hausdok

I think a little bit of rain has been getting into the vinyl around the cell and has been reacting with the aluminum divider strip. OT - OF!!! M.

Thanks Bill, I've been away most of the day. Check out the coding I added to the Picture this post. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, A picture would help. Is the underside of the porch completely closed in or can air circulate beneath it? If the underside is an enclosed area and there's no way for moisture to escape a vapor barrier will help to cut down on the amount of moisture but probably won't completely eliminate the problem because you've got a self-inflicted wound there. Painting the underside of the porch with a latex paint after it's already been put down without being primed or even sealed probably didn't do a whole lot of good. The only reason you'd want to seal the underside of a porch is to stabilize the wood against uneven curing - you already realize that - but painting it after the fact only means that now there are narrow bands of unsealed wood where moisture can get into the wood. Instead of the boards swelling and shrinking uniformly along their entire length and on all sides, these are now absorbing ambient moisture through those narrow bands of unpainted wood in the joints and on the face of the joists whenever the humidity changes. Those areas closest to the unsealed wood are expanding and contracting more than the sealed areas and this is causing enough torsional movement to cause the floor to buckle. Kiln dried lumber is just sitting there whining, "I'm thirsty." If you leave it out in the weather unsealed it will take on moisture and expand. Paint it with a film-forming finish once that happens and now it can't uniformly expand and contract with changes in humidity. It would have made more sense to have sealed the underside with something that can breath like Thompson's Water Seal and then to use a translucent stain on the surface. Perhaps you should think about screwing it down. It'll still struggle to move but the screws might be able to keep it in place anyway. It's winter, so it will have expanded to the max right now with all of the exterior moisture on it from rain and snow. Drill and countersink, secure it with stainless steel screws, fill the countersink recesses with side-grain wood plugs that are glued in place, sand smooth, paint and hope for the best. Check this and this out. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Okay, the Plastic Pipe Institute called me today. They'd moved it to another location on their site. I've corrected the link above and you can, once again, download the guide free as a PDF document. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Actually, I wouldn't have shot you down, Rocon. You're absolutely right; a lack of adequate insulation, inadequate ventilation and warm air leakage up into that roof plane is probably what's caused that mess. If that roof plane were properly ventilated and there weren't any air passages, that roof plane area would only be 3-4 degrees warmer than the outside temps, the roof would stay cold and the ice wouldn't melt. Ice and water shield if fine but when I was taught about what forms ice dams there was no such material around. I was taught that if your roof is installed correctly and you've done a good job detailing your ceilings, insulating the ceilings and ensuring that there is enough ventilation to keep the roof cold that damming wouldn't occur. Those two pot vents on the roof might just as well be lawn ornaments for all the good they're doing there without a way for air to get under the roof plane from the eaves. They should have installed a fascia vent behind that gutter. It's not hard to do, instead of the solid trim, they install a piece of trim with a bunch of 2-inch holes drilled in it, mesh applied to the back of it and 1/4-inch spacer blocks fastened to the face of it right where the ends of those rafters are. Once the gutter is installed, there's a constant flow of air up through that gap from the fascia to the upper vents and the roof stays plenty cold enough to prevent the melting that causes the damming. Of course, if you've got a bunch of recessed lights and all kinds of heat pouring up into that roof plane you might as well just plan on camping out on the roof whenever it snows so that you can keep it clear, 'cuz it's going to keep damming until you stop that warm air from getting up into the roof plane and melting that snow. I also agree with Kurt and Jim; it's backing up on the roof and probably entering the roof plane a couple of feet from the edge, drains down the rafters, onto the top plate and into the wall below where it comes our around the door. Yeah, with that ding-dong post-modern artsy-fartsy architecture, no overhangs and gutters flush to the eaves, it's just an ice dam waiting to happen. Where I'm from, snow dogs are common on metal and slate roofs. When we would get called about "leaking roofs" in the dead of winter and discover that the roof was fine and the mess was caused by an ice dam, we used heat tapes installed above the gutters at the eaves and one lying in the gutter that extended to the bottom of the downspout to keep things flowing. We'd remove ice with a piece of wire strung on a bent piece of wood that looked like an archer's bow. Wire cuts ice pretty quickly for some reason. Once we got the thing cleared and the water flowing, they kept the heat tapes up there for the rest of the winter and would plug them in whenever necessary and the next spring the roof plane would get first aid to fix the poor ventilation, seal the air passages and get some insulation in there. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Rich, I haven't a clue. Out of somewhere around 4500 inpsections with about 90% of them with furnaces in the garage I've only seen about 3 or 4 setups like that. As I recall, the last one had a laundry room in the back of the townhome garage and there was a heat duct into the laundry room. In my mind, that was the reason for the damper. Anything like that there? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Apparently there was no demand for it so they took it down. Go here for lots of info you can use: http://www.popularmechanics.com/home_journal/ ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It sounds like someone has tapped into their system while they were away. Is the neighbor a stoner? Maybe there's a grow op over there and you're paying the electrical bill. OT - OF!!! M.

That's interesting 'cuz I've seen them outlast water heaters two times over here. Not been my experience here. They were doing what they were supposed to; regulating the temperature of the hot water going to the fixtures. As Rich said, it's CPVC and the discharge pipe is metal up to that point. I disagree, I don't think it will "fail" at all. In the event that the TPR valve discharges it might get soft and flex some but it's in drainage plane and he says that it's constrained by the wall and framing so I expect that it'll just get soft. I think he made the right call. You say tomayto I say tomahto. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

See, You are over-thinking it again. Imagine that you have never worked in the business and this question is put to you. All he wants to know is the size of the opening (minimum required) to obtain exterior combustion air for 60,000 Btu. It's that simple; if he wanted to make it more complicated he would have. Jim provided the answer above - it's 20 square inches and Joe was the first to correctly answer by stating that a 6-inch opening would be adequate because that has an area of just over 28 square inches, which is plenty large enough once you reduce it for any mesh. This is why you, I, Jim and other experienced folks should stay off of quiz questions. We probably shouldn't even jump in until a day or two has gone by and nobody has correctly answered the question. Quizzes are to help inexperienced folks learn to find and formulate answers. Questions that are not quizzes, which are what normal posts are, are entirely different - those are fair game to everyone. We've been talking offline today about how to incorporate some sort of regular quiz feature into the board. Look for it in the future. OT - OF!!! M.

Jeez, Why do you guys insist on complicating the question? He asked very simply "What size opening to the exterior is needed to accomplish this?" He didn't say openings, he didn't say opening locations, he didn't say mechanical ventilation and he didn't say anything about ducts. All you have to do is answer the basic question; and then, if he wants to pose another question about size of multiple openings, ducts, etc., answer those. It's a quiz, guys; you're not suppposed to reformat the questions or read into them. Just pick the simplest answer that can answer the basic question. OT - OF!!! M.

I say Joe answered it correctly with his very first option - a 6-inch duct - 'cuz it's got an area of just over 28 square inches. Jeff? OT - OF!!! M.

It doesn't matter; a home inspector has no way to know when he's looking at it whether an engineer was involved or not and the question says nothing about any mechanical ventilation so you're left with passive - a simple opening to the outside, which is what he asked about.

Hi Jim, Actually, I'm using Code Check Complete - Figure 40 versus Table 8. Perhaps Table 8 compensates for mesh reduction. Nevermind, I was looking at the wrong thing; I should have been using Figure 39. It's 1 square inch per 3K Btu/hr as you've stated. Using that, Joe's 6-inch opening works. OT - OF!!! M.

Jim, My reference says 1 sq. in. for every 4K Btu for a single exterior opening. However, in another place in the same reference it says 1 for 3. Hmmm, OT - OF!!! M.

Nope, neither of the first two work and the third will work with either of the first two but still wouldn't be correct.Whoops, I was wrong; looked at the wrong reference. It sounds like he wants all combustion air from the outside and his reference to "opening" is singular so Rick's first answer doesn't work, his second does and I still wouldn't want to trust a damper and wouldn't see it as necessary. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I bought the exact same product at the orange box for half the price and used it to install a component on the inside of the tailgate hatch door on my wife's beamer so I wouldn't have to drill any holes. It worked fine. Mike

Of course it's a cold water line and of course it serves a purpose. That's how those things work - they allow cold water to mix with the hot water coming out of the water heater until the water temperature is reduced to the target temp. I see them occasionally, Rich. Did you happen to check the Btu/Hr rating on the tank? I normally see them when the w/h is one of those 65,000 Btu/Hr high performance tanks versus the typical 40,000 Btu/Hr tank. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You're a funny guy Steven OT - OF!!! M.

Brad, I've looked at it for the past 20 minutes and I still can't figure out what I'm seeing in that center picture. Guess I need to go drink another cuppa before I try again. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Walter, Yeah, that thought had occurred to me but I figured I'd answer his questions before asking why he's using shakes in that climate? Around here, shakes last about 13 to 16 years in heavily shaded areas and 16 to 20 years in sunnier areas; unless, or course, you're doing regular maintenance on them by keeping them clean and free of alga and are regularly replacing broken/rotten shakes. In that case, the cover - not individual shakes - will last as long as you continue to care for it properly. Though we have a fair amount of moisture in the air here, and plenty of rot spore, I bet it's not nearly what it is in Costa Rica's climate. I've heard that felled trees rot very rapidly in the central and south American rain forests. Is Costa Rica heavily forested like that? If so, how long would a wood shake roof last? I'd always thought the reason that so many concrete tile roofs were used in those climates is that they hold up better in the humidity. Halfblindrabbet, if it's the look of the shakes that's prompted you to choose them as your cover, and you haven't purchased your shakes yet, you might look into Eco-Shakes from Renu Woods in Wagoner, OK. They might perform better than 100% wood in your area. http://renewwood.com/ ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ugh! I'm envisioning all of the whatever engineers overseas who might not necessarily have a good understanding of English stumbling onto this thread and then diving in here with endless egghead theories and debates that have absolutely nothing even remotely to do with home inspections. OT - OF!!! M.

Maybe a little discussion about thread etiquette is in order, Energystar, your user name tells us that you probably instantly knew the answer to Jeff's question. It's clear that Jeff knew the answer before he posted the question. I think he was just trying to get someone to think about something we encounter all the time but which many inspectors - private as well as AHJ's as well as HVAC guys - seem to overlook. Anyway, the question wasn't, "If you have a gas burning appliance in a sealed room how must you get sufficient combustion air for it and how big are the necessary openings?" Jeff asked, "Is there enough combustion air in the room?" and the respondent in #2 provided the proper citation for determining whether there is or isn't sufficient volume in a space to provide enough air for combustion and the respondent in #4 ans wed the question more succinctly. If you take what's obviously someone's pop quiz and turn it on it's ear you'll confuse those who don't necessarily understand the question or the answers. Isn't it better to allow the initial poster to guide the thread to the point where the question has been answered to the initial poster's satisfaction before posing the next problem? That way, those inspectors who're brand new to this gig and still trying to apply everything they learned in training to the real world will have the opportunity to exercise that new found knowledge and work it out in their own heads or will pull out their texts and look it up. Jeff, to avoid confusion, so that we experienced hands don't jump in and ruin it, how about announcing it when you're going to be dropping a pop quiz? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Other than to turn them on and run them through a cycle to see whether they leak and to inspect their supply plumbing and discharge lines, I don't care about dishwashers and a glowing light on one probably wouldn't even attract my attention. It's not unusual to walk into a house where the family had washed the dishes not long before my arrival and the darned things are still on and in the drying cycle. There are too many other important aspects of a house to investigate; we don't have time to be dinking around playing with the accessories. I tell people up-front that I really don't care about their appliances and that if an appliance fails after the inspection - heck, even if it fails when I'm backing out of the driveway - not to bother calling me, 'cuz I'm not there to inspect appliances and am only interested in whether the ones that are installed are plumbed correctly, wired, correctly, and aren't leaking all over the place. I tell them that I don't have any cake batter with me to ensure the oven will hold 350° for an hour; I won't be putting anything down the disposal to test how well it works, so I won't know if it can't even grind up Jello; and I don't have any dirty dishes to run through the dishwasher. If it looks like they're confused as to why I'm not concerned about the appliances, I point out that when they bring their car to a mechanic to see what condition it's in the mechanic will check the engine, drive train, cooling system, brakes, fuel lines, exhaust system, etc., but really couldn't care less about tears in the upholstery, what color fuzzy dice are hanging from the mirror, whether the CD player works, or how well the radio pulls in any particular station. That analogy usually helps them to understand. Most people get it and, though I'm sure that their appliances fail eventually, I've never had a complaint about any appliances. It's called a home inspection; not an appliance inspection. You won't find any texts about about home inspection that tell you how to test appliances will you? There's a reason for that and there's a way to know where the boundaries are; just think, "If this thing weren't here, would the home still function just fine without it and could folks still live in here comfortably?" When it comes to any appliance, the answer is yes. Sure, they'd have to drive down to the corner restaurant to eat but the place would be fine and that's the point. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I don't get it; why didn't they just take a low tech approach and divert a danged creek into that mine and fill it with water? If they found it draining out through some other abandoned mines they could cave those in. Surely it would have filled up decades ago and then they could have waited a decade or so before draining it to make sure the whole thing was out. Bet that wouldn't have cost anywhere near $600M. It seems like gross negligence just to allow it to continue to burn unhindered for this long. Aw, waddu I know. The clock still blinks on my VCR after 13 years. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike