Hi, This year I'm using a whole-house humidifier on the 2nd floor of our 2-story home. Yesterday I found that there was quite a bit of condensation forming both inside the attic (insulated) ductwork, and on the surface of the ductwork between the duct itself and the insulating layer. I could squeeze the insulation and feel that it was full of water in a couple of spots. I cut out that insulation, and installed fresh insulation and re-taped everything.
I've got separate ceiling mounted sends/returns in each room. I plan on covering each with a vapor barrier (7-mil plastic and either tape or magnet strips). Questions:
- Will the vapor barrier on each send/return do the trick? That is, is this solution good enough to fix the problem?
- How worried should I be about the remaining damp insulation or the inside of the ducts still being wet? We have another 2 months of winter here, so the system will not be drying out on it's own anytime soon. Do you think it's okay to just wait until summer when the attic will get up to over 110 (F), and it will dry out on its own? Or should I do something sooner? I don't want to start a mold experiment up there.
- If I need to proactively dry the system out now, what is the best way to do that? I am thinking that I could turn off the whole-house humidifier for a couple of days to get the air inside the house to equalize in humidity to the outside (dry) air -- then just run the HVAC air handler fan for 24 hours to pull inside air through the duct system, hopefully drying it out (?)
Any help/insight would be greatly appreciated....thanks....
-Randy