hausdok

Call the manufacturer and wring someone's ear off and demand they direct you to an HVAC tech who knows how to fix it. Then demand your money back from the people that told you it was fixed and didn't fix it. They'll refuse to refund it all but if you stick to your guns you'll probably get some kind of refund. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ah obfuscation; brilliant tactic, Mr. Ferry. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

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Whoo Hoo! [:-party] OT - OF!!! M.

Yes, I know that; but it sounds like this townhouse is an attached type where they share a marriage wall between units and, being staggered, the exterior side wall of this person's house extends beyond the back wall of the unit next to it and one side of the deck is attached to that wall. That's not unusual, I've seen it dozens of times on attached townhomes here. It still depends on the rules that they live under and most of the time those rules here apply to the exterior - even with detached townhouses. You'd probably not like it here where neighborhoods of detached homes - not condos - have HOA's and CCRs that regulate how some homeowners can remodel their home, what kind of roofing materials they must use, etc.. It's all stuff that they agree to when they purchase their homes. The person that called John probably just needs to pull out his or her copy of the paperwork that was signed at purchase and read it to find the answer. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Click to View 82.06 KBHell, That one's a piece of cake. Compared to snaking one's way through a bunch of fink or queen post trusses under a 3:12 roof, that's a sweetheart. Hell, you don't even have to crawl; just stoop and walk. Energy Star - What mold? OT - OF!!! M.

So, what you do is climb up in there and go on your hands and knees over to that area to look things over. Then when you back out you just fluff the stuff back up behind you. It takes almost no extra time; just a little more effort to get off the ladder and make your way over there and back. Maybe the framing crew had a few too many at lunch that day before they raised those walls and the guy working the level or the guy nailing home the temporary brace was a little off his game. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It looks like the type of chase one sees cobbled on around stovepipes when wood or gas stoves are added to a home and they need to run the vent up the outside of the structure versus straight up through the house. If that's the case, I suspect that whoever cobbled on the chase, whether the homeowner or the guy putting in the stove, was probably not the best "carpenter" in the world. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I'd always been told that the condo owner owns paint-to-paint and that, unless there is a specific agreement from day 1, the "common areas" - the exterior envelope, balconies, decks, exterior cladding, windows, roofs, foundation, crawlspaces and attics - were the purview of the HOA. Demising wall or not, I'd say that, unless there's specific language in the rules for that condo, that he/she isn't entitled to object to anything that the HOA does on the exterior unless it violates those specific rules that apply to the "common" areas. What's been the experience/education of the other brethren? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's because not all of our forums allow you to subscribe to them. Go to the menu bar above, pass your cursor over "forums" and then click "all forums" and look at the far right of the icons on the various topic lines. Those topics with an @ symbol can be subscribed to. We made a conscious decision early on when we began TIJ that, for speed's sake, so we wouldn't bog down the server, we'd limit the number of topics that one could subscribe to. We've changed our provide once or twice since then and transmission speeds and capacity have increased so maybe, maybe, we can revisit that policy. I'll have to talk to MIke and Rose about it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Yes, borate is mixed with Silvawool (shredded wood) and cellulose (mulched newsprint) as a fire retardant. The cotten insulation has been around for a while now; it's pretty popular in new construction down under for some reason. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

3 words: heatinghelp.com OT - OF!!! M.

If you use the stuff in the cavities of a CMU wall won't it get damp, and what happens to it if it does get damp? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks Bill, I'd learned about that stuff when I first trained for this gig; but, since I haven't ever seen any, I'd forgotten all about it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's only a guess but from your description of how it crumbles to dust I'd say it's probably UFFI - urea-formaldehyde foam insulation. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, 3-tab and architectural-grade shingles are uniform in dimension and are made out of the same materials. There are different sizes when you compare Canadian shingles to US shingles but within types made in the same country, they are the same size. I'd insist that the person who provided that question and answer provide a valid reference for the assertion that they're a different size. One more example of a so-called trainer with his head tucked up his backside so far that only a proctologist can examine his teeth; and then only with a fiber-optic scope. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hey Guys, You know, most of these columns have a comment section beneath them. There's nothing stopping you guys from going to those links and adding your comments beneath the article so that consumers can see what home inspectors think of the responses. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Asks the smart-ass while he curls up with his little harem of conchitas down in meh-hee-ko. Grrrr. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi All, I don't know if I've ever shown you all this link before, but it's one you really should have if you want to refer your clients to a source of information about how to safely deal with pests. http://www.stephentvedten.com/ ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Correction, Permanent wood foundation have been around for hundreds of years. We have a PWF guide put out by the Southern Pine Council in TIJ's library at: https://www.inspectorsjournal.com/forum ... ref400.pdf and there's a Permanent Wood Foundation website here: http://www.pwfs.com/ If you go to the FM 5-426 - the army Carpentry Guide that's in that same library - you'll also find a section in there on PWF's. That date on the guide says that it was published in 1995 but that's not true - it was actually written decades before and then updated many times. The date only reflects the most recent update. I agree, it's an excellent topic to discuss. There's a previous attempt at that here that didn't get much response: https://www.inspectorsjournal.com/forum ... hTerms=PWF I'm not sure where it is, but somewhere on here in a post I made many years ago is a PWF Inspection Checklist that I found on the net somewhere. I know it's here, I just can't remember where I put it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

What you experienced doesn't surprise me; it's very common here in new homes. Some builders here don't bother to put down a barrier until after they've dried the house in and completed it. You'd think that with our wet climate they'd know better. Anyway, because of this, the house continuously obsorbs moisture for months on end. Then, not long before delivery, they'll install the barrier and deliver the home. In almost every instance, builders will warn the clients to expect to see some cracking and movement throughout the home because they know that all of the framing is going to shrink; it even occurs in homes built with engineered lumber. The builders typically come back at the one year mark and repair the damage if the buyers request it. Sometimes the damage is minor, sometimes not so minor. You tested 15% moisture in the rim joist after the place had dried in? Since 17% or better will support rot, and it probably was much higher at the time of the inspection, those homeowners probably don't realize how close their home had come to something far more serious than cracks and movement caused by lumber shrinkage. This past Tuesday I inspected a brand new home where the builder had plenty of crawlspace ventilation under the code formula and had put the barrier down early but never bothered to install vents under one room that sort of juts out from the rest of the crawlspace with cold air on three sides. It's also the hardest part of the crawl to get to and the person that put the barrier down got lazy and left it about 10 inches shy of the far wall. Conditions in the crawl were perfect everywhere except under that room; under that room, water was literally dripping from the insulation and running down the foundation wall where evaporation from that 10-inch wide by 10ft. long strip of earth was condensing on the rim at all three sides. When I pushed the insulation aside to look behind it, moisture drained out of the insulation like a squeezed sponge and the floors and rim close to the perimeter on all three sides were covered with blue-green mold spots about the size of a dime. Your story has just proven what I've been saying all along - uncovered soil gives off a lot of moisture that the house should not be exposed to in the first place. By not insisting that it be dried in, one takes a huge risk. By all means, warn folks that fixing it will cause things to dry and shrink but don't tell them it's OK because it is not. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

So, can boric acid be harmful to humans when used like this? I doubt that the post would have been using it so liberally where kids and families were present if it were. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It might simply be some boric acid powder. When I lived at Ft. McClellen, Al the pest guys would come around every few months and dust that stuff all over everthing under/behind counters and in closets to knock back cockroaches. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, You can find everything you need right here: http://www.missouribusiness.net/iag/eating_drinking.asp ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Mediocrity? That's one hell of a bar to aspire to. Isn't the whole marketing mantra that one must set one's company apart from the pack and then market that particular aspect of his or her service? I see commercials all the time on television - many of them from lawyers, even - extolling the virtue of folks' businesses and explaining to the viewers how they go over and above and do things that other firms don't. Seems to me that we are conditioned to do the best that we can; yet, you preach mediocrity. Interesting. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike