hausdok

Hi all, Just had this. Scenario - a small uninsulated mechanical room attached to the end of a house. Inside is a boiler supplying hot water to hydronic baseboard convectors and a radiant floor heat system. The exhaust is a single-walled pipe that passes out through the plywood wall on one side, extends a couple of feet, turns downward and then ends. I could be wrong, but I suspect that the vent used to turn upward and had another section attached that's long-since been lost to the ages. The current homeowner purchased the house this way and has no idea if there used to be a connected vent. OK, so the vent needs six inches of clearance. That's easy. But since it's not venting into a dedicated stack I believe that vent should be a double-walled type because using a single-walled metal vent on the side of a house is going to end up with a lot of condensation occurring in the vent. Currently working on this report and have a short deadline. would like to not have to spend a lot of time digging around for the rules that state that the vent needs to be double-walled material and needs to extend up the side of the house and then clear the house/roof. If anyone can help me save a little time and has those cites handier than I do, please post them here. Much obliged to anyone that has 'em handy. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT !!! Mike

Hi Nick, I think it was Kurt M. who had some questions for you but as far as I know he hasn't participated in any conversations here for the past couple of weeks 'cuz he's dealing with some personal issues. Be patient. He'll be back by and by. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Maybe what's holding it up is the same thing that makes furnace exhaust flow upward inside a Gravity vent!!! [:-bonc01]

I think you've got a roof there where the guy nailing the shingles is not being careful to align his singles. He drops the shingle in place, slams a nail into the left side of the shingle and then takes the time to line it up. Sometimes, when he's done that and pulls the shingle down on the right edge to get it to line up, the bottom-left edge rotates left until it butts against the previous shingle and then it bows up slightly, Look at those closely. If the ones I see lifting are all at the joint between two shingles you've got your cause. A piece of sheet metal and a razor knife. The roofer just needs to trim the little bit off the left edge of the right shingle at every lifted point. Push the sheet metal under the butt joint, overlap the two shingles, then cut straight down through the butt to remove any excess at the overlap. Go on to the next raised area. One the pressure is relieved, they'll all lie flat. If the roofer had to go through that one time, he'd make sure to kick his crews in the butt so they'd stop doing that. Maybe he'd even invest in a chalk line and a story stick - stranger things have happened. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi David, Yeah, I agree that the HD's are simpler but for whatever reason a lot of houses in Redmond are built with those cast-in straps. I don't know if it's the city requiring it or it's just the preference of this particular builder. I was doing an inspection last week which happened to be next door to one I'd done a month ago. The client told me that the builder had a crew of guys out the week before to his neighbor's (my former client) house and they'd stripped off the first few courses of siding at the back entrance and were...guess what...chipping out the flash, prying the straps off, flattening them with s sledge and then reinstalling the siding adjacent to the back entrance. I'd written that same issue up for one strap adjacent to the back entry the month before. In that case, the siding had literally cracked. You'd think that a smart builder would have told his foundation subs long ago, "If you don't clean those things up after you strip the forms I'm gonna lose your phone number." Instead, they're fielding people to fix stuff that they could have avoided with a little foresight. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The concrete that hardens in the gap between the curve in the strap where it exits the wall and the wall plane. If you don't chip it out, there's no way the strap can lie flat to the side of the foundation. OT - OF!!! M.

Every once in a while I'll find one or two pieces of siding bowing out on a house because the guy who'd framed the building hadn't bothered to clean the flash out from between the earthquake strapping and the foundation wall. Sometimes it's not caused by sloppiness but by framing shrinkage. In the case below, I think it was shrinkage. I've never seen a house this bad. There were 11 instances of this around the perimeter of this one-year-old home! The homeowner doesn't remember seeing even one of these when he'd bought the house a year ago. When the framing shrinks in height the strapping has nowhere to go but outward and this is what you get. I normally recommend the owner insist this be fixed. To fix it right they need to strip off the siding, pry the strap off the wall, chip any flash out from between the bottom of the strap and the wall, sometimes notch the sill, flatten the strap against the foundation, re-nail it to the house and then reinstall the siding. It's not the kind of job a developer wants residents of a neighborhood to see; because when they come around asking questions they're liable to realize why they have odd bumps on the bottom of their own walls and it can start a chain reaction; so they'll often refuse to do it. This particular builder has refused to do it dozens of times; not sure how he'll react to a situation where there are eleven instances on one house. With HardiPlank one can fall back on the manufacturer's specs and force the issue but it's not so easy when it's not HardiPlank. I'm curious, do many of you see this? If so, what do you guys normally report and recommend when you find this? Click to Enlarge 12.7 KB Click to Enlarge 55.06 KB Click to Enlarge 48.17 KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Sorry Richard, Please note time of response? Was getting foggy-brained. Well, nah, that's not true - I'm always foggy brained. I guess you could say I was on the verge of falling asleep sitting at my desk. Anyway, the manual answered the question, though John K. had answered it looooong before that. This thing was configured as a plug-in but I see in the manual that they can hard wire them. What's next - a friggin' windmill? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks Chad, I'd briefly looked into that. Just the seats or valves too? Been reading that stellite seats and stainless steel valves are the way to go but another guy said he'd installed stellite seats and valves. To be honest, forty years ago when I walked away from the automotive world I'd never looked back and hadn't followed any of the technology. I'd completely missed the whole loss-of-lead discussion. OT - OF!!! M.

Oooh, that's cold. One thing is for sure, finding a place less than half a mile away where I can get old style gas for that Packard is pretty cool. I guess I'm still going to have to add a lead substitute though. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Richard, Thanks for your response. I agree that it is called a charging station but since I first posted this I found their installation operations manual online and in there they repeatedly refer to it as a charger. There is a bit of a difference; your car is a hybrid; the leaf is 100% electric. No gas motor; no on-board charging system. I specifically asked him whether it had the ability to charge itself like a Prius or other hybrid - it doesn't. In fact, the wife returned hom and rolled the car up behind me while I was standing in front of the house and I never heard it. I asked the guy if it use any gas and he said it didn't. I eventually found the answer in the manual. It says the output from the "charger" is 30Amps but that a 2-pole 40-amp breaker is necessary. Guess I should have done some more research. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Cool tip on the gas, Jim. That place is about 600 meters from here. Not sure, but I thought I saw a bunch of those metal Jerry Cans at HFT the other day. I might be able to get them a little cheaper there; worth checking out. I'd be putting StaBil in any gas I store. Running the generator dry with the choke on when you're going to put it up is SOP where I come from. Whatchu mean catfish, Jimbo!? Have you been unconscious? Have you driven down the road and seen the snout on all of these new cars? The front end of my baby is gorgeous in comparison. Here's what she looked like when I found her on the H.A.M.B. board more than two years ago. No 151 of 588 made and one of less than 200 left today. Click to Enlarge 56.67 KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Generac makes a couple of portable models. http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200481615 http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200596740 OT - OF!!! M.

So, in the Star Trek sagas whenever a hostile ship tries to take over the computer on a Star Fleet ship Captain Kirk or Spock or Captain Piccard would send a tachyon burst back along the link and cause the enemy's computer to self destruct. Has someone figured out how to hack the NSA's computers and do something similar? France was pretty pissed at the NSA last week. Hmm...... Read This! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. Man, if there's such a thingy I want it. I want to go after all of the spammers from overseas (and here) that fill my inbox with so much crap every day. Push a button and imagine the fat sweaty guy with food scraps in his beard losing his ability to screw with me. Yeah!

Last week I ran into a charger for a Nissan Leaf in a customer's garage. I'd never run into one before. I normally wouldn't have even looked at it, 'cuz such things are outside the scope, but being the curious type I checked it out anyway. That's when I got really cornfoozed. A 40-amp two-pole breaker protects it and a #6 copper cable runs to a 50-amp plug on the wall of the garage which that charger is plugged into. Then there's the label; if I'm reading this thing right, it draws 30 amps and is supposed to have a maximum fuse of 30 amps (see below). Click to Enlarge 21.39 KB So, I thought by using a 40-amp breaker they'd over-fused the thing. To confirm that, I came home and googled the thing on the net and got to the the site. The site says that the input current is 40-amps and that a 40-amp 2-pole breaker is appropriate.???? Any of you electrical whizzes want to help dispel my cornfoosiosition? ONE TEAM -ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Thanks for the suggestions so far folks. I live in a 3-story townhome - all electric. Baseboard heaters in each of the three bedrooms and a couple of unitary in-wall electric heaters in the kitchen/living room/dining room area along with an electric hologram fireplace. All three baths use overhead heat lamps. I've got the typical electric range/oven, 50-gal. electric water heater and electric dryer. There's one full-size frig in the kitchen and two full-size frig' plus a full-size freezer in the garage. I've got half the garage converted into an auto restoration shop with a couple of compressors, blasting cabinets and assorted automotive machine tools but I wouldn't use any of that in a power outage. The house is tight and well insulated. So much that when the heat goes out in the middle of the winter it takes at least a day for it to cool to the point of being really uncomfortable at which point we break out the sweaters. Once it gets cold in here though it takes a day or two of running the heat full bore to get the place warmed up enough that it returns to it's original mode. We never run the baseboard heaters - ever. The bedrooms on the mid and upper levels are comfortable without them and the one in my office on ground level is right up against the back of my desk so I use a 120V/1500W space heater in the office. During the coldest days of the year, the two 240V/1000W heaters on the main level come on maybe once or twice an hour when the temp in the house drops below 55 degrees. They are all we need for the main floor and the heat from those goes right up the stairwell to the master suite and keeps it plenty warm. The 120V/1500W fireplace is almost never turned on. I was reading online where refrigerators and freezers generally draw about 700 watts when up and running but about 1200 watts each at startup. If it's really cold out, I wouldn't think I'd have to worry too much about the frig's defrosting but if it's a typical Seattle winter where the coldest it gets is about 35-degrees I'd expect there to be some melting going on in both frig's and the freezer and for sure in the one upstairs. The water heater says 4,000 watts for each element but in an emergency I'd probably shut off the water heater unless it was needed. When needed. I'd shut down those two 240V heaters on the main level for an hour, switch on the water heater, allow the water to heat up, and then I'd shut it down and turn the heaters back on. Same if she needed to dry a load of laundry or use the oven - never more than one of those big watt users on at a time. Harbor Freight has placed a sale price of $289.99(with coupon) on a 3200 running watts/4000 max watts 6.5 HP generator right now. At 70 dB it's pretty quiet and it'll run 10 hours at half load. I was thinking about picking one up but I'm not sure if it can do the job. The next step up is a 6500 peak/5500 running watts 13 HP unit with a run time of 11 hours at half load and 74dB sound level. That's on sale for $490. - I'm thinking that this one will probably be able to do the job better. I was considering their new inverter generator (2500max/2200 rated) at $499.99($500 jeesh); but, if I did the math right I don't think it has the cajones to do the job - though the noise level is supposedly super low and I hear that the inverter generators are supposedly superior, blah, blah, blah. I know I can pick up a ready-made transfer switch but I was really wondering if anyone had thrown their own together using off-the-shelf parts - a small breaker box, some breakers, etc.. It seems like it would be a cool project. I know all about the perils to workers of running a system with the main on - I'd go down to the meter, turn off the main and put a padlock on it so only I could turn it back on and then go fire up the generator. Also thought about going with a propane unit. I used to work on propane-fueled towmotors and forklifts back in '73 when I worked for a big foundry in Torrington, CT for a few months. Got pretty good at fixing those fuel systems and liked their simplicity. There are some real advantages to propane - namely the ability to store unused fuel forever and not having to worry about the generator's fuel system getting all gummed up. They are quite a bit quieter too and they burn cleaner - not completely CO free but I'm pretty certain that they'd be more neighbor friendly than any of the other choices except the inverter type. What say you all? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, So, they are predicting a very cold winter here in the northwest this year. When that happens we always seem to have the inevitable loss of power when the ice takes down limbs onto power lines all around the county. Usually I grin and bear it, pile on a sweater and snuggle up but this year I was thinking about picking up a back up generator. I was wondering if any of the brethren have one; and, if so, what wattage are you running and for how large a house? I know size is dependent on what I'm going to be powering off it, but I'm curious as to what folks are using in their own situations. My wife has a platoon of refrigerators and a freezer that need to be powered in the event of a power outage. My inclination is to simply purchase one or two of those large Rubbermaid tool lockers, put them out back on the shaded side of the house outside, and if the power goes out, unplug all but one and then move all the foodstuff from the others into the lockers; otherwise I'm probably going to need a pretty big generator. Then again, the cost of purchasing two of those is probably equal to the difference in cost between a small barely-large-enough-to-get-by generator and one large enough to keep all of them running and still provide enough capacity to power all of the bare necessities. I'm also curious about folks' thoughts about installing a transfer box versus just running a few heavy-duty extension cords; and for those who'd eschew extension cords from the generator, their thoughts on building a small sub-panel to use as a transfer box, using off-the-shelf parts, versus purchasing a ready-made transfer switch. I've opened up a lot of small accessory sub-panels put together and installed by electricians around here when those electricians had installed standby generators. The off-the-shelf installs seem to outnumber the ready-made transfer switch installs. They seem pretty basic: I mean, if I can understand how their circuitry functions they have to be pretty basic because when it comes to most electrical stuff I'm dumb as a turnip. So, what're you guys using? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Found this. Kind of interesting. I can imagine folks finding this applied to a conventional stucco wall and mistakenly identifying conventional 3-coat as E.I.F.S. http://stuccomfgassoc.com/v1/wp-content ... h-tech.pdf Also this, which should come in handy: http://stuccomfgassoc.com/v1/wp-content ... udging.pdf ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Didn't it come with a manual? Did you look on the inside of the cowling for a sticker with the codes?

I'm with Marc, It's a 20-year old gas furnace with a defect in the heat exchanger. They have an expected service life of 20 years. It's done what it was designed to do and lasted as long as it was designed to last. Time to get a new one. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

See them like that all the time. Doesn't seem to be an issue. The lichen is. It's turning that roof into lunch. OT - OF!!! M.

Tried one of those once at the Steam n Cream - what we called the oriental bath/massage concession - on Camp Red Cloud back in the 1970s. She filled a coffee can up half full of water, dropped in one of those old fashioned cup warmers that looks like a question mark, wrapped my neck with a towel and shut that door. In about five minutes I learned what it was like to be some vegetables getting steamed on top of the stove. The next part was much better.....[:I] ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Because there is no coalition and my attempts to form one failed. For example, I asked ASHI if they would help and they turned me down explaining that they couldn't even commit $1,000 toward it because they have a 21-member board of directors that has to approve everything. Both major manufacturers turned me down too. So, I had to go it alone. Could be folks turned you down because they don't trust you. History does have a way of repeating itself. Just saying..... The same folks did nothing for the poor inspector who was being sued. History will show that Nick was the only one who did something for the inspector in need and got the law suit dropped. The others could have done something, but did nothing instead. Does that make you trust them? I think you are wrong. A large group immediately began organizing and they continue to do so. There's a difference between member-owned associations with representative governance that aren't permitted to do anything without debating it first, and then voting on it, and a private entity. Don't think so? Look at the snarl in D.C. Those other associations have by-laws they are obligated to follow. Nick's association is basically thousands of folks paying him a few hundred every year to participate in his association but he isn't hamstrung by any by-laws. Look at it this way, governments are debating forever what to do about global warming but if they wanted to Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Donald Toupe' and others who are obscenely wealthy could dip into their pockets and hire every farmer who's cutting and slashing in the Amazon rain forests and make them game wardens and pay them a very comfortable wage overnight. Then instead of cutting and slashing those wardens would zealously guard the rain forest and preserve it. Those folks could do that with their pocket change. Instead, they rely on their governments to come to a solution and that takes time. In the case of this guy who was getting sued by the patent trolls, there wasn't enough time to bring all of these disparate groups together, formulate a cohesive plan and then go back to membership, organize meetings to discuss the issue and then bring it to a vote in each organization so the "coalition" could move forward. Nick, unencumbered by any rules except those he makes up for himself, was able to use his considerable resources (membership dues) to act immediately. It's just too bad he didn't use those resources to stall the patent trolls long enough to allow the other associations time to get their coalition up and running; so that the coalition, with him included, could move forward in a direction everyone agreed on. Had Nick done that for the benefit of the profession, instead of unilaterally acting on his own and tacitly validating the tent trolls' nutty claim, he would have been hailed as a hero and a whole lot of folks might have changed their opinions about him and his association. Instead, he's just made it more difficult for all of those inspectors using infrared that don't belong to his association. Now, instead of being the hero, he has set himself to look, in their eyes, like the villain.

20 second bing search http://www.floridadisaster.org/hrg/index.asp

Right now the deck can dry to the exterior and interior. Coat it with rubber and you turn that cover into a big piece of plastic that traps moisture against the deck. If there's any rot there you'll just accelerate it. Don't throw money away on jackleg solutions. Tear it off and put a decent cover on there - not a cheap fiberglass comp cover - they don't work well at low pitches - in fact those architectural-grade shingles don't even belong on a roof with that low a pitch. Put a cover on that's designed for wind conditions on lower slopes in your climate. Not sure why I'm bothering to respond to this. By the looks of the way you've responded on that other site thread, you're going to ignore what we tell you anyway and do what you want. You're looking for some kind of affirmation that what you want to do will work. You didn't get it there so you came here. When you don't get it here you'll go to another site and keep looking until you find some numb nuts who says it's OK and then you'll coat the roof. So, go for it; but when the roof deck rots a few years from now don't forget that you were warned and didn't want to listen. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike