Been renting a single family house for 3 1/2 years through an annual lease. No basement, 1 floor ranch, 2 car garage, 3 bedroom 1 bath. House came furnished with refrigerator, electric stove and range, dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, and of course hot water heater and A/C and heat.

Landlord failed to fix the washer that was leaking in the garage and was getting our storage materials wet as there is no floor drain. That was 3 years ago, he never fixed it, So we bought our own set. Been constantly reminding him of the fact that there is no insulation under the floors. We have genuine wood flooring. I happened to look under the house’s flooring from outside through a crawl space, and there is no insulation between the beams of the floors for the entire area and the dirt under the house, not even a vapor barrier. Which explains why we have costly utilities electric bills (Heat is electric).

I also had a free energy audit performed by the local power utility 2 years ago, and they noted that the air intake which is in the living room and in the hallway (2 different air filters for the furnace/air handler which is in the attic) wasn’t sealed. It just pulls air from an old closet area, and the dirt from the floor underneath the house looks like it is being sucked through the unfinished wood flooring in that crawl space/intake.

About 2 years ago the landlord replaced the entire heat and A/C system, to include the air handler in the attic, and the 100% efficient heat pump outside. But did nothing about the dirty intake setup. Now we have brown dust blowing out of the air vents even though we keep the filters clean, but because the intake sucks dust from the floor after the filters.

Is there any legal recourse I have. He is fully aware of these problems but won’t do anything about it’ I don’t want to stir the pot (so to speak) much more as I like living in this area, but I also don’t want to sacrifice the health of my children either.