Hi all, first-time homeowner here. Please forgive me if I don't use the correct terminology, I am an HVAC novice, at best. I recently purchased a new home, in Kentucky, built in 1986. It is a two-story and has a crawlspace, gas furnace, and outdoor condenser unit. The previous owners had their crawlspace encapsulated and a sump pump installed, but I'm not sure it was done correctly. They put down a nice vapor barrier, but didn't really seal the crawlspace access door to the outside very well (I am planning to remedy this with vapor barrier plastic cut into strips). The pre-purchase inspection uncovered mold growth in the crawlspace which we had re-mediated professionally. The mold guys suggested that I have a dehumidifier installed in the crawlspace, which I recently did. I purchased a Sante Fe Advance 2 dehum, and set it up in the crawlspace with a drain into the sump pump. We have still been noticing a musty smell in the house so I went back into the crawlspace to investigate a bit more and this is what I found: On the air supply side of the HVAC system, in the big housing that all the air supply ducts fan out from to all the registers, the previous owners had cut a hole and installed a regular floor register to pump air into the crawlspace. From what I have read on encapsulating crawlspaces, this is to treat the air in the encapsulated space since the vents to the outside are closed in encapsulation. It looks like the mold guys had closed the register and taped plastic over it to seal it off. The next thing I noticed was that there were no ducts connecting to the return air side of the HVAC system. On closer inspection, I found that on the return air side, there is simply a long (8ft) section of ducting in the crwalspace attached directly to the HVAC unit that has holes cut along the top of it. Furthermore, there are various places in the crawlspace where there are holes up through the floor joists into the walls, etc. Some go all the way to the second floor and you can see the light shining in them from rooms in the house with air return register grills in the walls. So this leads me to believe that the entire air return system is pulling air from the crawlspace...which is being pulled down through these random holes cut in the floor. Shouldn't there be duct work that does this? I always thought return grilles in the wall attached to ducts that traveled back directly to the HVAC, thus creating a closed system. Is this a major issue? Was this "to code" in the mid 1980's? I can try to put together some pictures if needed. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated.
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