Quote:
Originally Posted by rexxfan
Ok, nevermind about the furnace questions. I braved the attic one more time and had a much longer look at everything and its clear now the duct I was referring to is from the master bathroom, probably the exhaust fan vent.
I came to that conclusion after I observed that there's another identical duct at the other side of the house where the guest bath is that leads up to the same area. I simply hadn't noticed it before. I've attached a picture. Interestingly, the duct for the guest bath runs all the way up into the space just below the circular vent whereas the one for the master bath does not, it is just hanging in space several feet below. That should probably be fixed, but I can't imagine how anyone would get up in there to do that, especially with all the blown in insulation lying about. The master bath duct does pass over the area above the laundry ceiling and the place where the two sections of it is joined is right there, so it could still be involved I suppose.
On the other hand I also noticed this time that there's a large metal pipe in roughly the same area that leads up to the roof. It is the topmost gooseneck vent in the original picture (the lower one being the dryer vent). I'm not sure what that could be for. Could it be for the kitchen oven? That's right on the other side of the laundry room wall. I'm fairly certain that the roofer who was here in January worked on that area already, but perhaps it needs more attention. Maybe the vent just needs to be replaced. Upon further reflection, this seems somewhat more likely than the somewhat far-fetched master bath duct theory.
Though I was an engineer, I'm not the handyman type (bet you couldn't tell  ).
We'll see what they say next week. Thanks for bearing with me ...
--
bc
P.S. For the record, the second and third pictures are of the actual leak and the water on the floor after the storm earlier in the week. It's clearly not a huge leak, but has to be fixed regardless. |
It looks like the builder ran the two bathroom exhaust ducts to the area just under the roof vents. This is probably okay, but, In the newer houses, they run the bathroom vent to the outside soffit and connect them to a hole that they cut into the soffit. I have even seen older houses that just vent the bathrooms into the attic space, and depend on evaporation to eliminate the moisture. But, it could be that your master bath duct has a low point above the laundry room, and the ceiling leak could be just an accumulation of moisture in the duct from the master bathroom exhaust fan that runs down to the low point and creates a leak. If that is the case, then you need to eliminate the low point by possibly installing a hanger to lift up the duct. This is just my opinion about what could be happening. Another solution could be to reroute the master bath duct to the nearest soffit location with hopefully a shorter run. Good luck.