Bought my home 6 years ago...keep smelling dank odors coming up from the basement, discovered the drainage from the toilet to the septic was never vented through the floor/walls to the roof. There is a short 5-6inch stack just below the floor, leaving me with only 2 inches there. How to I vent this properly without having a pipe running through an upstairs room or hallway. Looks like no matter where we vent this to our roof, the pipe from the toilet to the septic isn't under any walls or closets to hide it. I wanted to be able to put a vent free propane heater down there if the furnace isn't working in emergencies, and I realized an open flame down there could be dangerous because of the gases coming from the septic and this pipe. How did this pass inspection?! How can I vent this damn pipe out horizontally, safely?

This is a subject that deserves some research because you have many trade-offs. I can advise what the best thing is to do (functionally), but cost and aesthetics may force you to give up some performance. These are the basics for the hood: The goal is capture and containment. Capture means getting the smoke into the hood; containment means not letting it escape except to the outside through the ducting. Hoods do not have the flow rate to suck up the smoke from the stove. They depend on pulling it into the hood when it reaches the hood. This means that to capture all of the effluent, the hood has to overlap it. The smoke and grease effluent expands as it rises. The higher the hood, the larger the hood has to be to capture all of the expanded effluent. Commercial hoods are mounted seven feet above the floor and typically extend quite a bit beyond the cooking zone on all four sides. If wall and cabinets are present, they can act as "mirrors" to the expanding effluent and help duct it to the hood aperture. In such cases the size of the hood can be reduced somewhat. For normal 30-inch or so hood heights over the cooktop, the hood needs to overlap the cooking zone (the array of pan bases, not the glass surface) by three to six inches on all sides. For 36-inch wide cooktops, the recommended hood width is 42 inches at a height of 30 inches or so. (Even this width might not capture everything if serious frying or grilling is done on an edge burner.) Hoods placed higher should grow to accommodate the effluent expansion. The hood entrance aperture also needs to be deep enough (front to back) that it captures on those edges also. The hood center should be centered over the array of pan base areas. 20 inches is probably too small for a stand-alone hood. If the pan base zone is around 18 inches front-to-back, then one would want 24 inches at least for a hood 30 inches high, 27 inches if the hood is at 36 inches high. A 20 inch deep hood would need "skirts" of some sort to direct the effluent up into the hood aperture. This would be impractical relative to buying a larger hood unless working with an insert within a larger cabinet exterior. The CFM required is of the order of 90 cfm per square foot of hood aperture. This is based on a 3 ft/s effluent velocity from hot cooking. A lot of cooking is done at lower temperatures where this velocity is lower and the fan can be run proportionately lower and still contain the effluent. At lower speeds the fan will be quieter. The fan should be sized for 1.5 times 90 cfm/sq. ft because its rated performance is measured when it is hanging in the air (zero pressure drop) but the reality of the duct losses, baffle losses, transition losses, imperfect MUA cause pressure loss and hence reduced fan performance. I recommend spending a few weeks of spare time reading the various hood threads on this forum. kas

Meg, imo, you really need to move away from this designer. If nothing else, this is causing you a great deal of increased stress. That takes a lot of your time and energy, too. I'd just finish up whatever is hanging and not involve her in other issues. While moving on, you may stumble upon someone else better suited to help you with things. Where you just click. As far as charges, I think it's ridiculous to charge for general contacts. Design help in emails, I think, is another story. And the per email thing is a racket. Fixing problems -- well, there are always problems to be resolved and the world just doesn't turn perfectly or as expected. That's part of a designer's job and expertise for sale -- to get it done and know how to handle the problems. So, depending, one can't put it all on the designer (to be perfect, have a crystal ball, and to have everyone else be perfect too). That's just a scapegoat for hire and unfair, imo. Now if it's just negligence and carelessness at your expense, that's another story, too. Gee, did you just send her to LA and Mehico??? Not a bad deal.

as far as I understood they repair while they mitigate..I suppose different crews at work, but one can't just remediate without replacing whatever's damaged. one needs to get estimates though-what's happenning, where, what it entails..it is overwhelming, we also spent couple months just being in shock and drinking wine, even though ours didn't present any safety issues unless being disturbed. Then one takes a deep breath and starts calling.. and sources for leaks should be all taken care of, no question I'd start with a mold guy and a GC..to put some picture together insulate the house..drywall comes out for that..you might be surprized at the state of black paper too..we patched ours, overall was not bad.. or else would be easier to take the house down..asbestos-we had to remediate it 'cause was everywhere..but yes, now the house' s insulated)) and we're in Southern CA, no snow-but makes sense for a house to be insulated. roof-was still fine yet we did have to change lots of stuff there since was at the end of its cycle. and we didn't have leaks, mold, etc nothing structural too. and wiring was fine. still..life experience I could easily live without lol but hey..everything learned in comparison. I had this phrase I'd be telling myself "Nobody shoots yet? okay then". I got it in my head to automatic level. It popped up even when I didn't need it. Like a broken record. Yet it helped. In order to do stuff one needs to keep himself functional..)) as for Craigslist etc don't worry..half of our place is craigslisted, etsied, ebayed, blahblah. One of the best affordable ways to create, with time, a cozy and meaningful place for your family. So as to that part-a day will arrive and you'd be, like, wow, all the stories I have in our house.