hausdok

We're curious; how many of you actually remove the dead-front cover from the service panelboard when you can get to the panelboard.

How many of you actually move insulation aside and look behind it in order to look at the plumbing beneath toilets, bathtubs, etc. or to examine the underside of the floors or rim joist areas.

For those of you that are areas where crawlspaces are common, how many of you will actually go into a crawlspace with an access opening that's only 18 in. by 24 in. when there isn't any mechanical equipment or 22 in. by 30 in. when there isn't any equipment present? If you do, how much of the crawl will you inspect?

When you inspect a home, do you physically go into the attic to inspect it when the hatch is large enough for you to climb through and there aren't any obvious dangers present? Since you can only choose one, just pick that one that's closest to what you do.

Do you probe for deterioration in wood? If so, tell us what type of probe you use.

Do you check water pressure and/or flow using special gauges during your inspections?

We're wondering what kind of electrical testing equipment you use. Perhaps you use more than one of the choices below. That's OK, but you should only choose the method that you utilize the most often.

How many of you own either an analog or a remote(infrared) thermometer and how often do you use it?

We're interested in knowing how many of you actually use a level to determine whether things are level or plumb and how many of you use a square and actually check to see whether doors or window or other things are out-of-square during an inspection.

We're interested in knowing how many of you use moisture detection devices and what type you use. If you have more than one type of meter, choose the one that you use the most often.

We'd like to know if you use one of those pen-type voltage detection devices. You know, the thingy that you place next to a receptacle, without plugging it in, and it starts to tick, beep, or lights up to indicate that there's a magnetic field created by active voltage present.

How many of you have combustible gas detectors? If you have one, how often do you use it?

We want to know how many of you have a C.O. detector and, if you do, how regularly you use it.

Infrared cameras seem to be the up and coming new thing for inspectors. Are you currently using an infrared camers on your inspections or plan to purchase one in the next couple of years?

When you inspect a home do you climb up onto (traverse) the roof to inspect it close up if it's safe? If so, on what percentage of the houses you inspect do you think you actually go up onto the roof.

What's the highest point your ladder(s) will reach from the ground?

Hi, Well, it if were "self" insurance I don't think there'd be an issue. However, when talking about pooling funds for a real "insurance" policy I don't know if that's even legal in my state without a license to sell insurance policies. In 12-1/2 years, I've had only one incident where I called my E & O carrier. I made a mistake 'cuz I called them before I'd checked the issue out. After I'd checked it out, I discovered that I shouldn't have called them at all and she was making a totally bogus claim. They agreed but charged me the deductible anyway 'cuz I'd made that call. I thought that kind of sucked; I called them and they charged me $1k (back when deductibles were less) and then they agreed with me and refused to pay her?! Think about real self insurance; if you put $3600 a year into your bank into a special callback contingency account that you never touch, in just a couple of years you'd have $7200 put away, in 10 years you'd have $36,000 plus the interest. If you did that for 12 years you'd have $43,200 and so forth. If you did that, and had the one call in 12 years, realized that you were right all along and the person was making a frivolous claim, you could probably just pay a lawyer enough to make the claimant back down. However, when the other side knows that there's an E & O carrier or a self insurance fund, aren't they liable to simply hang in there for years until they can force you into a settlement, like was done with the situation that began this thread? Wouldn't it make sense that without an E & O carrier or a pool they're liable to back off, unless they really do have a basis for a good claim? It seems to me that one would be smarter to just go without E & O and tuck away that cash where nobody's lawyer can find it. Then, if the day ever does come when someone tries to wring you out without good cause, pay a smarty pants lawyer just enough to make them go away. At least that way you've kept some of that money and you are the one earning interest on it; not the insurance company that would piss it away on you and settle anyway. I dunno, like I said, I'm not smart enough to figure this stuff out; maybe there is a way to do it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

This piece on CKWS TV news in Kingston Ontario is about how the peer rewiew testing for Canada's national home inspector certification program is moving across Canada. To read more, click here.

Mel Chalfen was an oldy timer ASHI member from Mass. who was the epitome of professionalism and had very strong ideas about what our profession should be. Always showed up in a jacket and bow tie. But try as he could, (and many others as well,) proper training of professional inspectors never became a reality. Those who knew Mel know what he was like and what he stood for. If he could have waved a stick to make it happen we would all be taking at least a two year college course in our profession before we could be licensed, or allowed to inspect. On the main thread topic, the astounding amount of "idaknows" in our profession is a real bone of contention with me. I did not know it all, but I knew much of it and I still continue to learn even though I am retired. If it was broken I told them to fix it. If it leaked I told them to fix it. If it moved and was not supposed to move I told them to shoot it then have it fixed. HI's need to know more than they apparently do. I like the analogy about the Mechanic. You cannot sell yourself as a professional (especially for paltry fees) and then say it needs further evaluation. Someone mentioned a 30 year gas furnace. It would have been reported by me as needing replacement even if someone told me in writing the exchanger was not cracked. Everything has a life span and Murphy's law says that if you wrote the furnace up as old but functional it would become dysfunctional the day of the closing. Hi John, Mel and I never met face-to-face, but one day back around 2001 he sent me an email and asked me to call him about something; I forget now what it was. After that, we spent many hours talking to each other on the phone about various home inspection topics and the subject dear to both of our hearts - the idea of a true college exclusively for home inspectors and building scientists. When he died in August of 2007 I felt the loss almost as badly as when my father passed away. He was a real gentle soul and a true inspiration to me. A couple of years ago, I got myself all charged up about the school idea again and decided that if I ever got it started that I wanted to call it Chalfen Technical Institute (CTI). Not long before he died, Mel called me to say that his family had asked that I not call the school that should it ever come to fruition. Now that he's passed away, I can't think of any better way to honor his lifetime commitment to education and excellence but I don't know if his family still could/would want to prevent me from calling it Chalfen Technical Institute. Guess we'll cross that bridge when/if we ever come to it. Re: the 30-year old gas furnace. I would have written something like: REPLACE THE ANCIENT GAS FURNACE: This gas furnace is pretty old; around here, these things have an average service life of only about twenty years from the date of installation. Even if you have it checked out now, and an HVAC tech tells you that it's in perfect working order, there's no way that anyone can predict how much longer it's going to remain serviceable. Heck, for all I know, it might have failed since I left the site and began writing this report. I recommend you get it replaced now; if you don't, you should not be surprised if it fails the day after closing, on the coldest night of the year or one day makes you sick when it begins leaking carbon monoxide into your home. We miss you, Mel! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The noise is coming from a contactor that energizes the strip heat. So, good thing, bad thing? Is it likely to get worse and fail or could it go on forever without issues - except for the noise, that is? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Erby Okay, I think I know where I found it. It must have been in some of the pest control information that I had to read back in 1996 when I was studying for my pest inspector's license here in Washington State. I say that because I just googled "11 gallons of water for every 1,000 square feet of uncovered soil in a crawlspace" and kept ending up on pest management sites. I found some interesting links: The google tag for the 6th link below specifically states: "A poorly vented crawl can produce over 12 gallons of water per day per 1000 square feet! When your crawl space has been properly vented ..." but I just about wore mmyself out trying to find that in the actual document - it's about 113 pages long. There's a whole pest management education at these 6th and 7th links though! http://www.engext.ksu.edu/moisture/mf2141.pdf http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalo ... ec1437.pdf http://www.earthcrafthouse.com/document ... 120903.pdf http://www.state.mn.us/mn/externalDocs/ ... isture.pdf http://www.houseinvestigations.com/down ... 0pages.pdf http://www.stephentvedten.com/36_Wood_D ... nsects.pdf http://www.stephentvedten.com/ ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jeez Erby! You must think I'm someone with a memory left. Off the top of my head I cannot. I distinctly recall that when I first got into this business I'd read it was either 7 or 9 gallons and that's what I'd written for a couple of years; then I read something somewhere else that caused me to revise my estimate. I want to say that it was either at Home Energy Mag's website or it was Dr. Joe L's website. If I were to go over to the storage, dig down to that bottom box of files, I might be able to find the reference cited in one of those old files, but I'm not likely to do that tonight. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Last time I had that happen on an electric furnace, I found that there was a transformer screwed to the wall of the controller tray and it was loose. Every time the heat came on, that transformer fibrated just like the tool engraver I used to have - which wasn't much more than a tranformer mounted on a piece of carbide. I took a nut driver, snugged up the two sheetmetal screws holding the transformer in place and the buzz ceased immediately. Five seconds to fix it - it would have taken five minutes to write it up. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Jerry, Of course, you are free to run your business the way that you see fit, but I didn't read anyone saying that it's an absolute; of course there will be times when you can't see something and an invasive inspection by someone else is going to be needed to determine exactly to what extent repairs are needed and to fix the issue. However, if you have the training or experience that allows you to easily diagnose an issue and tell someone what's wrong and how to get it fixed, why not? Let me give you an analogy: There are now automobile inspection services that get paid by buyers to give used cars a once-over and tell buyers whether they're getting a decent car or a piece of crap. Like us, the folks that do that service use some instruments and they poke and prod the car here and there to determine its overall condition before providing a report to the buyer. Who does these? Mostly mechanics, right? So, if you brought a car to a mechanic and asked the mechanic to give you an idea of whether it was in good shape or not, would you expect the mechanic to say to you, "It looks like the steering rack has some wear, I recommend you bring the car to another garage, have them confirm that there is wear there, and then tell you what needs to be done to fix it? No, you wouldn't expect that; you'd expect that the "expert" that you hired could tell you generally what was wrong and tell you how to fix those things he knows how to fix. Like us, sometimes those guys can't fully diagnose something. For instance, the inspector might determine that the the automatic transmission is shifting a little sluggishly. He might proffer an opinion as to several possible causes, but reserve final judgment, telling you that there's no way to know without an invasive inspection. Since his is an inspection service and he doesn't do tear downs, he'd tell you to take the car to a transmission specialist, let that specialist drop the pan and check things out more closely and tell you what it's going to cost to fix it before you proceed with the sale. In the end, you might walk away with a list of issues that he's clearly diagnosed and given you specific repair recommendations for; and you might have a separate list of stuff that he was unable to diagnose without an invasive inspection. Isn't that what we "inspection experts" should be doing? Shouldn't we have the training and experience to confidently offer our opinion about something we perceive to be a deficiency and be capable of making solid recommendations for the client about how to get something fixed, versus punting the house to someone else who is only going to tell them what we should have been capable of telling them in the first place? I'm with Neil, since day one in 1996, whenever my knowledge and experience has helped me to feel confident that I was making the correct call on a home, I've told folks what needed to be done to fix the issue and I've saved the "further evaluation" calls for those issues that I physically cannot see without an invasive inspection or where I don't have enough experience with the issue to feel comfortable making a diagnosis - air conditioning systems jumps right to the frontal lobe there (I see one every couple of hundred houses if I'm having a very lucky year). No arbitrations, no lawsuits in 12-1/2 years of doing that, so I'd have to take issue with any claim that offering a firm opinion about how to correct an issue is fodder for lawyers. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I think that the issue that you run into with a self insurance program is that you could run afoul of insurance laws in some states with a self-insurance program. Maybe the way to approach it is to go directly to a regular insurance carrier with X number of potential clients and demand a customized program. I dunno, this stuff is for guys waaay brainyer than I am to figure out. OT - OF!!! M.