mthomas1

Re post #1, Look for a bottle labeled "Drink Me".

Most (for example the LGs I've seen) drain to a reservoir that is emptied after every cycle, or optionally to a drain (the LG drain connection is on the left rear, seen from the front). The LG manual I looked at was pretty sketchy about this - just says to connect to a "household drain" and there was no spec for maximum lift or line length. Presumably a dedicated interior drain connection would have to be via an indirect receptor as for other similar sources, and I expect that as these become common we will be seeing the same kinds of improvised drains we now see for AC condensate.

Every manufacturer of electric non-condensing dryers I'm aware of requires venting to the exterior. Rather than argue about it, I have one of these for each major manufacturer to insert into reports: Click to Enlarge 26.02 KB

I'm not talking about reducing liability control - that's the one thing on which I would not cut back. I'm talking about including substantial supplemental information, for example a check box which notes that the exterior is sided in asbestos cement siding, vs a paragraph explaining what is, if I'm aware of material available for parching which matches this pattern, link to government sites discussing the health implications and similar information. There is currently a *lot* of such information in the "FYI" section of my reports, and a good deal in the defects comments,and many clients find it extremely useful (I'm often told that they think of my reports a a "bible" or "guide-book" or "manual" for their purchase) - so much so that I have discovered that providing a color laser printed copy of each report (in addition to the immediately provided .pdf) is one of my most valuable marketing tools. OTOH, there are a minority of clients who are overwhelmed by this much information (though when I ask them, "What should I have left out?" they think about it for a minute, and then say. "Well... nothing. It all *does* belong there, I just didn't realize there was *so much* to know about my house!"). These clients usually work mostly off the separate summary report I also supply - which is the defects section, less photos, diagrams, and much of the supplemental information. That summary, really, is already more comprehensive than many of the reports I see, and would be the "base" product, with what is now my "standard" report as the "premium" service.

One thing to keep in mind in these discussions is that we often conduct them as though there were these things called "a home inspection" and "a report", when in fact there's a very wide range of what each of them can be, and still be a reasonable inspection and report. The proof of this is that you can have skilled inspectors with very different reporting styles, but who still have satisfied customers. To some extent this reflects the fact that if much of your business comes from referrals, there is a self selection for the kind of clients who want the kind of services you offer. But I think it's also fairly strong evidence that many clients are not very sensitive to the style of the report they receive. And as long as there are no expensive surprises they attribute to inspector oversight, they will end up feeling they received "quality service" and good value for the money. With this in mind, one of the ideas I've been kicking around is the option of marketing multiple inspection reporting services to my clients, and allowing them to decide what it is they want to get out of their home inspection and report. On the one hand, I would offer a checklist type report, directed toward people who don't have much time or inclination to understand their property in detail, but only want to know if there are "deal breaking" problems present. On the other, I would offer my current comprehensive narrative report to clients who want to achieve a deeper understanding of what they are buying, for example with an eye toward minimizing longer-term cost of ownership. I don't think this would save me much time on the inspection end - I would still follow pretty much my turn inspection protocol if only to control liability - but would potentially save me huge amounts of time on the report writing end. If all a client wants is protection from major surprises, pay me "X". And I'll provide you with a minimum report that meets those goals while adhering to the state SOP. Want what amounts to four hours of your own little HGTV show, and a report that has a picture that shows you where the air filter is located behind the lower front access panel of the furnace, and a discussion of why you should probably not be sticking and MRV 14 filter in there? Pay me "Y", and you can have that, too. To make this work, you would have to pay careful attention to your marketing - customers would have to understand that the quality of the inspection is a different issue from the type of report provides: that a less competent inspection will produce a poor report of either kind, while a highly competent inspection will do an excellent job of discovering the information that's needed to produce a useful report of either kind. Thus one of your marketing goals would be a client who understands that the difference in the services you are offering is not the quality of the inspection, but rather how the information you discover is formatted for their use. Which in turn, is driven by the client's decision about how much information they want - for example a inspector's website might display two sample reports the same property, making the difference in the depth and detail of the options graphically clear to the client. Of course, this approach is heresy to people for whom report writing is theology. But once you wrap your head around the idea that it's reasonable to offer more than one type of "home inspection" to your clients depending on what they want, it might be a reasonable and profitable thing to do.

Don't know about the others, but you can edit any existing comment and/or the underlying template at any time in Homeguage - from time to time my wife will proof one of my reports to see what typos have found their way into the boilerplate, and if there are just one or two errors I'll edit the boilerplate in the report, then abort the comment edit, which alters the stored template but not the existing report. (For "archival" proposes, the "real" report is the .PDF I send the client.) If I'm doing more serious editing, I prefer to open the template in Notepad++ - I doubt HG would approve, but it's the fastest way to edit, for example you can search for every comment that includes a given word, do global search and replaces, etc. Very handy, for example, if you have "lost" a comment. Here's what a section of a HG template looks like when it's opened for direct edit: limit(general-limit-visual-paint/parging) 2010/11/04 16:19:08 *{(amount-of-total-uc)* *{{(interior_of_the/exterior)* *identify(structural-foundation-component)* *general(lti)* *identify(structural-foundation-finish_material/method)*. *limit(general-limit-visual-paint/parging-explain_recent)* --- end -------- Removed, but noted here for future reference *limit(general-limit-visual-paint/parging-no_damage_observed)* limit(general-limit-visual-paint/parging-explain_recent) 2010/11/04 16:20:51 ------- Use ONLY if painted or parged Either the *identify(structural-foundation-finish_material/method)* is recent, or the *identify(structural-foundation-component)* has been little used since *identify(structural-foundation-finish_material/method)*. *{{(Parging/Paint)* on *identify(structural-surface/material--painted_or_parged)* can make it difficult or impossible to visually observe defects such as *limit(general-visual-paint/parging-cracking/tuckpointing)*, horizontal and/or vertical displacements of adjacent sections of foundation walls, evidence of water intrusion and/or damage, and evidence of insect infestations or the growth of biological materials. *explain(general-parging)* --- end limit(general-limit-visual-paint/parging-no_damage_observed) 2009/05/19 06:34:33 Unless noted in the "Structural Components - Foundations Findings" section (below) no evidence of significant structural damage or water intrusion was observed through or below the *identify(structural-foundation-finish_material/method)*. --- end limit(general-limit-visual-party_wall) 2010/11/04 16:33:22 The *identify(cardinal-direction)* *identify(structural-foundation-component-party_wall)* *{{(is_a_party_wall/are)* (a wall shared with an adjacent unit). I did not have access to the *{{(side_of_the_wall/walls)* located in the adjacent *{(unit/units)*, and *{(it_ was_not_inspected_and_is_not/they)* reported upon. --- end limit(general-limit-visual-personal_possessions/similar) 2009/12/01 10:23:44 At the exterior *identify(structural structural-foundation-component-all/%_visible)* above ground portion of the *identify(structural-foundation-component)* *general(lti)* *limit(general-limit-visual-not_paint/parging)*. Once you work out the logic of how the HG engine parses the template, you can change things around much faster than editing through the interface.

Yup - grammar can be is a real problem with such methods, as are "one-off" conditions. Like you I use a hybrid system, with an option to insert free-form text at any point, and probably 10-20% of the content of any given report is unique, and not worth automating. OTOH, my approach - as the way I have Homeguage set up makes it easy to do so - is that "when in doubt, store for possible use and future edit". I also use a text substitution program (AsUType) which allows me to predefine blocks of text to insert with a predefined keyboard combination (I set it up to look for a "word" that starts with a double carrot ("^^") and which also learns my typos (including misspellings) and automatically corrects them on the fly (knows around 14,000, so far). Which for a poor typist and speller such as myself really speeds things up while reducing errors. And one nice thing about AsUType: it works with any windows program, so the corrections it learns when I am typing in Homeguage also apply to text entered in Photoshop or Word or when creating Gmail, and vice versa. For example when typing the sentence above I accidentally typed "I an" (a combination which should never occur), so I "taught" AsUType to automatically substitute "I am". As you build up its custom vocabulary of mistakes, it becomes increasingly satisfying to watch AsUType automatically connect your typos in real time.

Well... the flip sides of the "compose as you go" approach are: 1) For most inspectors, there will typos and misspellings - if you doubt this, go back and carefully proof a report created "on the fly". 2) You are using mental "templates" for you comments, and for most inspectors these will not be as carefully composed as comments to which you have given careful consideration and which have been proofed and "tuned" numerous times. 3) I like to (for example) carefully document all limitations individually - for many inspectors, there is a temptation to shortchange such comments when they must be manually created each time. That said, if you are going to attempt a drop down "comments building" approach you are going to need highly configurable report writing software. And as Jim notes, you will be rewriting virtually ALL the boilerplate. FWIW I use a *highly* customized version of Homeguage, and make extensive use of the fact that at the deepest level it is a powerful text manipulation and scripting language. But I have - literally - thousands of hours invested in the effort, and as of this morning, 97,444 lines of code in the template (which I edit directly with a programmers text edition rather than the Homeguage interface) - very few people are willing to go to that degree of effort to get *exactly* the result they want.

That IS on cool ladder rack.... but fifteen-hundred bucks... !!!

Thanks, shudda' realized - got sidetracked on the discussion of PVC vs ABS, focused on that portion of the pic, and was thinking you were comparing the receptor to the "bell" of a trombone.

Hard to tell from the picture, but could that receptor be intended to accept water from a valve above it functioning as a drain cock, or some other similar source above the receptor? Click to Enlarge 29.07 KB Now... THIS... is what I would call a "trombone": Click to Enlarge 27.14 KB

I add that if the manufacturer requires that the device/appliance be powered from a grounded receptacle, and this requirement is not met, the manufacturer may not honor their warranty. This is not just a theoretical issue, some manufacturers of computers and peripherals (ex: Dell) specifically instruct their service personal to be alert for such conditions when they are performing on-site service.

1) I have to agree with Kurt: too many inspectors who are writing "narrative" reports are using too much "boiler-plate", often in the form of unaltered and poorly written canned comments that came with the software. 2) I have never seen a primarily checklist format report that is *nearly* as useful to a client who really wants to understand properly condition and what to do about it as a well written narrative version. And when the checklists are bad, they are truly pathetic.

I try to find someplace where I can get the accessory Protimeter extension probes to the backside of the siding.

"How to climb a roof" would be a pretty good topic - you're not going to find advice commercially available because of the liability issues.

As anyone who has ever walked up a steep roof with the assistance of a safety line knows, it's far easier and safer than without. Just about any kind of device which provides that sort of assistance is going to be a huge help even if it does not provide full "fall protection".

(IMO, code ought to require a permanent anchor at the top of every combination of roof planes. I would certainly do a better inspection if fall protection was readily available, and I suspect this is true of most others as well, irrespective of their opinion absent the opportunity.)

While I admire your gecko-like adhesion.... I think I'm pretty aggressive about roofs (as do some people who have worked with me), but the only way I even consider roofs at that pitch is in dry weather, with Cougar Paws, on shingles in good condition - at that slope you can have an entire shingle detach at one corner and pivot right out from under your foot (ask me how I know this). The other thing is, do that often enough in the summer, and sooner or later your left hand is going to find the hornet's nest hidden behind the rake board. At that slope, any aggravating condition, and it's inspection from the ground and eaves; as my wife likes to point out: "Dead inspectors write no reports."

When I researched this, everybody who understood patent litigation eventually got around to asking "Don't you guys have a trade association to fight this for you?".

The only two suits I'm aware of were: Homesafe vs Harris, but in that case Harris was a Homesafe franchisee, and failed to make franchise payments: http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/di ... /28810/20/ and as a result got dinged for the unpaid payments and court costs. And, Homesafe Inspection, Inc. v. Mark Gibson, filed about the same time, but I can't determine the status of that one. The FLIR suit was a product defamation suit, it's been settled. Unlike a lot of people, still believe this could be a *big* problem: once HS was granted the patents, the legal presumption is that they are valid, and demonstrating they are not would be a crushing burden for any individual user of IR equipment.

The problem with these guys is, they are too greedy. They could probably have gotten a few thousand inspectors to pay them $100 a year to go away, and IMO $200K a year for sending a bunch of letters would have been a pretty good rate of return.

I GOOGLE for further information on this issue every few months, and just did so again, there has been no further action by Homesafe, at least that has turned up in my searches.

That's "Apophis" "Apophis... previously known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a small probability (up to 2.7%) that it would strike the Earth in 2029. Additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. However, a possibility remained that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a precise region in space no more than about 600 meters across[6], that would set up a future impact on April 13, 2036. This possibility kept the asteroid at Level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale until August 2006, when the probability that Apophis will pass through the keyhole was determined to be very small. Apophis broke the record for the highest level on the Torino Scale, being, for only a short time, a level 4, before it was lowered." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis

Human nature being what it is, it's sometimes hard for people to get their minds wrapped around the fact that several things can be happening at once. That for example: 1) For well understood reasons, humans can have substantial, measurable effects on global climate, over periods as short as a few decades. 2) For (usually) less well understood reasons, various non-human factors have substantial, measurable effects on global climate over periods as short as a decade or two, and as long as tens of millions of years. 3) Because 1) is happening, this does does not mean that 2) has stopped happening. 4) Because 2) is ongoing, that does not mean that 1) can't/isn't happening.

$25 would work for me.