Bain

I found this yuck beneath a fireplace this morning in a crawlspace. The fireplace was 100 years old, and the chimney had neither a liner nor a cap. Check out the globular stuff and the tendril-ly thingies beneath the hearth extension. I realize it says something about my personality, but I thought it was kind of cool. Click to Enlarge 60.43 KB Click to Enlarge 55.96 KB

DO NOT mock that which you don't understand. The added benefit of Jiffy Pop, since you clearly don't get it, is the metallic pan and the foil that covers the corn. Jiffy Pop is an incredibly effective tool for diverting the rays emitted by Big Brother and anyone else who may be watching. I gleefully tossed out my foil caps years ago . . .

If I had feelings, you both might have hurt them.

How WOULD one put on frozen underwear? For someone with dimensions like mine, the very act would be incredibly painful.

. . . an acceptable solution for roof leaks? I checked the IRC and couldn't locate a reference. Click to Enlarge 47.92 KB Click to Enlarge 37.37 KB

Guess who unfailingly checks the garage-door lock before jabbing a finger into the button? Me. 'Cause there was one time when I DIDN'T check the lock, and got to watch while the screws were ripped clean out of the door by the opener-mechanism bracket. Something like that happens, and you just stand there, staring at the destruction you've wrought, while thinking, "I am SO f**king stupid."

I got a call one night from the seller of a house I was in earlier the same day. His furnace was dead. The house was only a few miles away, so I said I'd be right over. You're probably thinking what I was . . . the panels weren't on just so, and the blower kill switch wasn't depressed. I hopped into the attic and looked around for probably fifteen minutes and COULD NOT figure out what was wrong. I was about to give up and call my friend the HVAC guru when, through sheer serendipity, my eyes noticed that the disconnect switch was toggled off. No clue, but I assume I unknowingly brushed against the thing with a shoulder or elbow and clicked it off as I was leaving the attic. And that would be the end of this I-am-a-dumbass story.

Ha, ha, ha. That's pretty much what I said. IS a 4" b-vent suitable for gas logs? I assume there's some sort of BTU-to-diameter ratio, but I've never looked into it. I told my buyers they needed to have a sweep determine whether a replacement vent would be acceptable.

Condemnation did, indeed, occur Click to Enlarge 49.05 KB. Click to Enlarge 48.71 KB

I haven't. The chimney wasn't removed as far as I could tell. This is how the house was built fifty years ago I suppose the gas logs would draft okay once the flue--yes, I realize it's a single wall--heated up, but before that happened? Without a conical transition, I would think the effluent would hit the flat portion of the galvanized metal and backdraft into the house. Click to Enlarge 57.05 KB. Click to Enlarge 59.24 KB

They do that here, too.

Dude, that is awesome. All of it. Loving your daughter . . . is very cool.

Ah, man . . . who told Marc about the map? I thought we agreed he shouldn't know about it.

Yeah, right. You would have to hold a gun to my girlfriend's head to get her anywhere near that thing. And it's probably 50/50 whether she'd choose the urinal or the bullet.

Coolsigns, you're not alone. I bought an IR camera about three weeks ago. I showed some photos I'd taken to Erby this past weekend, and had to pretty much admit that I had no idea what I was looking at. There was one particular set of photos of a ceiling and wall that almost HAD to signify that there was a leak in the bathroom above me. But like I told Erby, "It didn't look wet, it didn't feel wet, and it didn't moisture-meter wet." He said, "Then what are we looking at?" I had to honestly say, "I have no f**king idea." hahahaha . . . there's always that damn learning curve that one has to hurdle.

Dude, you could have at least flushed the bloody thing . . .

On an inspection of an industrial complex, I entered a building that had a severe NG leak and couldn't breathe. The gas company investigator said his measurements showed there wasn't nearly enough oxygen left in the building for the gas to ignite. I have since regularly worn a multi-gas/CO alarm on commercial inspections. I think inadequate gas-to-air ratios are what happen lots of times when there are leaks. And it's also why we don't read about too many explosions.

What do you mean? The gas is in the pipe. Marc But at first it isn't. I was referring to the initial drilling of the well. Once the gas pay is discovered, you have to allow the pressure to decrease enough for the geologist to determine how next to proceed. Depressurization can take several hours. What comes next lots of times is Haliburton or Slumberjay fracturing the pay zone to increase porosity and pressure. Then, the 7" production casing has to be installed--+/-2,500 feet of it where I was in Kentucky--which can require several days, depending upon how smoothly the process goes. Gas is exiting the well during the entire process just described.

Not to muddy the debate, but it may actually be SAFER if LP pools rather than rises. For NG to ignite, you need about a 14/1 air-to-gas ratio depending upon moisture contents. LP is a little lower, at about 12.5/1. If LP is leaking, and stays where it is, it would be difficult to inject enough air into the mix to make the LP volatile. I used to work around oil-and-gas wellheads. It was much safer--not that I did it--to light a match directly beside the wellhead than it was forty feet away where the air-to-gas ratio was more conducive to ignition. And yes, this had to be explained to investors and even some of the roughnecks over and over again.

ahahahahahahahahahahaha . . .

I don't see many shake roofs. Is it typical to put wood shingles on saddles? Clearly, the code-mandated 3" for flashings won't work.

So if #1 is the most common first question, how does everyone respond? I typically say, "My fees are outrageous, but I'm worth every penny." Nine out of ten people laugh, which helps to set the tone. That one out of ten who doesn't laugh, I didn't have much of a shot with in the first place.

Answer to Question One: No clue. Answer to Question Two: There is no correct answer. I go through this scenario several times a week. When I'm busy, I tell them my fee and provide a 15- or 20-second self-promo, fully aware that I won't get the job, but that's okay 'cause someone else will call and fill that gap in my schedule. When bidness is slower, I spend a little more time on self promotion. In marketing classes, they tell you never to go negative. It simply doesn't work. But I break that cardinal rule on a regular basis. I tell callers that I WILL walk the roof, I WILL check out every accessible area of the attic, and I WILL look at every square foot of the crawlspace, whereas my competitors won't. Does it work? Probably not. Or maybe I should say USUALLY not. The difficult part, is that most people know very little about houses, and very little about what we do. People don't know how diligent and compulsive some HIs are--diligent and compulsive to a degree that those inspectors will debate what font works best in a report : ) , along with everything else that has to do with houses. Yen knows your work, and wants to hire you because of it, yet she doesn't want to pay your fee because it's higher than some other schmuck's. Yen is basing her decision on simple cost rather than value obtained for that cost. Her lack of logic skews the question and renders it without a correct answer.

Okay. I promise . . .

Me too. Lest you worry I, for one, got it.