Controlling the humidity in the house with a dehumidifier is a good thing and a great start. Check for any active leaks, specifically in any places where you have spotted water damage. Check for any drywall that is soft, specifically around the top or bottom of the drywall. Go outside and check the caulk around windows, the window ledgers, especially if the ledgers use any mortar, and flashing around the roof. You should take a hose and lightly spray, simulating rain and wind, with someone inside checking for leaks. Since you have a basement, look for any areas that might hold water around the foundation, check your gutters to make sure they are in good working order and the drains are directing the water away from the foundation and in a direction where the water can drain away from the house. You didn’t mention if your bathrooms vent to the outside (and not just into the attic either), if they don’t you will want to either vent them outside or include that in your dehumidifier/AC calculations. Check your dryer vent to make sure it is clean and vents outside as well.

If you can stop any leaks you find, control the humidity in the house, and wash with soap and water any exposed surfaces that may have had mold growth, I think you should be fine. I recommend you purchase some mold test kits and check for mold in the air just to be safe.

I use Emby and catalog my music using MusicBrainz Picard. Before Emby I used Ampache but I want to serve up as much of my media through the same interface as possible. Adding all the proper metadata and sorting the music can be time consuming, but it makes all the difference in serving up the music properly. Music is much more varied than Movies or even TV so it is a bit more difficult to get right and there are sooo many artists. MusicBrainz Picard makes it pretty easy though. I will be checking out Beets.io after reading this thread to see if it can help any more with organizing my library.

This is anecdotal, but I put in ceiling LEDs in my kitchen and sun room about 11 years ago. About 16 in all. The lights are turned on and off multiple times a day, every day. I have not had a single one fail. Since then I have probably put in nearly twice that many in other places, but they have only been in place for a few years at most and typically get less use. I have not had a single one of these LEDs go out. My guess is because the circuitry can dissipate the heat and that seems to be what kills the replaceable LED bulbs. Speaking of which, over that same time period I have went through more than three dozen replaceable LED bulbs. I think on average I replace at least one bulb every 2-3 months.

I have an inline duct booster fan with a control. I would recommend just putting one in your existing HVAC duct that runs upstairs. Also, if you don’t already, use your HVAC fan on “On” rather than “Auto” whenever there is an unwanted temperature differential. Overall I don’t think your idea about repurposing the chimney with additional duct work to move air is a bad idea. Especially given your description that multiple renovations have been done and perhaps a holistic approach to the HVAC system wasn’t taken. Our HVAC contractor re-routed our gas furnace’s exhaust gasses that had been going from the basement all the way through all the floors to the attack, the newer model just goes out the wall in the basement. The old exhaust was used to add a return from the upper floor to the basement. And of course, always check that you have more than enough insulation.

A better solution in this case would be a split unit to move the heat out of the home envelope completely.

We added a return to our upstairs and added an in line booster fan to our HVAC system to move more air up stairs. This helped a lot, but I have to agree that first I would look into insulation as it is a cheaper solution and closing a few downstairs vents as needed.

I initially had the opposite problem where my uninsulated cinder block basement was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter and my basement didn’t have any HVAC registers or returns. The only air conditioning it got was from a window AC unit and leakage from the HVAC ducts. Over several years I ended up adding 2" foam insulation internally to all the exterior walls, insulating the ceiling to the basement (mostly for sound absorption but it also helped with floor temperatures), and adding returns and registers in the basement. I also added an inline booster fan to help pull air up to a second floor bonus room that was an addition. Now the basement is always comfortable, the second floor is much more comfortable, and the energy costs are about the same. My moisture levels are 30-50% in the summer.

I did a radiant barrier on my rafters to guide heat up from the soffits to the ridge vent and then insulated the joists. Blown in insulation is pretty cheap. While doing other work I also insulated my southern facing garage wall and of course insulated the garage door (and sealed the edges). This made a noticeable difference in the temperature of the garage. I can turn a couple of fans on in the garage and leave the door to the house open and achieve a very reasonable temperature in the garage if I plan on being in there for a length of time. This helps in both summer and winter.

I run just one Windows machine with some VMs for various services if needed. Less to maintain and have to tinker with.

I installed cable in a couple of apartments I rented. I just made it look professional and nothing was ever said about it. In one apartment town home I even had access to the attic and was able to run cable in the walls. I did have to drill through the floor and door headers in some instances, but it can be done.

I still use Dia Diagram Editor for most things. I just wish it was still being updated.

I don’t really know of a way that you can add insulation without taking up interior space, exterior space, or replacing the wall with more modern materials.

• What about the sides of the home not facing the street? Can you add an exterior layer of insulation and then new exterior siding to those walls?
• On the side facing the street, you could replace the stone wall with a different type of wall that was more thermally resistant. This would of course be a major undertaking.
• I am sure you have considered fully insulating the floor and ceiling as best you can.
• If rodents and or insects are a concern, look into Mineral Wool/Rockwool Insulation.

After looking at other’s lists I think I am missing a good document server. Emby isn’t the best music and photo server so I could look at improving that, but it has been good enough for those purposes that I haven’t felt like going to the trouble of installing anything else.

• Aster: Multiseat software for Windows allows several users to work on the same PC.
• LaunchBox: Frontend for DOSBox, modern PC games and emulated console platforms.
• Blue Iris: Video security and webcam software
• Calibre: E-Book management and server
• Emby: Server for videos, music, audio books, and photos.
• Firewalla: VPN server, internet monitor and control
• Foundary Virtual Tabletop: Online role-playing game server.
• Grafana: Dashboard interface
• Hubitat: Home automation
• Hyper-V Manager: Tool that allows users to manage Hyper-V hosts and virtual machines (VMs)
• InfluxDB: Real-time database server.
• IotaWatt: Open WiFi electric power monitor
• Microsoft SQL Server: Database Server
• Octoprint: Web interface for 3D printers.
• PCem: Emulator for various old 8086 through Pentium PCs.
• SmartSync Pro: File sync program
• SnapRaid: Backup program for disk arrays.
• Stablebit DrivePool/Scanner: Disk pooling, file duplication, protection, disk surface scanner, and disk health monitoring
• Steam Link: Access and play steam games remotely