hausdok

Hi, I used to build A.O. Smith Harvestors all over New York and New England; I remember quite a few farms in upstate New York where they had that kind of water. The locals called it "mineral water" and my old man called it "sulfur water." It was supposed to be harmless to drink but jeez it stunk to high heaven. Any "mineral" water that I ever saw before that came off the shelf at the super market and it didn't smell like rotten eggs. The crew hated it when we landed on a farm with that stuff and my old man would have to drive for miles to find a place that didn't have it, in order to fill up a big plastic picnic jug with non-stinky water, so that we wouldn't get dehydrated during the day. My Uncle Al, the comic of the family, used to call it "fartwater." It was thanks to Uncle Al and his cute name for the water that I ended up insulting the prettiest girl I'd ever seen in my then 14 years and got drenched with that stuff in the bargain. We were putting up a structure on her daddy's farm in Alburg, NY less than half an hour from the Canadian border. She was about my age and so pretty that my knees just about buckled every time I looked at her and she easily put Angelina Jolie to shame. Well, the second day of the build, it was a really hot summer day and we were all laboring in the heat and dripping wet with sweat. That's when she walked out to the site with a big pitcher of ice water, came straight over to me first, poured out a tall glass of water, smiled and handed it to me. I could feel the eyes of the entire crew on me and all conversation between the guys stopped. I tried to smile and muster a thank you, but it was like my face muscles wouldn't work, my tongue had folded up in my throat, and I'd had an attack of Alzheimer's all at the same time, 'cuz my brain definitely wasn't firing on all cylinders. I knew I was turning beet red, so I did the only thing that my body seemed willing to do; I reached out, took the glass, raised it quickly to my lips and took a huge swig. That's when the smell hit me. Well, you can guess what happened next; I spit it out, spraying her pretty good in the process, and, before I could reengage my brain, I exclaimed, "Damn, it's that groddy fartwater crap!" Well, the entire crew erupted into hysterics and needless to say, she wasn't too happy at being hosed down with saliva by some rude boy who was insulating her family's water. Humiliated, I guess she did the only thing that she felt she could do to regain her honor, she doused me with that entire pitcher of fartwater, turned on her heel and stalked off looking pretty pissed. At that point, the entire job came to a half for about 15 minutes; 'cuz the crew were laughing so hard that they were incapacitated. Me, I just wanted to slink off somewhere, crawl under a rock and die because the most beautiful girl on the planet had just covered me with rotten egg smell and now considered me to be the rudest boy within 10 light years. A little while later, her daddy came out to the site looking a little concerned. He came up to me and asked me if I knew why his daughter had run up to the house crying after she'd brought a pitcher of water out to the guys. I just stammered something incomprehensible, pointed to Uncle Al and busied myself out of site behind the Loadstar while the farmer went over to talk to Al. I was pretty sure that in a minute he was going to come back and walk up on side of me and then down the other. Well, I needn't have worried, 'cuz about a minute later I heard him break out into laughter. I peeked around the truck and he and half the crew were standing there going into hysterics. I went back behind the Loadstar. A few minutes later, the farmer walked right by me laughing on the way back to the barn. He stopped only long enough to say, "Sonny, you've got a lot to learn about how to impress a girl," and off he went in stitches. We were there for another day and a half. I was hoping that she'd come back out to the site again. I'd managed to work up the courage and resolve to apologize to her in front of the crew if she did, but she never did come back. Those guys ribbed me about that all summer; especially when there'd be some pretty girl my age hanging around on one of the farms. I never did learn her name and I used to often wonder what became of her. [:-ashamed ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yikes! If I did that, I'd have to charge everyone some kind of outrageous and exorbitant access fee; something like a buck a month or maybe even $1.05 a month. Everyone would go bye-bye. [:-weepn] ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Editor's note: The following was sent to me by James Simmons, Mr. Electric. Enjoy Found this outlet (standard CU type) connected to aluminum wire. You can see the result for yourself. The panel is an FPE and the breaker never tripped of course. Almost caught the house on fire because they had some clothes hanging in front of it. James Simmons (User name: Mr. Electric) Olympia, WA

OK, so I had this idea; I have all of these references here and the list has recently gotten bigger when Douglas Hansen sent me a couple boxes of references and told me to find a good use for them, so what if TIJ had a lending library? Folks could go to the menu, choose "lending library " and then browse the selection there. I could list the weight of the book or CD that they want next to the item on the menu. If they find a book they want, they send us an email to reserve the book and follow that up by sending me a weight-appropriate pre-paid return mailer. I send them the book and then when they're done with it they send it back. So folks, waddayu think? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks Walter! If anyone would like to read or download that article just go to the menu bar above under the Library tab and click on "New Files." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! MIke

Hi Jeremy, Be careful how you use terms when referring to agents 'cuz you'll confuse folks and might even piss 'em off. In real estate parlance, the "selling agent" is the agent that works for the buyer and is referred to as either the "buyers agent" or the "selling agent." The "listing" agent is the one that lists the house and works for the seller and is referred to as either the "listing agent" or the "seller's agent." The "selling agent," who is working for the buyer, is called the selling agent because that agent is actually the one that "sells" the house to the buyer. It was an agent that straightened me out on that point one day. I'd commented about how the "selling" agent had screwed up by not having a closet cleared so that I could get to a crawlspace hatch. She's a nice lady so she didn't take offense, but as soon as the client left she patiently explained the difference to me. I know, it's confusing - sort of like trying to remember the difference between "grounded conductor" and "(equipment) grounding" conductor. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Around here, if it's used where it'll be seen it's mostly Douglas fir or Port Orford Cedar. Usually don't see SYP here unless it's been special ordered. It makes a great floor platform; nice and quiet and solid feeling. OT - OF!!! M.

That's a huge misconception. The "sand" is only a few inches deep except for where it's drifted. Once you get below the sand in Kuwait, Saudi or Iraq you hit some of the hardest sh*t you'll ever try to dig through. Before the air force bombardment phase of DS kicked off, command ordered us to dig bunkers. What a friggin joke! I had nearly 30 guys working round the clock in shifts with picks and shovels to dig a 10 by 16ft. bunker and after 24-hours they'd barely made 18-inches. I finally drove out onto the desert, found 4 brand new latrines that hadn't been used yet, loaded them up on a couple of HMMV trailers, brought them back, stripped two sides off of each of them, and then set them into that hole, leveled them, and stacked sand-filled 55-gallon drums all around that sucker, reinforced the roof and then put on a 3-layer sandbag blast cushion roof. Just as we got it done, Brigade HQ comes down and says that they're going to commandeer it for the secondary HQ in the event of an attack. Yeah right, you should have seen the looks on their faces the morning of the offensive when some panicky twit yelled "gas!" and the entire brigade had to suit up and get in bunkers. They walked up to find my platoon solidly entrenched in there and there was no way they were going to come out and let a bunch of remfs take their bunker. Anyway, I digress; the "soil" there is very hard strata and it's laced with some kind of light-colored mineral that looks almost like chalk but is hard. Driving ground rods into the stuff is a b***h. You have to try multiple locations in order to find a spot soft enough where you can get the rod to any depth, so you mostly scrape out a trench, lay the rods lengthwise and then bury them. I think they need to look at the soil composition and how poorly those grounding electrodes are probably being installed. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, You never know, it might have been the Nisqually. Lots of stuff got jostled around in that sucker. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Kurt, Yeah, around here anyway. Often see them with a thick layer of bituthene or asphalt shingle beneath the ends - sometimes even steel plates. End are usually not directly against the concrete although some of the older ones are. Those usually have ends that are rotting. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Dunno, Jimmy Morrison, one of our moderators, splits his time between his inspection business in Massachusetts and his Property Management/Inspection firm in Puerto Vallarta. I'm betting Jimmy knows. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Huh, I'm going to assume it was before the days of the Internet 'cuz today you could send him to the free Publication Downloads Page at the American Wood Council site where, among many others, he could download the following pubs for free. Note WCD 4: WCD 1 - Details for Conventional Wood Frame Construction (54 pages) June 2001 WCD 2 - Tongue and Groove Roof Decking (12 Pages) Feb 2004 WCD 4 - Plank-and-Beam Framing for Residential Buildings (40 pages) April 2003 WCD 5 - Heavy Timber Construction (17 pages) Feb 2004 WCD 6 - Design of Wood Frame Structures for Permanence (23 pages) Feb 2006 ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Brad, No worries; we understand how nervous and distracted our northern neighbors are today wondering whether the morning will usher in someone they consider either a saint or the devil. Take a deep breath; no matter who wins, we'll still be your friends in the a.m. [] Traffic should be light in the morning. I figure those who vote for whoever loses tonight will all be home mourning in the morning. [] ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Jim, You'll note that I said "Easterners." We left coasties see them all the time but sometimes the right coasties think we've been doing happy smoke when we describe these things to them. The one in your photo, and the ones that I see in new construction have a pressure-treated sill. However, there's a bunch of post WWII ones around here where the "sill" is nothing more than a 2 by 4 with really long spikes driven through it that was tacked to the top inside of the forms with the long face flat to the form and the top edge flush with the finished top edge of the stemwall. Once the mud was placed and the forms stripped, the 2 by 4 remained in place with those big steel spikes held by the concrete. Then they laid the T & G ferry decking and nailed it at the perimeter to the "sill". No bolts. I find these sills and often the ends of the planking where they'd lain on the concrete eaten away all the time. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jeez Luoise! It's right here in the decoder chart. Print this out and keep a copy inside your clipboard or on the truck. Like Jim says, use the Goodman codes - that furnace was manufactured in July of 1990. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

If you look closely, you can see the stamping. Oh, by the way, the trough across the top of the beam is so that if the crawl fills with water the water will flow over the beam and into the next bay without getting on top of the beam and causing the end of the post to get wet and rot. It works great when the total amount of infiltration is only a few inches but it's useless if the crawl fills to a depth higher than that beam. The vapor barrier placement is crap.

It's funny, we know that parging the interior of the flue is the Lexus way of doing it but in reality that's not always the case. This is fireplace country - most homes here, new or old, have some kind of fireplace. Yet, it's extremely rare to see a fireplace throat or flue parged around here. I'd bet I only see it about one in every 2,000 fireplaces. Probably 30 - 40% of them - being more than 50 - 60 years old - don't have any tiles lining their flues either. Most don't have spark arresters or bonnets on them either. Don't hear much about chimney fires though and, despite our famous dry climate, don't see a whole lot of damage being done by rain due to no covers. Do see a lot of damage caused by cracked/eroded crowns and full permeation of stacks though. Regional differences/customs are interesting, aren't they? I should think that if I were to relocate to another part of the country I'd end up going through a rough patch wherein the way things are done in the new location seem pretty alien and incorrect to me. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

OK, OK, elitist northeast snobs, It's a grade beam and no, we don't have a frost line in the western corridor. Well, maybe just a bit - a few inches or so on the coldest day of the year - if it's not raining. However, in that crawl temps will rarely get less than 50°F. It's nothing more than an elongated pad footer and it's on undisturbed soil where they excavated for the foundation. Some folks sink 'em, others don't. A whole lot of 'em use these large round cardboard box forms, about a foot deep by 3ft. in diameter, place them directly on the soil, fill them with concrete and criscross a few pieces of rebar in them before the concrete sets up. Depending on drainage around and under the house, pier pads will either settle or not; one of these beams rarely settles 'cuz it distributes the weight over such a long wide footprint. The crack, though it's unusual, wouldn't concern me in the least. It's got rebar inside of it; I'd bet a case of whatever you drink on it, and the wood is not in direct contact - if you look closely you'll see that they've placed squares of asphalt under the ends of those posts. I'd like to know how you've managed to analyze the strength of the concrete via a photograph. That's a pretty good skill; if I could learn that, maybe I could learn to predict sports outcomes, bet on them and become an overnight millionaire. That looks like a plank-on-frame floor platform - something else that would probably freak you guys out a little. You guys'd probably really freak out if you were to see them forming up foundations around here with hand-built ordinary oiled plywood and 2 by 4 forms. I know my Dad did when he was out here to visit a few years ago. Being the owner of a big expensive truck full of forms, he couldn't imagine that folks were still doing it that way. Randy, Richard, Brad, we need to really freak these folks out. Do any of you have any pictures of post WWII plank-on-frame floor platforms with the little verticle 2 by 4 mudsills let into the top of the foundation wall to show the Easterners? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Uh, Sure, if 100% of these meth cookers were caught and we had a record of where they'd ever lived, that'd be fine: however, what about a home that's been contaminated by someone that was never caught and who's already pickedup and moved, maybe years ago, to another home? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, That's because they aren't asbestos and never have been. They use processed wood fiber mixed with silica sand and Portland cement, just like Hardiplank does. Richard didn't say that they were asbestos shingles; he more or less asked in parenthesis if they were. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Developed by members of the Timber Frame Engineering Council, the Standard for Design of Timber Frame Structures and Commentary defines the engineering and design requirements for timber frame buildings and is available as a free download from the Timber Framers Guild Bookstore. According to the purpose and scope statement in the guide, a timber frame is a "structural building frame system or a portion thereof that is composed of heavy timber members in which connections between interlocking members are created by carpenter-style joinery using wood pegs and wood wedges." According to its authors, the new guide is not intended to preclude use of other materials, assemblies, structures or designs not meeting the criteria within the guide, "provided it is demonstrated by analysis based on recognized theory, full scale or prototype loading tests, studies of model analogues or extensive experience in use that the material, assembly, structure or design will perform satisfactorily in its intended end use." This Standard is intended to supplement provisions of the National Design Specification for Wood Construction (ANSI/AF&PA NDS©, Reference 1). To download your free PDF copy of the standard direct from the Timer Framers Guild Library website, click here.

The IRS warns taxpayers to be on the alert for e-mails and phone calls they may receive which claim to come from the IRS or other federal agency and which mention their tax refund or economic stimulus payment. These are almost certainly a scam whose purpose is to obtain personal and financial information — such as name, Social Security number, bank account and credit card or even PIN numbers — from taxpayers which can be used by the scammers to commit identity theft. The e-mails and calls usually state that the IRS needs the information to process a refund or stimulus payment or deposit it into the taxpayer's bank account. The e-mails often contain links or attachments to what appears to be the IRS Web site or an IRS "refund application form." However genuine in appearance, these phonies are designed to elicit the information the scammers are looking for. The IRS does not send taxpayers e-mails about their tax accounts. Additionally, the way to get a tax refund or stimulus payment, or to arrange for a direct deposit, is to file a tax return. For more information on consumer scams, see Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft.

Vancouver, Wash. The Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC) ANSI-approved S520 Standard and Reference Guide for Professional Mold Remediation is now available. The new reference guide, which provides updates to the standard originally released in 2003, will help cleaning professionals continue to provide high-quality service utilizing the latest techniques and technology. To read more in dBusinessNews, click here.

Uh huh, If you can do business with our sponsors we'd sure be grateful 'cuz without 'em we'd probably roll to a halt. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I don't have one, but it's my understanding that the IR cam only measures differences in temperature. So, if something is damp and it's essentially the same temperature as everything around it, the IR cam won't spot it, no? OT - OF!!! M.