Hallo, Yes I am indeed having problems articulating myself in this issue, I have no idea why, I spent the longest time editing it, to the point were I decided it had to be posted & done with.. About half of the plants have been sitting in our semishaded & windprotected gangway for the last 3 weeks already. Everything is in pots for the time being but I was concerned about having to prune off part of the roots , I just have no experience with that, don't even know what to look for.. The stuff still in the basement is things that are in the dry seemingly dead/dormant group... I have for example quite sizeable creeping phloxes, who are in appearance as they would be out side during winter, Those I am not too concerned with as they have a way of bouncing back from the dead, I am back down to the basement, Thank you So much for such prompt reply, I hope I naswered your question , if not, get back to me please. Kind regards Kerstin

Just an update... I am finished with removing all of the original fiberglass batts - what was pinned to the ceiling and also the really old stuff from the rim joists. The old stuff at the rim joists was nasty, and I am glad it is out. I can now see light thru the cracks between the framing and the top of the foundation. I'll be hitting that with "great stuff" soon. To recap - this was a smaller unfinished basement area. I have a hepa vac. I plan on vacuuming the area daily for a few days, in case anything airborne starts to settle. It was quite dusty, plus fibers.

Hi Sue I also have a Modine feed off a hot water line. I also have alot of condensation on the windows. I run the garage temp at about 45 degrees only. The lowest the thermostat will go. I am in Westchester New York. Zone 5. The garage gets very wet when there is snow. The snow sticks to the cars and then melts in the garage. The garage floor is graded such that the water runs to the garage doors. I get a puddle around the doors because the rubber draft sealant on the doors tends to keep the water in. I think water is not getting in under the door, but it is the snow melt not being able to get out. Note the rest of your garage is dry because it is up hill, and most water has evporated when you check the garage in the morning. Hence the illusion of water seeping in under the door. To try and reduce this I use a broom to sweep up the drop snow and push this out the door. I usuall flip the emergency catch and use one of those home depot buckets to raise the door by about one foot and the push all the slush out. That helps a bit. In the summer we have a damp corner in the garage mainly from condensation and humidity. It is not that bad though. The doors and the windows are the coldest in the garage, and all that wter does then to collect on them. To fix the hinge rusting issue I recomend putting some WD-40 on it. That should keep the water off and the sqeaks away. A longer lasting solution is car grease, but it is sort of messy. Best, Mike.

My "unheated and closed-off rooms" are definitely not isolated, unused spaces. I sleep every night in one, for instance. Another is my back entrance hall (a sort of mud room, but this being a farm it is unusually large) which in warmer weather is always open to rest of the house, but in winter the connecting door is kept closed (and is tightly weatherstripped). Except for the many times each day we go through it on our way in or out of the house, or to go further on into the wood storage room (wood heated house so that's at least 10 times per day.) My sleeping room is on the second floor above heated rooms below, but the back entrance hall is directly over a dirt-floored crawl space (uninsulated and non-vapour-barriered) with a trap door in the floor opening directly to the open, stone-sided, well. Other closed-off rooms are intermittently opened (say before a party or before the holiday gatherings) but some stay mostly closed all winter (store rooms and my sewing room, for example). There are also other rooms, which without direct source of heat (no stove in the room) can get quite chilly but are not closed off by a door. In any case I don't really see any difference that I would ascribe to temperature variations among the spaces. Perhaps it's due to the age of my buildings, the plaster thickness (my walls are back-plastered twice within the wall behind the three-coat on wood lath interior finish), the complete lack of wall-cavity insulation, or the nature of my climate. I am always wary of blanket statements that purport to cover all old houses, in all areas of the US and of dissimilar age and construction. Peeling paint in old houses can be caused by the paint, especially if there is calcimine in one of the layers. Resolution is removing all the paint and starting over with a clean, dry, sealed surface. But before you do that, pay some attention to the cracks themsleves. For plaster cracks one of the best things to do, in my experience, is to take a pencil and draw a line several, or many, places straight across the crack and at the extreme ends of a crack. Write the date of the mark on the surface and observe for many months. Any rapid shift of the lines or extensions is worth paying close attention to. In my case every worrisome "new" crack has invariably turned out to be one that remains stable for years, and probably had been there for decades but never caught my eye before. It's very reassuring to directly observe no progression. One less thing to worry about in your old house. HTH, L