Kyle Kubs

[:-bigmout Whadaya mean call somebody else? They have a choice of who does their inspections? Too harsh...[:-censore &^%##^& [:-censore

Don't thank me yet, Jim or Dan should be along any minute now to make me look stupid.

Randy, if your talking about the connection between the #2? wire & the #10? wire. No. and if there was, it wouldn't be that big. I'm guessing that is the compression connectors that get used to connect a service drop to the SEC at the weatherhead. Like a split bolt only fancier.

Schweeet! Nice job Chad. I love the cable routing, nicely done. Don't envy you having done all the lighting & receptacles in #12 wire... My fingertips hurt just looking at it. I've been sneering at the electrical mess in my basement and panel for 9 years now but just couldn't justify spending time on that while bigger fires burned. After the storm last week had us without power, I started wiring a generator into the panel. Soon as I had to move a few wires to free up a spaces on the terminal bar, I lost control and just started pulling everything out and cleaning up the rats nest. Turned the power on and went upstairs, my wife says "I thought it was only going to take 10 minutes..."[:-censore

Just need to watch out for the fitting they use to attach it. Many of the fittings have a reduced orifice compared to the tubing. The one in your picture doesn't look like it does. I agree, it will never see that pressure, but worth noting, the pressure rating is usually given at a particular temperature and falls dramatically above that temperature.

Give me an old beauty like that any day over yet another rubber stamped McMansion/BiLevel/Ranch. Being unfamiliar makes it a lot more daunting. Get used to it and your head doesn't spin so much. Course it helps if you grew up in one and doing renovations of them. In general, for slate, 100 is typically a young roof if the hamfisted monkeys have been kept away. So for a house around 100 -150, if it's not original it's going to look pretty new. That one looks to be suffering those overhanging trees more than anything.

Sometimes they are monitoring wells the EPA puts in due to an oil tank leak. Most of those that I've seen have an embossed cap though, but not all.

I'd say someone has a pretty good talent with Photoshop.

Yep. Once we happen upon one of the components and I get the "Whats this". In the same breadth I make them aware that I won't be inspecting any part of it, but they need to contract a professional to winterize it and put it back into action in the spring, if they ever want it to work again. $8K water bill! [:-bigeyes

I think we need a picture of that. [Please]

I've this one instance of it. Not from a window per say, but from a skylight. At the time, I was standing there a little perplexed wondering how some lunatic hoisted a BBQ up on that roof and why[:-bigmout. ( I had no idea what caused it, till I came home and got on TIJ, and of course, almost instantly found a recent post about warped siding that edumacated me) So, I didn't collect much information, but you can see from the house picture in the second pic that the skylight on the left, was reflecting to the wall to it's right. The skylight was "flat" glass and fairly large, so I wouldn't be surprised if gravity was having it's way & making that glass a little concave. Three years ago, but if I recall correctly, it was low E coated, though, not sure. The color of the siding was a light gray. The third pic is there just to show the color a little better. This was in North/West New Jersey. Download Attachment: DSCN6618.JPG 281.18 KB Download Attachment: 129 W Lake Shore Dr Rockaway.jpg 187.68 KB Download Attachment: DSCN6619.JPG 355.09 KB

Hey Scott, Yes, repair... Talk to too many lawyers around here and their language starts to set in. There's been so much failure of this stuff up here that mitigation & repair are kind of used interchangeably now. They, previous buyers that walked away, did have an EIFS inspection prior to my inspection. Was funny how that was only presented to me after I issued my report. But it was only an inspection and no specification for repairs. That's why I'm trying to find a reliable contractor to layout what needs to be done and provide a quote. 99% of my options are just more clowns that would do it the same way. The other 1% are too far away for it to be worth their trouble, not being a whole house job.

Hey Everyone. Had a typical million dollar McMansion recently with a brick veneer front wall using EIFS details around the windows and cladding two foundation-roof window bays. 1998 house and the usual, nothing installed properly, signs of damage & problems/potential problems everywhere. The seller of course is a highfalutin realestate agent who brought in a contractor who says only limited areas need repair & the whole thing isn't more than $3k. The buyer found one person to take a look on her behalf and he wants to rip it all off and start over at $16K. His estimate of course lacked any real detail as to what he was going to do, and both of them are completely ignoring the lack of any signs of weeping drains or flashing in the brick veneer. So I've got the usual disparity in estimates and the seller asking me to recommend someone. I just don't have anyone to recommend to her to take a good detailed look and outline a proper course of repair. Does anyone have a good, solid EIFS mitigation contractor in the North Jersey area? The house is in Oakland but I need someone for the western areas also. Some of the pictures for your viewing pleasure. Download Attachment: P1040585.jpg 1702.72 KB Download Attachment: P1040561.jpg 1617.09 KB Download Attachment: P1040537.jpg 1512 KB Download Attachment: P1040559.jpg 1704.59 KB Download Attachment: P1040566.jpg 1674.64 KB Download Attachment: P1040567.jpg 1560.68 KB Download Attachment: P1040654.jpg 1291.34 KB

Peerless boiler? Copper should never be used for steam boiler piping, especially the header/manifold. The first thing that is going to happen is, without any swing joints in place, something you can't have with soldered Copper pipe, the thermal expansion, which is more significant with Copper than Iron, is going to cause that horizontal pipe to pry apart the sections of the heat exchanger, causing a leak. Kinda like this one. Click to Enlarge 51.58 KB That boiler look familiar? Then the Galvanic corrosion from the Copper and Cast Iron in the presence of water & O2 is going to rot the heat exchanger in about half the time is should live. I had told this guy ten years before he better get someone to change that piping. This one failed at the ripe young age of 18 years. Probably had a hole in it for a year before he called me. Click to Enlarge 30.32 KB The one you have there was piped by a buffoon.

Well, I wasn't there, so I can't say for certain. But my speculation would be that, they were going to have windows anyway... so not really any extra work to arrange them in the "Georgian Way". I'd say the same could be said for most other aspects, such as the walls & roof. Besides, the line of symmetry could just as easily bisect a single door as run in between two of them, you don't have to have a second door to have symmetry. Click to Enlarge 59.11 KB Click to Enlarge 55.3 KB Back in the time frame I'm talking about was a period of several years when I was doing a lot of work with the Smithsonian and the National Park Service on sites like the Lincoln home and Civil War museums. These people are a little anal about their research. I'm not talking about the little old retired woman they hire to sit there in costume for a few hours a day, I'm talking professional Conservators and such. Can I claim the article you posted the link to as a primary source for the formal entry theory? I was agreeing with that part of it... I just don't see the symmetry explanation as having as much merit. The receiving of guests on the other hand was a pretty serious thing back then. Hell, I remember we weren't even allowed in my living room when I was a kid. That was for company.

The one upstairs used to be the main panel and has since been relegated to an extra large junction box. Looks to have been done by someone with more IT or automotive electrical experience than residential power. And not much of that either. As for the main panel feed to the breaker, look up induction heating...

"...using one door for daily, domestic use while reserving the other for formal functions and receiving guests. One door usually opens into the "keeping room," where cooking and other domestic functions occurred, and the other opens to a more formal parlor." This was the explanation I got from a woman who was the curator of just such a house turned museum quite a few years ago. Now if I could only recall which one. I'm not so sure the symmetry thing is plausible. Think about the times. You spent your day from sun up to sun down, tending fields and livestock in every effort to make certain that by the time the growing season was over, you had enough food stored away to make it through the Winter to the next time things would start growing again. Spending time and resources on something as elaborate, for the time..., as a door, just for symmetry, doesn't sound like something someone who lived in such a meager house would do. Think about the resources. Hinges, a doorknob & lockset were pretty elaborate and expensive things. Even a raised panel door, full of hand cut mortise and tenon joints was seriously time consuming, especially compared to another 2.5 - 3 feet of lath & plaster. It just strikes me as being equivalent to me, paving the entire 150' up the side of the mountain to my house, three times wider than normal with 12' retaining walls, just so I could make a u-turn anywhere in my driveway I wanted to. Another conversation I had with the curator of Paul Revere's Grandson's house, concerning the receiving of guests, supports the "Formal entry" theory also. But then again, I know the symmetry thing would make me nuts.

I've never heard of a "reduction tank" either, but what someone call stuff in their neighborhood can be totally different just 50 miles away. On rare occasions, when someone wants to build a Cadillac system, they will put in a second treatment tank, around here typically called a settling tank. It just provides that much more opportunity for the solids to settle out and not make it into the field. You say the pipe runs downhill to this tank... is it a steep pitch? Maybe this tank was there to "reduce" the velocity of the effluent before it hit the d-box or drain field? Nothing coming into it after 15 minutes is not normal. Unless the primary tank was pumped or otherwise not at normal operating level. No pump of any kind involved anywhere?

Sorry to post then go missing. Trying to keep up with this and push the PD into actually doing something more than just filing a report. I had sent out an e-mail to several neighbors that are contractors to keep their stuff locked up & got a reply back from one up the street that he had been hit too. They took his GPS and wallet. Then managed to use his card at an ATM to withdraw $500.- but were also stupid enough (funny how it always works that way) to get video taped at the ATM. So the cops got the dumbass & I was hoping they might have my tools too, but apparently he's claiming he bought the card from someone. Getting any information or even having the detectives give me a call back is like pulling teeth. The last time this happened nearly 15 years ago when I still lived on the east side of the state where you fully expect this stuff, I handed the two heroin addicts, properly bloodied up, over to the police. All the contractors they robbed that night and the night before all got their stuff back, 'cept the idiot plumber that kept a handgun under the seat in his van. Doesn't look like this one is going to work out that way. I did put an add on Craigslist looking to buy tools, but no bites. Half of the Pawn Shops around here are just the legal faces on the illegal fencing operations that buy this stuff. Steven, thanks for the offer. Much appreciated, I just couldn't work it out time wise.

Yah, that was the first place I went. That and ebay, I'll keep checking them. Thanks.

Just went into my truck for the first time in a few days, all my tools are gone. Anyone is approached by someone trying to sell a Veto Pro Pak full of inspection tools or a Femto-Tech Radon monitor please get in touch with me. (973)663-3320

I almost made it through the day without consulting Merriam or Webster. The soughing song of pages falling from M to A brought relief from my ignorance. And you couldn't tell everyone else what it means? Now I have to look. [:-paperba EDIT: Now that's ironic.

Hey Mike, How does Doug have a "joined date" several months earlier than you? I thought you were the big cheese around here?

I guess that shouldn't surprise me. It still does, but I guess it shouldn't.

A wiring course in an engineering curriculum would be badly misplaced. No engineering graduate is ready for any line of engineering work without additional specialized education, done pretty much on his own and at his own initiative. It's like HI work....'train thyself'. Marc I understand where your coming from with that but, for crying out loud... Do they at least talk about those old guys, what were their names? Tesla & Edison.. I mean I know we're getting close to plasma conduits and all but I've always thought the history of a thing was an important place to start on how we got to where we are now. Hell, at least give it an honorable mention.