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

switch humidifier completely off? Put on the window banks such humidity adsorbant boxes? Ventilate more?

It depends on how often and how much do you ventilate the room and which temperature do you keep if you get a condensed water on cold places. It is more often that people have to humid housing than to dry.

Turn down your humidifier until there's no condensation forming on your windows, or get a hygrometer:

If outside temperature is 20 to 40 degrees, humidity indoors should not be more than 40 percent.

If outside temperature is 10 to 20 degrees, humidity indoors should not be more than 35 percent

If outside temperature is 0 to 10 degrees, humidity indoors should not be more than 30 percent.

If outside temperature is 10-below to 0, humidity indoors should not be more than 25 percent.

If outside temperature is 20-below to 10-below, humidity indoors should not be more than 20 percent.

If outdoor temperature is lower than 20-below, inside humidity should not be more than 15 percent.

If you really want to throw money at this, get new windows with a better u-factor.

This is in my mom's ground floor condo where she rents.

Sewer line backs up. Both her bathrooms flood, but essentially none gets outside the bathroom onto the carpets. A remediation company comes and cleans up and runs heaters and dryers for 3 days. With some moisture detecting device they detect moisture up the drywall like 30 inches and under the vinyl flooring. The remediation company said something to the effect that the drywall, vinyl flooring and I think the shower/tub enclosures have to be replaced. It's almost two weeks since it's happened and it left no trace detectable by looking, smelling or feeling the drywall or anything else.

Not that this has anything to do with the question here, but everything in the bathroom is relatively new and perfectly good and it's not like there's a big advantage just to getting new stuff. I don't know, but I suspect it's possible that the remediation company has an interest here in overstating the necessary repairs and the insurance company (they've been out to take pictures of basically nothing) and then perhaps the HOA and then perhaps the owner are all going to decide that it's fine as is. My mom is fine with it as is if it's really fine as is.

Do you think it's fine as is?

micro,

not that this is at all responsive to your question, but isn't this the home owner's problem, not your mom's? usually in this sort of spot the renter wants everything gutted/replaced and compensation from the owner, while the owner is fighting to keep everything cheap and whatever?

My mom will not pay for anything. The remediation company had given her the impression that tearing everything out that got wet was necessary. I don't know if this is true or not, but wanted her to be ready for the possibility that the owner/insurance company will contest this and I wanted to see if people here thought it was important for her to fight for this to happen or not.

She has every right to have it removed it she wants, the owner should want to have it removed too for liability reasons. It's ****ter water, they usually gut everything it touched.

I doubt the insurance company would fight it, my friend does that remediation and the insurance companies are good about that. The owner might just want to pocket the money though. Nobody would be out of pocket for the repairs.

With Condo's though it can be different, my dad had a HVAC leak and ruined some of his laminate floor, my friend demo'd some of the floor and dried it down but his Condo policy was only for $5k or maybe less I don't remember now. He still wasn't out of pocket but that was just 600sq' and like 150 feet of baseboard molding.

edit - The remediation company didn't demo any of the drywall? If moister got up to 30" high at least half that would be saturated and probably can't dry out.

The fault here ultimately is with the HOA as the clog was in their sewer line and the pipe is broken.

But, I'm really just interested in how important people think it really is to have the stuff it touched replaced, not whether it's standard or a good idea for liability reasons. If they just do the work my mom won't stop them from doing it.

If it were my bathroom I'd probably leave it alone. Also think electric raises a good point about moisture 30" up. The bottom 12+ inches of the drywall would be very obviously ruined for that to happen. Makes me think they're just hunting for easy insurance work.

Best practice is to remove anything black water touches that isn’t impermeable. If it were my own house and depending on severity I think disinfecting all surfaces and not removing carpet might be ok - but without evaluating I would say remove/replace.

A lot of times drywall may have insulation behind it, and if so the water will wick up a certain height and you’ll never be able to dry the wall cavity out even with drilling holes behind the baseboard and placing behemoth fans in place. For this reason alone, keeping drywall off the ground by a quarter inch can allow water to drain between the studs (you can hide the gap with a baseboard or covebase. So if they do “put-back” I’d have them leave that gap if I were the property owner.

I’m a certified industrial hygienist, you can trust me!

Could be insulation, but probably not (based on age and location - and I drill a lot of holes in walls and have a pretty good idea of how common insulation is around here). But regardless, if it were your house would you really worry about it?

Thanks for the response. I'm on the far extreme of not worrying about stuff like this, but I'm not going to do the OOT thing and ignore advice from induatrial hygienists. If this is up your alley and you think I should tell my mom to insist on tearing things up, that's what I'll do.

I think most likely they are punching up the bid for the insurance money.

Moisture up 30 inches from a toilet overflowing doesn't make sense.

Under no pressure, wicking doesn't go that high.

As long as your mom isn't out money, i guess let them do what is paid for.

But sounds scummy imo.

Without seeing it I would say remove/replace affected drywall/carpet. At work if we have black water hit that material we are always recommending that protocol. The problem with this is that you don’t know if it’s going to be a problem until it is - not even referring to the potential mold growth. The black water can contain some very nasty stuff. If your mom or any visitors are immunocompromised this is really a no brainer to remove/replace.

Another thing to consider is that residential carpeting has the carpet pad, which is basically a sponge and extremely difficult to dry in place. So thinking of it from that perspective you can see how difficult it would be to “clean and disinfect” it. It’s probably cheaper to tear it out.

Hope this helps. If it were clean water from a pipe it can give you a lot more options (disregarding timeframe).

Sounds suspicious to me also. Plus, let's cut out a section of drywall and see if they are right before gutting the place.

You could try getting your hands on a moisture meter which can let you figure out the scope of impact. A remediation contractor will certainly have an IR camera and I would do a walkthrough with them. Obviously my advice is assuming the contractor isn’t trying to fleece anyone.

Well, thanks all. I talked to my mom, not quite advising her to raise hell, but not to just say nbd either.

New build home did not come with a whole house humidifier. We're in midwest and humidity in house is 20-30%. House is 3800sf up top, and 2000 sf below (1400 of those below sf are finished). Can't find a bypass whole home humidifier that says it will keep up with a house over 4500 sf.

1. Do I buy one that only does 4500 sf (I'm just trying to get to 45-50%, so maybe that will do the trick)?
2. Do I go to a steam humidifier (I've heard those are bad for your HVAC system)?
3. Other solution?

Thanks.

West Coast bias I guess, but 20-30% humidity sounds fine. It's 16% where I am today and I didn't notice it being especially dry.

Agree. 20-30% is pretty reasonable in the winter, and you might be asking for condensation problems if you go much higher when it's really cold.