HOUSEHOLD MAINTENANCE IS TIME, ENERGY AND FINANE CONSUMING

I became acquainted me with Zillow,com..  My house was built in 1945 (not 1958 as I had thought).  The basement was made of cement blocks (actually the whole house, though the upper floors was made to look like pink brick).  For years I have watched powdery residue slake off the basement wall.  Seven years ago I had a new furnace installed. The code had changed; there was no longer a vent in the forced hot air system for the basement.  I found this out after I got black mold on the wall and the smell of mold permeating the house..

The first dehumidifier It lost its compressor in a week.  On warranty, I drove to the next state, the closest where repair could be done but not for several weeks.  To keep me healthy and the house from rotting, I bought a twin of the first one.  I used both, connecting one to the furnace pump, draining into a set tub.  The second was turned on in very wet times but had to empty manually.  Last year, my visiting son noted the two running dehumidifiers producing a lot of water.  He told me cement becomes porous after many years it is leached.  There is a great deal of moisture but no standing water..

Solutions are neither simple nor inexpensive. To repair the problem from outside, trenches would have to be dug around the foundation at a cost of 20K-30K.  A second lesser cost but less effective  solution was to paint a sealer on the basement walls.  The basement, after 46 years of storage is like an obstacle course, otherwise known as a blivet.  Trying to move things from the walls would take backbreaking work and incredible amount of  time.

That said, one of the dehumidifiers finally decided to die, noisily.  It is now August and places have sold out their stock for this year.  I can only praise the man who invented the World Wide Web because it saves hours of driving from store to store to find a replacement.  I've earned the art taught to me by the chef in a restaurant I worked in after high school/,  She wisely taught me:  "Use your head and save your feet."  Wise words.  Use the Internet and save driving and wasted time.   The band aid fix tomorrow will be to buy a replacement for the unit that died.