mgbinspect

When in doubt, get the materials sales rep out. That's typically a highly educational exercise. I used to do it often with masonry materials, and sometimes the big wigs would show up.

No, but hail occurs less than once per decade here. I've seen it twice since I was a teenager. I'll google rash blisters. Mike B, this house has several attics. A couple were no longer accessible because of ill conceived DIY 'projects' that converted some portions of attic space into conditioned (or semi-conditioned) space and left the balance of that attic space unaccessible. You may be onto something. Marc Yeah, well converting attic space to finished space without throwing baffles in will fry a roof too. It could always be a materials defect exacerbated by under-ventillation.

I'd suspect under-ventilation. Huge attics typically do very well, but hip roof systems are notoriously under-ventilated - plenty of soffit ventilation, but not enough ridge or roof vents toward the top. Is there a fan, and is it working? You might remember last year when I had an attic with a hip roof with temps in the 165 range. The shingles look like they're getting cooked.

(And, of course, my original note was based upon the assumption it was the real deal. I didn't get the impression from the original post that it was the abhorrent stuff...) [:-weepn]

Sure thing Mr. T. Another thing that might be helpful to understand, is that stone mortar is nowhere near as dense as brick mortar. Stone mortar is merely sand and Portland cement mixed just damp enough to clump when compressed. So, it's pretty porous. The exterior of the joint is rarely tooled, but is typically brushed, which does create a bit of a finish. Consequently, moisture will wick out of stonework pretty readily. Brick mortar, on the other hand, is quite dense, due to the plasticizers (lime, etc.) The real purpose of those materials are to make the mortar much more workable. They make it so a mason can spread a trowel full of mortar along three to five bricks at once. They also make it so the mortar will easily squeeze out from between the bricks as they are installed. The plasticizers fill most of the voids between the sand and cement particles making brick mortar dense. So, brick mortar holds water for a much longer period of time. I imagine that, a drainage system isn't quite as critical with stone veneer, but that's just a guess.

If there is no cavity between wall sheathing and the backside of the stone, there would not normally be weeps. (We never put in flashing or weeps, as far as I can recall.)

I did an inspection last Summer, where the entire crawlspace looked like a cavern - tubes hanging everywhere. The seller seemed to have money to burn, owning vintage cars, ATVs, Bass boats, etc, but apparently hadn't stuck his head in the crawlspace in years. Needless to say, the buyer ran, and the guy took the house off the market. There had to be $20,000.00 of damage in there - really sad. When you see them hanging from window heads, you know you're in trouble. [:-shake][:-scared] (PS. Richmond, is kinda like the Bahamas for termites, they love it here - lots of boggy damp clay and soil, forgiving Winters and brutally hot Summers and plenty of wood - heaven... )

Agents seem to hone in on the fact that a crack is stair-stepped, as if it's a redeeming quality, when in truth it's meaningless. The only telling factors of a crack are: 1. Does the wall surface remain a single plane, or has the crack made for two planes? (Bulge) 2. Is the crack bigger at one end than the other, which reveals heave, subside or differential movement/settlement. In the case of the foundation settling over something (flexing), the farther you get away from the point of origon of the crack, the larger and more intimidating the crack will appear (a bit of deception). It's an angle, after all, so getting larger the farther from the point of origon is just a fact of simple geometry. In spite of these helpful hints, only an engineer can make any type of qualified diagnosis.

I don't know if this will be helpful or not, but I know for a fact that when you see that happening on mirrors (laminations coming apart). It's from cleaning with chlorine based cleaners. (I always wondered what made mirrors get all screwed up on the outer edges. Then, my youngest son surprised me by cleaning the bathroom. Twenty-four hours later my mirror was toast. He had used chlorine based tub and tile cleaner on the mirror, and that did it in. Apparently, whatever is used in the lamination process can't tolerate chlorine.)

Perhaps in some aspects, it's a lost concept... [:-magnify

In a different way, past builders and designers DID use high performance materials. The selection of materials was pretty scientific, in ways it no longer is. I noticed, many years ago, in old building design manuals that woods were selected according to use. One thing that stood out to me was red wood - as pretty as it is exposed or stained, it was listed as the champion of woods to receive and hold paint. Building science isn't a new concept. In confirmation of that fact, I was just yesterday snapping photos of finger-jointed shingle mould coming completely apart on an eight year old home...

That's pretty much the way I call for repairs, as well - pretty direct, unless I don't know what's best. One of the problems we deal with is that often, the licensed profession tradesman is the reason we're calling for a repair in the first place, so we need to take a stand regarding the repair.

I can't agree with that. The biggest single reason TIJ exists, as I understand it, is to promote home inspecting, as a profession. What we're talking about here is the difference between sounding professional and being professional. I think a great example is a doctor. The knowledge base of the average doctor is astounding to me. It's so obvious that when a doctor isn't seeing patients, he's reading and studying to stay on top of what's happening in medicine. How often do they really feel the need to refer us to a specialist? They're a consistently professional and respectable gang. Why shouldn't home inspectors be that consistently competent? If you think about it, most of the time, when a doctor consults with you, the information he offers you is far less based upon what he learned through his years in college than what he's learning every day, by keeping his ear to the rail of medicine. And, thankfully, he only encourages us to spend money on a specialist, when it's dire or he's out of ideas. It might be GREAT to be the upper crust of service and knowledge, but accepting the fact that there is no real bottom to the barrel and merely hoping to benefit from that reality doesn't do the profession any favors. It just goes without saying that if we concentrate on what is best for the profession, it's going to be self-incriminating - me included.

Coal has its definiite advantages. When I lived in the mountains in that log cabiin, all cooking was done with a Coppercad cook stove - Summer and Winter. As plentiful as wood was, that stove had a firebox the size of a shoebox, which. Meant you had to split the wood down to kindling and the stove really burned through it fast. I finally got tired of that and put in the coal grate. Coal was cheap and lasted probably five times longer. It was great. The Shelby Foote Civil War Trilogy I'm listening to calls to my attention that most boats and trains were driven by steam, and even when idle, they had to keep a head of steam to be ready to move out. It seems they'd burn whatt was available, but coal was preferred. I imagine there was a time that coal was available pretty much everywhere. Lots of coal shoots here in Richmond.

It always puts a smile on my face when Kurt does the "a hundred times yes" or "a 1000 times yes" thing. (Eureka moment in the lab...) The "extreme" I was referring to was motive - or lack of it. It seems that guys refer a lot of things to specialists because: 1. They actually should (job well done). 2. They're lazy (an embarrassment to the profession) 3. They're ignorant, but don't realize they could have the answer in minutes. (never heard of the phrase "self-taught") 4. The only phrase they know how to robotically type is "consult with a licensed ... blah blah blah, prior to closing." (I can't stand the phrase "prior to closing." - talk about canned horse manure.) Regarding #4. The attorney style CYA babble might be more an East Coast disease, which I used to be mildly guilty of. I've never been in the habit of calling for everything to be checked out by a "licensed whatever, prior to closing.", but I did write like a stuffed shirt, until Chad set me free by hitting me squarely between the eyes with this phrase, which I now always keep in mind: "...you're an easy going guy, loosen up on your tight ass white middle class vernacular.... I think you should write friendlier, ..." Thank you Chad - a 1000 times thank you... [:-graduat (and thanks for the eureka moment mantra, Kurt.) At any rate, maybe the best way to sum up the challenge is this: If you don't KNOW EXACTLY why you're referring something to a specialist, you probably have no business doing so. After all, if you're going to direct your client to spend more money for informational puproses, make certain there's some genuine value in doing so.

Just FYI, CSST was *always* supposed to be bonded, from the very first piece that was every installed. The bonding requirements have changed a bit but, frankly, not in any meaningful way. There was *never* a time when it could be installed without bonding. If someone asks me what the seller *should* fix, I usually tell them that it's a stupid idea to have them fix anything because they'll only screw it up worse. Beyond that, I really don't care who negotiates with who to fix what. I'm with you. Repairs to a seller are merely an obstacle. I always use stuck windows as a great example. "What do you think these windows are going to look like if you make the seller unstick them?" Most folks immediately get it. I don't see a lot of long stretched of the yellow CSST here. It was a flash in the pan. Consequently, I'm very guilty of ignoring a lot of the threads about it over the last few months, which I now regret. Thanks for the input.

Exactly. I've been telling people for a couple of decades, when they ask me a question I don't know the answer to: "I honetly don't know, but I'll have the answer for you in pretty short order." If you have an internet connection and a telephone, the answer to any question you can think of isn't very far away. You just have to know when it's time to call for help. I've got fellow inspectors in my area that call me now and then from the field to ask me masonry questions or get my opinion and direction. I don't mind at all. I rather like it and am glad they feel comfortable doing so. And, I just called a local guy and posed a question here about CSST gas line. The way I see it, like Ben Franklin said, "We'll either hang together or hang seperately." The largest single obsacle to learning is getting past "I don't Know" and on to "can you help me."

I think honestly, there is no "right" and "wrong" and the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes being tossed around here. The problem arises not when an inspector knows and stays within his limitations, but when, like my example above, an inspector refuses to even use his head. I ask myself this question all the time, regarding the severity of a problem: "What if nothing is ever done about this condition?" I even ask the question out loud to myself and the buyer during my Summation, and often the honest answer is, "Nothing. It's been like this forever, and will be like this when we're both dead and gone." The example above is like that. You're right that we must stay within the limitations of our knowledge base. But, we can also think things through, muster a little courage and render an opinion.

I can offer a perfect example that happened in my area: A Realtor I've worked with for years called me asking if I would follow behind another inspector to put out a firestorm he had started by referring a buyer to an engineer. I told her, I don't like doing that. Any time anyone has called me to make another inspector look bad or fan a fire, I've always declined. Worse yet, this inspector was a fellow Member of my own local ASHI Chapter. But when she explained the situation, I felt it best to come. The floor system was TJIs and over the steel I-beam down through the center of the basement, TJI's were cut and used as blocking between the joists. During construction, a plumber had knocked one of the pieces of blocking askew to accomodate his plumbing pipe, rather than cut the blocking. The inspector referred THAT to an engineer!!?? Huh? The seller was furious and the buyer was insisting that the seller provide the engineer. It was crazy and flat out stupid. I was shocked. In that case, I called the inspector and told him apologetically that I was going to write a letter to all parties concerned stating that when the blocking was in place, it was approved by the local building inspections department. Cut the blocking to accomodate the pipe and put it back in place. Everyone involved thought about the logic of the statement and was relieved. The fire was out. End of story. I agree with Mike O and Mark. A lot of agents rightly expect us to refer even the slightest little problem to a specialist. Mike said it right - no guts.

Just a thought - If it's really a turn of the century house, I wonder if what you're seeing there is an old relining job. In other words, the original chimney flue was the inner surface of the brick chimney - no flue liner - just like you're used to seeing. What has me wondering, is that slurry around the flue. We never used anything that wet when we built chimneys, because it was important to leave terra cotta liners some wiggle room for expansion and contraction or they'd crack - big ones anyway. The same holds true for dampers. You can't mud them in tight or they'll warp and crack. You kept the brick and mortar back slightly from the damper surfaces, except the flat ones, which would slide in and out of the mortar bed joint. We used to line chimneys years ago with a nifty little tool we'd make of wood out in the field. It had a vertical 2 x 6 as long as the liner, with an eye hook in the top of it. Then we'd put 2 x 6s out from that one just short of the width of whatever flue we were dropping down the chimney - two at the bottom and one up from that. The forth one would be hinged and slightly too long so once you dropped the whole affair into the flue, the long piece would wedge into the flue and you could pick the whole flue up and drop it on down the chimney. When you had the flue in place, we'd pull on a masons line that was attached to a small eye hook on the leg that was too long, which released the flue. The thing worked every time and the harder you shook it, the more wedged in it became (detail below) [:-graduat Click to Enlarge 26.72 KB Then, sweeps came up with the inflatable bladders they'd pour around or the bullets they'd pull up through partially set grout (Golden Flue), which put masons out of the relining business.

Thanks Bill.

I'm wondering, for accurate reporting, if someone who has really put sume time into this subject could offer a simple summary timeline regarding: when the material was first considered a problem Dates of any official conclusions Dates of any official code changes ? I started looking at post and threads on it, but there are too many - all peppered with tidbits. Can anyone post the complete lowdown here, since this appears to be the most appropriately named thread. It's obvious a few of you have done some serious research on it: John Dirks, Mike O, perhaps? I've got a home that has it and bonding was called for right around the time it was constructed, but it was no doubt code approved when delivered. The buyer is making a huge stink about it, because he happens to be in the insurance industry, but I'm not really sure I feel it's a legitimate seller concern. I'd just like to consider and offer the best info possible. I don't usually call for sellers to upgrade anything for the buyer's peace of mind. It just doesn't seem cricket to me. At any rate, it seems like it would be nice to have a single thread we can refer to where news on this product is updated. Thanks in advance.

Now that I'm home and able to behold the stuff on a decent sized screen, I can see it's not epoxy resin. Interesting! Never seen it. I wonder if it can be had with finished edges? (It sure is ugly stuff...)

Yup, I don't believe it's a "product" at all. It's a product mis-applied - pea gravel and epoxy resin - typically used over concrete slabs around pools to permit water through and off a surface without ponding.

But, what better way to uphold the church? [:-tophat]