hausdok

Just a guess but maybe it's a commercial type and they number them differently. I just spent about ten minutes going through everything on the State website and I couldn't find a current explanation of their numbering code. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Kurt, Before I had the guide, I would have been reading this number as September '04, April '09, or March '04 or January '09; depending on whether I interpreted it as year and month or year and week. Since I got the guide, I just start at the letter and read to the right using the letter as the month (A thru N - they exclude the letter I) and the next two digits as the year. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I considered that model; but I've been pondering doing something beyond just furnace heat exchangers. Chimneys, cathedral ceilings, etc. and you can only use two short extensions with that. With the Seesnake you can use up to six five foot extensions and not lose resolution. What would be cool would be the Ridgid Seesnake Micro with a head that can work outside of piping that won't hang up in walls, etc.. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yes, A is January and 02 is the year. It's 8 years old. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

My father, his brother, my mother's brother and my sister died from cancer. I seriously doubt that being exposed to EMF had anything to do with it and until I know that it did, I'll be telling folks that there are lots more important things to worry about than the bogeyman. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Ya'know, listening to you rail on and on can get pretty tiresome. How about presenting your information a little more objectively in an article format accompanied by pictures and followed by a bibliography instead of links to disconnected stuff all over the web. I can guaranty you I'd then be interested in reading it. Instead, I read the first couple of sentences, looked at the user name, and clicked on to the next post without a second glance. Explain the premise of the article and then lead us through, with careful explanations, photos and diagrams, why your outside method is superior to the inside method. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, I'm the idiot. What Jim is saying - I think - is that if you don't know the answers already you shouldn't be dinking around with it and should be letting a licensed sparky do the work for you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

110? Does anyone supply 110V anymore? I think you mean 120, but I'm not in PA so I don't know for certain. 3750/120 is going to require at least 31.25 amps 3750/110 is going to require at least 34.09 amps Do they specify a maximum breaker size? If not, I think you're going to need #8 copper or #6 aluminum and a 40 amp breaker. Don't trust my word though; I'm a math/electric idiot - wait for Jim K. or one of the ex (or current) sparkys to weigh in. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Anyone else notice a sharp decline in the number of inspection requests after last week? PS: Jim, I'm not sure if you recall me referring you to a Realtor for an inspection in the Portland hills. There was a 60's house on stilts that I didn't want to do. Anyway's, the agent told me yesterday that they are closing on the house next week, and that they chose to skip the inspection. Turns out one buyer was the local DA, while the significant other was an attorney as well. They ended up hiring a PE to go out and design a bunch of repairs for the support structure. Probably a good house not to get involved with. Hi, Every time I drive up to Bellingham and see those houses on those 30ft long stilts on that steep hillside east of I-5 I just shake my head in wonder and ask myself, "Why?" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Indeed . . . but you utterly miss the point, Mike. No, I don't think I missed it at all; but I think you missed mine. It's pointless to indulge a client's (or one's own) fears when there is no proven body of science to justify the fear and absolutely no way that you can ever completely remove the source of the fear. For example, I'm more afraid of rats than I am of death. I know that I can't change the fact that rats are in some crawlspaces and attics. I have a choice; accept it as a fact and continue to do what I do, or get out of the business, because there's absolutely no way that I can ever change the fact that there are going to be rats in some attics and crawlspaces. People with fears of electro-magnetic fields have even less of a choice; because about the only way they'll ever be able to avoid them is to get on a non-motorized sailboat and find an island somewhere with absolutely no electricity or radio towers, etc.. and completely withdraw from society. Oh, well, I suppose they could commit suicide, but that would be a little weird considering their fear of cancer has that whole accelerated death thing that goes along with it that they are hoping to avoid by avoiding EMF. Even then, out on an island and isolated from everything else, they'll still be surrounded by the earth's electro-magnetic field. Maybe it's just me, but I think that junk science should get very short shrift in this business. Convince me that it's something to worry about that we can change and I'll get behind any effort to educate folks about it and ensure they avoid it. Until then, I don't have time to waste explaining to folks how they shouldn't be afraid of the bogeyman. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

We sit inside of a building with an electromagnetic field surrounding us. We sit in cars with an electromagnetic field surrounding us. We walk through commercial buildings surrounded by electromagnetic fields. Yeah, I guess there's a lot of reason to be worried about powerline radiation when we're spent our entire lives surrounded by it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's voodoo, People are worried about EMF based on a discredited study of a single town in England (Wales I think) where there was an unusually high number of kids with leukemia or something like that. It's my understanding that no agency (EPA,CDC, AAS, European health agency) has been able to duplicate the tests. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nah, It's dirt, fine silt. That red dirt is everywhere in Alabama. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, The Examining Board of Home Inspectors - the outfit that developed and provides the National Home Inspector Exam - is looking for some photos to be used to illustrate components or deficiencies. They are looking for: 1. A picture of an old gravity-type boiler - the kind that was used before circulators came into common use. 2. A contemporary hydronic boiler 3. A steam boiler showing the sight glass 4. A photo of a gas water heater that's been improperly cocooned in an insulation blanket with the blanket covering the air intake at the bottom of the tank and the draft diverter at the top of the tank. Those sending photos need to understand that the photos will become the property of EBPHI and will need to be accompanied by a release. Basically, send them as attachments to an email and declare in the email that you are surrendering rights to the photo. Send them to: jfunkhausr@aol.com ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

There's nothing unusual about a gas fireplace producing moisture. The cobwebs that you're talking about have absolutely nothing to do with the flame color or how much condensation it produces because the box is sealed away from the interior. How long did you run it? As soon as you fire up a gas fireplace the water produced by the combustion process will condense on the gas and remain there until you have it on long enough to warm to the point where it can evaporate that condensation. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I see one every few hundred homes. The nails are usually pulling out on one side or the other and they're ready to blow off. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi David, I don't think it's a Cor-a-vent; I think it's one of Certainteeds Multi-Pitch Filter vents. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Put down a vapor barrier. Even in dry climates a 1,000 sf house can evaporate up to 11 gallons of air into the atmosphere every 24 hours. Vapor diffusion will push that moisture directly up into the home. OT - OF!!! M.

Yung and I met because she was the spitting image of an ex-girlfriend of mine. I was working undercover in my role as an AWOL doper and had the nightclub she managed under surveillance for alleged drug activity. I saw her back in the office and actually thought she was my ex-girlfriend. I told a waitress that I wanted to talk to her. The waitress said, "No way, GI. She's the manager. Her boyfriend is a Korean rock star. She doesn't talk to Americans. No way I'm going to get fired by asking her to come talk to you." I showed the waitress a picture of my ex-girlfriend and said, "If she doesn't talk to Americans, how come I have her picture in my wallet?" To make a long story short, it worked; the waitress did go back - and did get yelled at - but Yung finally did come out of that office to talk to me and three weeks later we went on our first date - a trip to the zoo in Seoul. We got married two years later. Thirty years later she's still my best buddy and the only person on the planet that will put up with my bullshit. I think I'm gonna keep her around for a few more weeks. Click to Enlarge Yung and my niece Eun Jin ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

A very good point; and one I recently made to someone where a very steep roof met a narrow shallow pitched triangular roof wedged in between the steep roof plane, the side of a second story dormer and the front wall of the second story. The upper end of that lower roof plane was about 4ft. wide and has a valley where the two roof planes meet and it narrows from 4ft. to 10 inches in the space of about 8ft. The only thing under that roof was felt and I was concerned that even a moderate snowfall was going to create a dam that was going to create a mess below that area in the foyer of that home. This is what I'm talking about Click to Enlarge 32.82 KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, except some manufacturer's - Certainteed for instance - don't like open valleys. Anybody else? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

We've talked about this here before but I'd never really asked the question before. When you all see a Closed cut/California/Half lace/Alternative closed valley on a roof, do you all consider the "greater" watershed slope the larger roof expanse, such as a main roof that meets the small roof of a dormer, or do you consider the greater water shed slope the slope with the steepest pitch, such as when a steeply sloped tudor dormer meets the lesser-sloped main roof of a house? I was taught by my father to always run the shingles from the smaller roof field up the slope of the larger roof slope field about a foot. If the shingle from the smaller field was to end just short of the valley, in the valley or just uphill of the valley, we'd insert a shingle section in the course a couple of shingles before the valley so that the end of the shingle lapping the valley would be just long enough to ensure the shingles ended at least a foot uphill of the valley. Then we'd overlap the shingles of the larger roof field onto those of the lower, trim them off 2 to 3-inches short of the valley on the uphill side, nip off the sharp point at the top of the shingle where it meets the valley and then place a bead of mastic just under the edge of the overlapping shingles to make sure they stayed stuck. In W.E. Johnson's Roofer's Handbook (Originally published in 1938), Johnson calls it a half-laced valley and says that the shingles of the less-steeply-pitched slope should run across the valley and lie on the steeper slope with the shingles of the steeper slope overlapping them (Like the tudor dormer I talked about above). Certainteed's Master Shingle Applicator manual says on page 63 to "lay shingles on smaller foof area, across valley and onto the adjoiniting roof area at lea 12:, Embed each shinlge in a 2: wide strip of asphalt roofing cement. and Cut 2" diagonally off the upper corner of trimmed shingle." Certainteed's instructions pretty much mirror the Old Man's way of doing things but lately I've been running into some roofs that are done the way Johnson says to do it and I'm wondering what the prevailing mindset is on this - smaller roof uncut and larger roof cut, or lesser-pitched roof uncot and more steeply pitched roof cut. I'd appreciate everyone's input. Thanks. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Don't waste your money. Look around you and find the largest employers in the area and then target those employees. Rob, in your area, you should be targeting Joint Base Lewis-McCord. Ask every customer where he/she works. When you find someone that works for one of those companies, find out whether they have an intranet discussion board for company employees. If so, when you shoot the final report over to that client, ask the client to recommend you to co-workers on that board. It cost you nothing; it produces gobs of work. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks Phil, I'm glad to finally hear from someone who is very familiar with this phenomenon. It's kind of neat too that years after they are posted, questions are still getting answered here on TIJ. Makes me feel llike a proud papa. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Phil, Roof restoration - painting a roof to make it last longer - isn't really something that's very popular here. It's more or less viewed as being a jackleg approach used by folks too cheap to replace a worn-out roof. I've personally seen a few excellent examples of roofs that have been coated with one of these products and those roofs had been doing really well. Still, I have to confess that, though I couldn't find anything wrong with those covers and as far as I could tell they hadn't negatively impacted the homes, I couldn't help but being skeptical of the claims made by the literature that the sellers who owned those homes were using to convince my clients. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike