hausdok

Hi Jerry, Yeah, I know, for a home inspector that is a pretty depressing piece. However, best to get that kind of thing out there in front of folks so they know about it. We still have a lot of very naive folks who've just gotten laid off from the construction sector trying to jump into this business as a backup plan; they need to know that they are probably jumping from the pan into the fire. My wife told me yesterday that a realtor at her church told her about a brand new shake-n-bake inspector who is making the rounds of Seattle's various real estate offices and promising to do all inspections for a flat fee of $200 each. I wonder if he realizes that by doing so he's already got one business foot in the grave and is only forestalling the inevitable? The poor schmuck probably shelled out what little bit of savings he had left for one of those 10-day courses and now he's trying to compete with very experienced long-term inspectors in a market that has an inventory glut 'cuz almost nobody is buying right now. It's getting scary. I'm prepared though; I've already got a tent and have spotted a pretty good spot beneath an overpass that nobody has staked out yet. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks for rocking the boat. You'll never know it, but it'll help a lot of the lurkers learn something they didn't know and were afraid to ask for one reason or another. Too bad more didn't do it. These are the kind of discussion we all learn from for FREE!Hi Erby, While I agree that this type of discussion is great, I'm not sure I understand the "powers that be" comment. There are no powers that be on this board. This isn't an association and as long as he keeps it civil nobody is going to kick Kevin out of here or edit what he's said for speaking his mind on a technical topic . Yeah, there are some regulars here that have very strong opinions; but, so what - home inspectors as a demographic are all supposed to have very strong opinions otherwise we wouldn't be very good at what we do. Would we? Kevin stood his ground and we all respect the fact that he did so even if some of us didn't agree with him. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would simply lurk and not post on this board. I can't even begin to count the number of times I've been proven wrong on this site and others - it still doesn't prevent me from asking more questions and learning from the answers. Besides, folks can register here under any user name they wish, check off in their profile that they don't want to receive messages or emails from anyone and remain completely anonymous. Then, using their anonymous identity, they can ask the dumbest questions on the planet and there's no way that anyone here is going to find out who they are 'cuz we don't reveal our users' identities to anyone (not without a court order, anyway). Well, let me correct that; there were a couple of times when certain folks came over here under false identifies trolling with an obvious attempt to denigrate certain persons or TIJ. I outed them to make them go away. I have to confess that it felt good at the time. I kind of figured that if they couldn't respect our rules I wasn't under any obligation to help them remain anonymous. I guess I should have been flogged for doing that. I see these comments about lurkers and the "powers that be" on every board. All I can say is that this board is a heck of a lot friendlier, and people are more civil and respectful to one another here, than I've ever found the soap opera, IN or the ASHI boards to be. Of course, I have to confess that I might be just a tad prejudiced in favor of TIJ. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I dunno, I've inspected for rot in freezing weather and it doesn't seem to reach much differently than it does when it's not freezing out. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Terry, Thanks, I appreciate the help. re. the kiln, your user name tells me that you might be thinking about building a kiln for drying lumber. if I were you, I'd leave the vapor barrier out of the walls. Vapor will be driven via diffusion through the walls to the drier/cooler exterior. Put a barrier in that wall, floor, ceiling plane and you'll only create a bending steamer. If you must use something, use a polyolefin house wrap or something else which is permeable. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

By Mike O'Handley, TIJ Editor If you thought things have been tough recently, you haven't seen anything yet. Like many of you, I thought that the market had nearly bottomed out, that before too long the economy would begin to recover and that within a year or two things would get back to normal. Well, according to a segment on the December 14th edition of 60 Minutes on CBS, a second round of mortgage meltdowns is on the way and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It seems that, besides the sub-prime mortgage mess, there are a couple of even more exotic types of mortgages called "option arm" and "alt-A's" and experts quoted in that segment predict that many of those are going to go into foreclosure too - one expert in the segment predicted as many as 70% - and that it's going to be as many as five years before we begin to see a housing recovery. Geez, just when I was starting to feel a little bit optimistic about the future. To watch the entire segment on your computer, click here. If you don't feel like enduring the first segment, which is an interview between Diane Sawyer and Barney Frank, just fast forward to the second segment by dragging the gray bar that appears on the bottom of your screen when you pass your cursor over the viewer to the 15:18 point. Looks like it's time to batten down the hatches; this is going to be a long and severe storm!

Hi Chris, Although I hadn't read that, if Joe L. says it I'd tend to believe it. That aside, the thing that a lot of folks don't understand is that Tyvek is designed to be an air infiltration barrier not a WRB. Water blows through most types of siding at joints and drains to the base of the wall and it eventually soaks through stucco and must be able to drain. Before wrap, builders used building paper. It has a perm factor of about .50 when it's dry but only about .05 when it's wet and therefore it doesn't do a whole lot to prevent air infiltration. However, When building paper gets wet and dries it shrivels up (wrinkles) and pushes the siding outward a minute amount; this allows the wall to drain. Polyolefin wrap doesn't do that; it remains perfectly flat and doesn't swell or shrink in plane. So, when you wrap a house with Tyvek and then punch thousands of holes through it as you apply the siding or stucco lath, you've only provided thousands of pathways for water to get behind it. Once you've done that, the water that passes through the siding has to be able to get back out of the wall or the Tyvek will hold it there. Compress 12ft. of Tyvek where the top edge of a clap is overlapped by the bottom of another and nailed through the Tyvek to the wall, and you've got a place for water to seep behind the Tyvek and remain trapped just like it's in a petrie dish. Do that dozens of times from top to bottom of a wall and you can understand why it's not the best product in the world and you begin to understand why so many houses wrapped with Tyvek and other polyolefin wraps are rotting. That's the reason why you now see these new wraps that have raised ribs on them and are installed with the ribs running vertically. These allow walls to drain better and are supposed to prevent the siding or stucco from trapping water against the substrate. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Kevin, First, you need to understand that I'm not the sharpest tack stuck in the bulletin board and, as such, electricity is a pretty mysterious and scary thing to me; so, to me, it really doesn't matter that the practice is harmless - it they're using a device in violation of its listing and labeling it is simply wrong. Now, an inspection never goes by when I don't see something that's commonly done by trades that's wrong; it's a good thing too, because that's what keeps us working. However, whether or not I decide to write those things up hinges on whether, as Jim pointed out, it defies accepted rules or convention or is a violation of the listing and labeling on a product. For those kinds of issues, the listing and labeling rule makes our job very easy; if it's not listed and labeled to be used in that manner it is wrong and we write it up. It might seem like we are being heavy handed by doing that but when we do we have the backing of the entire inspection community; and, in the case of electricity, most of the electrical community. It's a little harder for stuff that's not ruled by a listing and labeling rule; in those cases one has to determine whether it defies accepted convention. For instance, if you were to go into a crawlspace in your region and find a house flooring platform that's framed with plank and beam framing, and you weren't familiar with it, your initial reaction might be to call it out as wrong. You'd talk to the builder and the builder would say that it's a perfectly normal way of framing a house. If you didn't believe the builder, because you'd never seen it before, you might come on here and ask the brethren about it. At that point, some folks would probably say that it was whacked and the builder had his head tucked up his bottom, but Jim or myself would tell you that it's a perfectly acceptable way of framing a home that, though it isn't as common as box-sill construction, is a conventional method used around here. You might argue that still didn't make it okay because it wasn't done that way in other parts of the country and demand to see proof that we weren't trippin' on some BC bud or something worse. At that point we'd show you proof in the way of references published by a credible source. Once you saw that proof, you'd be satisfied that the framing method used in that home was acceptable though you'd be a little uneasy about declaring it okay because you weren't familiar with it. You'd then inform your client of that fact. From then on, if some inspector at some future point tries to tell your client that the home is framed wrong because of the plank and beam framing, your client, and you, are on solid ground and your credibility is intact. On the other hand, the other inspector's credibility won't be. Bottom line, unless we can prove that "it" is accepted convention, if we just say to ourselves, "Ah, I don't see what it can hurt, everyone around here does it that way," we call into question our own credibility. You have to keep in mind who we are working for. There's a difference between saying to an electrician, "Yeah, I realize it probably won't harm anything but that isn't the issue; the issue is that according to the NEC that's not supposed to be done because it violates the listing and labeling of that luminaire - can you show me anything, even a paragraph, that says that it's okay to wire that thing up like that?" and trying to explain to a customer who'd paid you several hundred dollars a few years before why he's now faced with a buyer demanding $500 off the price of a house because his inspector called out a luminaire being used as a fuse holder in violation of it's listing and labeling. The electrician will know and understand that, locally accepted practice or not, he's wrong; the homeowner will know only one thing - that his home inspector screwed him over by not calling out a very simple black and white issue that would have taken five minutes and cost almost nothing to correct. Need I point out that this is exactly the kind of stuff that gets inspectorlore started? 'nuff said, I'll go back to my cave now and wait to pounce on some other unsuspecting inspector. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Pex can go all the way to the nipple on an electric water heater; it's only on the conventional gas water heater where the draft diverter is next to the nipples where you need the 18" of metallic pipe before transitioning to the PEX. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, whether you want to admit to it or not, you have been defending the practice. Your electrician has been doing it for 30 years; his father and also his uncle, and you see it commonly done? How many thousands of houses do you think those three men have wired in 30 years? Many thousands is my guess. That's why it seems to be commonly done where you are. I've never seen it in any electricians manual and I'd bet nobody else has either. You have a practice that originated locally and spread among local electricians. Others have explained why it's not to code but you seem to have ignored what they've said by demanding that others show you where it is wrong. If you were arguing against it and an electrician said that it was fine, you'd probably demand to see a code or something which showed you that it was correct. So, how about you show the rest of us where it's allright to do it. Show us something in an electricians manual of best practices or something like that that describes the practice, not just tell us how Billy-Bob the local electrician and his kin have been doing it for decades. It's a luminaire, not a fuse holder. Show me the packaging for one of those where it's listed and labeled as a "fuse holder." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

A Trane heatpump actually and it only happened when the temps dropped so low that the heating elements came on. I don't know whether Trane units have sequencers or not but I seem to recall that the last Lennox heatpump I looked at did. It looks like he's probably got a pretty good handle on what's caused the noise. If they ever find out I hope he comes back and tells everyone whether any of us was right. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Besides the inspectorspeak, I guess I'm having a hard time understanding why, if you don't consider it a big deal, you'd place "Major repair" in front of that comment. If it's not that big a deal, why not say something like: The siding needs maintenance - At many places on the exterior, there are unpainted/unsealed nail heads and siding drip edges that over time will allow moisture intrusion to eventually ruin the siding. Have a competent painter - one that understands the unique finishing requirements for this siding - go over the exterior and as necessary caulk and repaint the siding. ? Seems to me, that's a whole lot more helpful than what you've got. I could be wrong though, have been many times before. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jim, with respect; if that was a continuing education class and that's what the teacher is putting out there, you need to have TREC remove him from the list of those allowed to teach CEU's in your state. That's the dumbest thing I've heard since the news came out about O.J. walking into a hotel room to take back his property accompanied by a couple of guys carrying guns. As Rich pointed out, there are already shutoff valves on that side at faucets and at angle stops. Besides, water can't flash to steam and expand like that unless it's already at boiling temps - if water gets to that temperature a shutoff valve on the hot water side is the least of anyone's worries. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Yeah, I agree with Jim; there are a lot of things that the manufactures warn you about when it comes to safely installing their water heaters. Rheem/Ruud has a very nice paper that explains thermal expansion in simple terms. One would expect any discussion of thermal expansion to cover a prohibition against an outlet side shutoff valve, no? Also, if such a prohibition existed, one would expect it to be in the installation manuals for these devices. I've never seen it - has anyone here seen it? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, I can tell you that they really work. Back in the winter of 95/96 I bought some to keep the MPs that worked the entrance gates at Ft. Carson warm in those wind-swept gate shacks. We put one small one inside mounted on the ceiling and had another long one that had wheels and handles like a dolly and was wheeled outside and pointed at where the MP would stand as he flagged cars through the gate and would stop them. The wind out there at those gates blew all the time. Before those heaters, I had to rotate MPs in and out of there every two hours to keep them from getting frost bit because the electric baseboard heaters in those shacks couldn't keep up. After we installed the infrareds, even the guys standing outside in the wind in front of that roll-out heater complained they were too hot. It was easy to fix, we just told them to aim the things away from them when they felt too hot. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

BRP (Business Risk Partners) is one of this site's paid sponsors as is OREP (Organization of Real Estate Professionals - another E & O provider). In order to decide whether they have competetive rates, you'll need to do a whole lot of research because an E & O policy that's inexpensive is not necessarily the best deal. Understanding insurance policies can be difficult; to me, they always seem to be written in a foreign language. If you have a local insurance agent that's helped you pick out life insurance, health insurance or disability insurance, I think it would probably be a good idea to pay that person to look at your business and then check out these various E & O providers and then tell you which is the best fit for your business. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

This is an interesting development. Why are you getting so defensive? I never questioned the provenance of the story. Not here, but then you went back over to the soap opera and directed folks over there to come over here saying, "I don't know when I've read a post with a higher BS index." Then after your buddy, Jimmy Boy, came over here he went back to the soap opera and said, "Mike has never allowed the truth to interfere with what he believes to be an interesting post," for which you thanked him. You said something else too, but then deleted it - perhaps you knew I'd read it? In any event, it sure reads to me like you and others are accusing me of putting up a story that I knew to be false. Nice switch in tactics, Counselor! There's only one problem with that; I know the man and I trust him. As ex-investigator who's spent literally hundreds of hours on witness stands dueling with the machinations of defense attorneys intent on getting their very guilty clients off, I'm afraid attorneys aren't very high on my trust index; especially after some of the stories that my older sister, an ex-ADA and ex-public defender, has told me about the way the "legal" system works. That tactic won't work with me, I'm afraid. Oh, by the way, if you're going to use 25-cent words to impress folks, you should at least spell them correctly. Nice piece of reverse psychology, but I doubt that you consider me to be any more of a "journalist" than you are. I know the man; I trust him and I made him a promise; so, though I might be curious, I'm taking him at his word. What part of that is unclear to you? Are you telling me that attorneys, despite their own curiosity, never accept their clients' version of events and then make promises to those same folks not to divulge certain information to others? Hmm? Sweet, from righty to south paw, very smooth. I can only infer from your reference to Dan Rather that you think that, by implying that I'd put up a post that I knew to be false and then try to bluff me way through it by offering to take a polygraph, you think I'd be willing to break my word to someone in order to prove to folks that I'm not pulling a Dan Rather. Well, like I said, I couldn't care less whether you choose to believe the story or not; you and anyone else is free to call it BS. The story stays and, unless he chooses to reveal to you who he is and gives you the reference for the case so that you can dig into it, you won't be getting any more information about it from me. Now, why don't we discuss your blatant attempts to promote your services on this site without paying for the right to do so. This site is free to members: but the only way that I can keep it that way is if vendors are paying for the privilege of reaching its members. Isn't completely ignoring a site's rules by promoting one's business without paying for advertising rights as the other sponsors do also some kind of skulduggery? From my point of view, you've not only called me stupid but you and your boy have essentially said that I'm a liar, while at the same time you've abused my hospitality. Not exactly a very effective interview technique when you're seeking to manipulate a witness into giving you what you want. That's it, this is the last post I'll make in this thread, Counselor; though I won't promise you that I won't get fed up with it at some point and prune it. After all, why wouldn't I if I never allow the truth to get in the way of a good story? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, good luck with that. Well, that certainly won't help you where I'm concerned. What is it exactly about North Philly that is supposed to impress the rest of us? I've known quite a few folks from Philadelphia in my day and they never seemed to be any tougher, weaker, smarter or dumber than the rest of us. Well, I can certainly understand why a lawyer would want to to dig into this but I can't help you with that; that's strictly up to him. However, if you're so eager to part with your hard earned money I'll be happy to sit down to a polygraph (if you pay for it) in order to satisfy you that the circumstances as I've explained them above are exactly how I came by the story. However, time is money; I'd expect you to pay me that $2,000. It won't get you his name or prove/disprove the story, but I'd be perfectly happy to make an easy 2K. Somehow, since you're from "North Philly," whatever that means, I doubt you'd be willing to do that No reason to be shocked; I put my pants on one leg at a time just like everyone else. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I don't think it's the un-grouted dry-stacked look of that cast stone that's the problem; the problem is the way that it's been installed out over the roof, lack of kickouts and lack of head flashings above that window. If that product is installed right, it drains nicely; just like veneer brick or a conventional stucco wall. When it's installed tight to a roof like that it's wrong and I'd bet a Hershey bar that it hasn't been properly flashed properly under/behind the veneer. The water that blows through the face and in around that window will simply drain into the wall and is probably getting behind the underlayment. If there's a layer of house wrap behind that cast stone, instead of two layers of felt, any water that gets behind the wrap can't dry to the exterior, is trapped and gets absorbed into the OSB and causes it to rot. Looks like just another rotten wall lawsuit on the horizon. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Russel, If you want to reply to a post with quotes, you need to post your own comments after the section of code that displayed in your composition box and looks like this - . Once you've done that, submit your response and it will display. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Gee, What a coincidence, two of Nick's acolytes show up to heckle me on the same day - what're the odds? What's the matter Jimmy Boy, tired of nagging folks over on the soap opera so you've come over here for a change of pace? I guess my reading comprehension is going to hell, 'cuz I'm not sure how I was "smooth." Post #9 above tells you exactly how I got the story, explains the circumstances of how I came to write it, and that he checked the facts for accuracy before I posted it. That's the absolute truth of how I came by the story and If you and Ferry, or anyone else, choose not to believe it, that's your prerogative; I really couldn't care less. Mr. Ferry, you can ballyhoo it as much as you want; you're not going to goad me into telling you the man's identity. He reads this site; if he chooses to come on here and answer your challenge that's up to him. For my part, I have no problem with anyone calling me stupid for believing someone that I think is a very credible person. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I think it's jury-rigged versus jerry-rigged and here's why. The first time I heard the term as a young'n I asked my Dad what it meant. He pronounced it "jerry" and said it was a term G.I.'s began using after WWII. Dad said that during the war, GI's used to refer to the Germans as "jerry" and that there came a time when the U.S. tankers found that, in order not to outrun their supply lines, they needed to carry a certain amount of fuel with them. However, our army didn't equip our tanks with enough racks and cans to carry what we needed, so our tankers would pilfer the fuel cans off of the German cars, tanks and trucks and then use welders and scrap metal to rig up extra racks on their tanks so they could carry extra fuel - thus the name "Jerry-rigged." I sounded plausible to me and that's how I used it for years. In fact, I'd thought back on that story during the first 24 hours of the ground offensive during Desert Storm when I found out just how true it could be. My platoon was escorting tanker trucks in and out of Iraq from S.A. behind the offensive. We - the convoys - had to drive flat out at speeds of well over 65 mph over the desert in order to catch up to the columns, get them fueled, get the tanker convoys safely back into Saudi, refill them, and then get back up into Iraq and catch up to the columns before they ran out of fuel. We would leap-frog miles and miles of support units that were also moving up and down the MSR's and we were alternating my platoon with one squad always escorting north, while one escorted south, while the third was at the refuel point in SA. Despite beating the crap out of ourselves and our vehicles to keep the fuelers behind the tanks, there were still a few units that ran too fast for too far, used up the tankers in their tail and ran out of fuel and had to sit there and wait for one of our convoys to catch up. If we'd ever driven like that in peacetime we would have been brought up on charges in a second. That wasn't half the craziness though; some of those tankers were military while some were civilian rigs driven by Bangladeshi drivers. Let me tell you something; there's nothing on the road anywhere in the world that's crazier than a Bangladeshi tanker truck driver. Anyway, i digress; a few years ago, an attorney corrected me on it when I used it in a report and said it was spelled "jury-rigged." I didn't believe him so I looked it up in my Websters. I found "jerry-built" which is also an epithet or term of belittlement to describe something that's cheaply built, but it stated that it's "prob. reinforced by jury." When I looked up "jury-rigged" it said "rigged up for emergency or temporary use, which I think this more appropriately describes what something like this is. I still think the WWII story is a plausible origin; we still call them Jerry cans and not jury cans. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Maybe at that one group of wires with the silver colored clamp in the bottom photo but I don't think it's an issue at the top of the panelboards. Here's Douglas Hansen on the subject: From Electrical Inspection of Existing Dwellings - 2001 Edition Cables - NM Cables: comments about bundling A common poor practice is to bundle several cables together and enter through one large bushing or clamp into an enclosure. The clamp is not designed for this large number of cables, and those in the center might not be properly secured. Cables cannot be bundled together without creating a problem of heat entrapment. When a bundle is longer than 24-inches and contains enough conductors to surround the ones in the middle, their heat cannot readily dissipate. The high ambient heat in attics can cause NM Cable to overheat and damage its insulation. Prior to 1984, conductors in NM cable were rated 60°C. Cables manufactured after 1984 contain 90° insulation. Both cables must be protected using the 60° column in the ampacity tables, but a large difference comes into play when the effect of high ambient temperature is considered. For example, if an older 60° #12 wire is in an attic with a temperature of 125°F, the maximum allowable current int that wire is 11 amps. In the same situation, a newer 90° rated wire would still have an ampacity of 20 amps. Wire can be more quickly degraded if there is both excess bundling and high ambient temperature. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I just fixed my post. I didn't mean to say "Is that insulator grounded" I meant to say "Is that insulator anchored to anything." If that little splice clamp lets loose, I suspect there's going to be a lot of resistance along that earth ground path. Stuff might not get a full 240 volts but I think it might run pretty hot - at least hot enouph to damage some stuff. Then again, what the hell do I know about electricity? I'm the guy who used to be so afraid of panels that I'd open service panels by leaning to the panel from nearly 4 ft. away and leaning on the wall so that if I got zapped my body weight would pull me off the panel and I wouldn't stand there frying. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I don't know much about money; but, as ridiculous as those salaries and incentives are (I mean, who really needs $28 million dollars for any job?), I bet the total of all money paid to all of the CEO's is only a scratch on the butt of a tick on the butt of a dog compared to the amount of money that it takes to fund and maintain the pension funds and fat paychecks, benefits and bonuses that all of the assembly line drones demand to keep them working. There are non-auto-worker blue collar workers who slave their whole lives to send their kids to college and then they retire with nothing in the bank and only what social security can pay them. Their kids go off to college, work their butts off to earn a degree from Yale or Harvard, or whatever, and then when they enter the job market they are paid less than an unskilled/uneducated UAW assembly line drone. Unions strangled the US steel industry the same way back in the day. Did you see the auto industry paying in money to help bail out the American steel industry back in the 70's when it floundered? Hell no! I don't feel sorry for them at all. I read yesterday about how AIG is paying huge "retention" incentives to it's executives now which are only Christmas bonuses in disguise. Instead of complaining about how AIG is abusing the money we gave them, the public should demand that the government call in the entire amount of AIG's loan immediately or seize their assets and auction them off lock stock and barrel. Maybe if they did that, this corporate greed would abate. I knew I shouldn't have posted this one; it just gets me worked up and irate. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, All I can tell you is that the inspector involved has been in this business for a long time, is very well regarded by his contemporaries and considered by those of us in the business to be very credible. He is still grinning from ear to ear over this. He agreed to allow me to print this story on the basis that he remain unnamed. That's fine with me; I believe him or I wouldn't have printed the story. Mr. Ferry is also free to believe whatever he wishes. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike