hausdok

Ha, I grew up on the Connecticut state line in New York and my father called them "clabirds". I finally asked him how to spell it and he'd spelled it clapboards. It had me scratching my head but it stuck. Now I refer to beveled siding as clapboards all the time in my reports and I get a call several times a year from realtors or clients wondering what clapboards are. As it turns out, that part of Edmonds is known as Sherwood Forest and other streets in that neighborhood are named "Robin Hood Drive", "Robbers Roost Road" and "Nottingham Road." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Going out to do a pre-offer on Friar Tuck Lane this afternoon. Wonder if there will be a bunch of guys dressed in green tights and leather pirouetting all over the place. [:-sly] ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That looks like Hardiplank or one of its fiber-cement competitors. It looks like the paint has blistered off due efflorescence caused by moisture saturation. My guess is that they either put that clapboard on while it was still damp after either lying on damp ground or being rained on or something is allowing water behind the siding and that's where the water is stopping behind the siding. It's soaking through, the product is efflorescing a little bit and the paint is blistering off along the entire line. Edited comment: Wait a minute. Just looked at the photo again. What idjit put sprinkler heads that close to an exterior wall? My first suspect is now the irrigation system. Did you turn the system on to see if one of those heads is spraying water on the siding? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ill conrtinue to report it because our sop sas that we shall and because i'm not a member of ashi anyway. no point in letting a cclient find out the hard way that the small savings they;d hope to realize by buying a less=than-perfect house will now be eaten up bby hgher premiums. sorry about the typing im on a plane wedged in between two people.

You can find details for using Hardiplank in a rainscreen system in the Hardi best practices guide. Go to their website, click on siding ;materials, click on installation instructions, choose the best practices manual, choose your region specific manual and then either download it or print it out. It's over 250 pages long and you'll find rainscreen details there. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, In the public crappers, yeah. Private homes, restaurants, hotels, etc., have regular toilets just like we use. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Haven't you guys ever been to Europe? They are the norm there. Never had a problem with a sink clogging because of one and never had a problem with odors. Jim is right, want to clear it or get a ring you dropped out of the drain? Just unscrew it, turn it over into a bucket and you've got your ring back. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hee, hee, Stained black, you say? If that's black I'd hate to see what would happen to your senses after a few Northwest attics. I can hear ya now, "Somebody help me, I'm blind, I'm blind!" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Mike, You should have dug down into it. You would have found the mother lode. I had one this afternoon. '50's house. I crawled into the attic and found it with about 14-inches of insulation. Thought it was odd to have so much in such an old house. then I noticed the glint. Dug down and found the ceiling joist bays full to the top with vermiculite. They'd blown in the cells on top of it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I've done that too; but only when the home is vacant. I once accidentally tripped a breaker getting the cover off a panel. A second later the ped door burst open and the owner came out into the garage fuming and ready to punch me out. Seems he'd been working for hours on a document and hadn't saved it (This was a long time ago when automatic saves were still not customary for all docs). When I cut power to the computer, he'd lost the document and his temper. The fact that I tried to explain that nobody had any idea he was home and that if he hadn't been home dinking around with the computer it wouldn't have happened didn't seem to sink in. He was so pissed he was ready to void the entire transaction. He seriously shook up the buyer. I'd hate to have a repeat of that in an occupied home while shutting off the breaker to look at it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The pattern behind the tree tells you what's going on. The shelter from that tree slowed down deterioration where the tree was shaded but the entire roof was long past end of service life anyway. They probably had a good wind storm strip off a whole bunch of shingles and the owner, obviously a cheap SOB who probably never replaces a roof until it starts leaking faster than he/she can dump the pots catching the water, based on the condition of the lower part of that roof, only replaced what needed to be replaced to stop any leaks. It's probably just coincidence that it corresponds to the attic floor height. Don't totally rule out ventilation issues though. Ventilation is more about removing moisture than it is about lowering surface temps. Combine a humidity filled home with a poorly ventilated attic and one sees lots of stuff happening above the second floor ceilings that doesn't happen lower down - paint blistering off all the way down to the wood - sometimes filled with water, warped siding, weeping underlayment, etc. If that humidity moving up and outward can cause those issues to the walls of a house why can't it affect a roof cover in similar fashion? Owner is still a cheap SOB. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Back in 1970 I went to work as a mechanic for a Chrysler/Toyota dealer in Mabbetsville, NY. I was less than a year out of high school but I was eager to own my first "new" car. The dealer wouldn't let me (the kid) work on the big expensive Chryslers and I was relegated to working on the Toyotas - the cheap cars. Back then you could buy three Corollas for less than $5K. I felt deeply humiliated. Within six months I was looking at purchasing my first car and started ogling the late '69 Pontiac Firebirds 'cuz my hero Jerry Titus was racing one of the prototype bodies on the TransAm circuit. One of the guys in the shop said, "There is a customer wants to sell his 2000GT why don't you buy it? I hear this is the last year they're importing them." I looked at the price of the 2000GT - a little over $6K and compared it to what Pontiac wanted for a balls-to-the-wall fully loaded TransAm - less than $5K and said, "No way I'm buying a six cylinder when I can drive American V8 power for less." I bought the Pontiac and within two years was paying so much for insurance I had to sell it. A decade later when I was stationed at Ft. Devens, MA I became curious about whatever happened to that 2000GT and I tracked it down. It was in a collector car dealer's showroom just over the state line in New Hampshire. I drove up there one weekend with my new wife, Yung, to look at it. It was a thing of beauty, a canary yellow coupe; one of only a very rare few with left-hand drive. I asked the guy what he wanted for it. "$52K," he answered. Deflated, I drove back to Ft. Devens. No way I could afford to pay as much as a house for a car when on my military paycheck I could barely make ends meet. Haven't thought about that car much since but I have watched the prices for those cars soar over the years and thought more than once, "Why didn't I just go halves with one of my brothers and buy the danged thing. A couple of summers ago, I finally attained one lifelong dream. I managed to purchase a '58 Packard Hawk - one of only 588 ever made and I'm in the process of restoring that. I'd wanted one since I was a kid, so it truly was a dream come true. Tonight I got a newsletter email from an automotive auction house telling me about a record-breaking Toyota sale. I clicked on the link and my stomach turned over - there was that canary yellow 2000 GT coupe - just sold by RM Auctions for $1.15M. Whew, shoulda, coulda, woulda - who'da thunk it? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The owner knows that most of us don't carry that kind of coverage and he's banking on them not being able to find anyone. Call your insurance company to see if it's possible, for a fee, for them to raise your limit to $2M, just to cover that inspection. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'm with Mr. Port. I think this is a dinked-up sub-panel. Did you actually see the meter array? I've had times when I found a single meter on the outside of a building containing several townhomes but only one meter. Then when I searched around, I discovered a meter array sever garages away with the individual meters and main disconnects for the various units. The meter I'd seen on the building turned out to be the one for the common-use area lighting. Just sayin' ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Sorry David, Thought someone would have posted this for you long ago. http://www.gobrick.com/Portals/25/docs/ ... s/tn28.pdf http://www.gobrick.com/Portals/25/docs/ ... es/TN7.pdf http://www.gobrick.com/Portals/25/docs/ ... s/TN7A.pdf http://www.gobrick.com/Portals/25/docs/ ... s/TN7B.pdf ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Stephen You indignation might be justified if you had stopped to consider the age of the home and made your recommendation in the context of the house. Before tossing out a recommendation for someone to consult an envelope specialist you need to ask yourself why an un-insulated house built in the 1880's, which would be perfectly normal for a house that old, would go 120+ years without an issue and then this issue develops. A building envelope specialist deals with stuff like detailing a building envelope to ensure it stays dry. With a house that's 120+ years old where the homeowner says the house has been dry and there haven't been any infiltration issues, what benefit does the homeowner derive by spending money on a guy who is a specialist in detailing current construction? I think the issue is under the paint - not on top of it. It's an un-insulated house cozy little house, which probably means the builder was not a wealthy person and wouldn't have bothered to spend the extra money to back prime all of that siding. In fact, I doubt anyone in the 1880's was back priming siding anyway. It has decades of layers of paint on it without an issue and then modern paint is used and it starts to develop fungi. I think the new paint has done such a good job of sealing that siding that the wall is trapping moisture. Interior water vapor that's been migrating outward has been condensing on the backside of that siding. The moisture has caused fungi to develop on the backside of the siding and the stuff has been migrating to the outside of the building envelope. It's happening on the sunny side because that side gets warm enough during the day for the spore to propagate, but not so hot that the moisture feeding the spore evaporates or the heat kills the spore. It's not happening on the other sides because they are staying cold enough during the day that spore count remains so low that the spore is dying off more quickly than it can spread. They clean the exterior every year and by summer the issue goes away because the summer sun warms the siding to the point where the siding gets so hot that it evaporates so much moisture that there is nothing to sustain the spore. The issue then goes away until next year. Take a sample of the fungi down to a local testing lab and have them identify it. Pull one or two clapboards at the area where it's occurring and take a tape lift sample from the backside of the wood and get that tested to see if the same stuff growing on the outside is on the backside of the siding. If it were me, I'd try an old school solution. I'd get some painters siding wedges and wedge the siding on that side of the house so moisture could more easily flow to the outside and dry outside air could flow to the inside of that wall cavity and help dry up the spore. If what I think could be happening is happening; adding insulation might help if blown-in cellulose with a high borate-content is used because borate is a fungicide. Cells works great to prevent air movement through wall cavities. Insulate those walls with blown-in cells and the borate in the cells will probably kill the spore on contact and the cells will either greatly slow down or stop air movement through those walls and keep the wall cavity warmer and help to reduce vapor diffusion that led to the moisture accumulating on the backside of the siding. The wedges will aid in drying the cells out if any minor infiltration occurs. It's a theory. One I'm not married to. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

My father taught me to call a vent flashing like the one Cary shows in the post above a "bib flashing." I suppose because it literally resembles a bib. In the case of a wide flange running around the bottom of a roof vent, I'd probably refer to it as either a flange or a bib, though probably not a bib flashing because it's integral to the vent body and isn't fitted around it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Had the bumb indicating telltale signs of a second head growing appeared on your back yet?

Well, I didn't ask to see his license to prove his identification, but I did have dinner one night about a year ago with a guy that looked remarkably like the guy in that Douglas Hansen avatar above. Maybe I should have checked his ID to be sure. Dang, what if it was another identify theft? Oh crap, what do I do now? OT - OF!!! M.

Nope, Crazing is expected in 3-coat stucco and those cracks don't change the way the stucco performs. Anything they do to try and conceal those will make them more visible. Best to leave them alone. Get more information about crazing on the Stucco Manufacturer's Association site. http://www.stuccomfgassoc.com ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Trace it back. Follow it back to whatever it's connected to. If it's connected to the water heater get it fixed. If it goes to the air conditioner it's just condensation and is normal. OT - OF!!! M.

Scott, How about deleting your article and then posting something that home inspectors can use. Your article is blatantly promoting you and your company to consumers versus providing value to the home inspectors who come here to share information about inspection techniques and issues. It's a form of link dropping and we don't tolerate it here. Replace the article with something home inspectors can use or see it deleted at the end of the day. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. There is no such thing as "toxic mold." The fact that you are promoting the idea in an article designed for consumers puts you on thin ice here with this professional home inspector community.

Feel it, If it's from a water heater and it's running non-stop the water should be warm to hot. If it's condensate from a furnace or air conditioner it will be cool. If it's hot, call a plumber. If ti's cold call an HVAC tech. OT - OF!!! M.

I don't know why you'd factor age into it. I base my inspection fees entirely on square footage. That way I don't have to try and keep track of age of the house. It takes me the same amount of time to inspect a 100 year old 2000 square foot house as it does to inspect a brand new 2000 square foot house. Sure, on the old house I have to deal with stuff that's worn out and obsolete but on the new one I have to deal with the fussy wife who's worrying about every little nick and scratch. In the end they balance out. Just charge a fair (for you) price based on square footage regardless of age or whether it's built on a slab versus crawl vs. basement etc., and you won't have to fuss with that anymore. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Not if spacers are installed behind the trim.