hausdok

About the only part of a home you can inspect with a drone is the roof, and even then the drone does not enable you to do a complete and thorough inspection of the roof. Can your mechanic look at the roof of your car and tell you what condition the whole car is in? Take the drone and do something else with it. There are already too many shylocks in the home inspection business.

I used to see that every once in a while. The builders said that they'd placed strips of plastic and that allowed the surface of the concrete to crack in line with the plastic. That way, when the concrete cured and shrank, and curing cracks developed, it would be in a straight line instead of random.

I see you've already found the other thread about Wesco furnaces. That's about the best info you'll get anywhere.

Go back and carefully read all of this thread. You don't need to be an HVAC guy to do this, but you do need to be a little adept with your hands and be imbued with a little common sense that tells you to be sure to cut all power to the unit at the breaker box before you start. You'll need some basic tools. Really, if everyone who had a gas or oil furnace could repair them as easily as electric furnaces could be fixed, the HVAC industry would go bust.

It's been nine months, and the job was already in progress when she made this post. By now, the job should be completed. I don't think it would be appropriate to say anything else here. It could only stir up a mess. I'm going to lock this thread.

Wow, 75 and still at it! You're a legend. I'm 72 and I'm falling apart.

Yep, We did do some stuff. I wonder if there's a warrant out for us?

Thanks everybody for your words of encouragement. John and Jerry, sounds like you guys have got it wired. I'm walking every day, but I have to find something else to keep me active. Maybe I'll take a job as a Walmart greeter. LOL Les, I don't know how those ladies will deal with their broken hearts. Juanita will laugh.

Yeah, I'd call it the 'Lesser is Better' page. LOL

Thanks for the support, Guys. Jerry, I am sorry to hear about your heart health. I hope you get much better. I have a friend who had a quadruple bypass surgery about two decades ago and he's still doing well, so I think that if you eat well (meaning sensibly), exercise, and listen to your doc you're going to be with us all for a long while. Getting used to retirement will suck a little bit but it is what it is. Les, I bet women all over the country are sobbing because they won't be able to enjoy your flirting with them anymore. If you guys know of anyone who wants to expand their library, and he or she wants some construction, HVAC, electrical, roofing, home inspection books, have 'em give me a call. I warn them though, there's enough to fill a standing bookcase, so the cost to ship them is not going to be cheap. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Years ago (probably about 2015) the knee pain got so bad that I cut back on jobs I'd accept and began coming here less, since I had to, due to pain, take a lot more breaks that cut down on hours available in the day. I spent so much additional time writing reports, that the joy went out of the job. I stopped frequenting the board - only looking in once and a while. Eventually, the knee pain got so bad that I couldn't climb stairs anymore, so we off-loaded our three-story townhome and rented an old, POS single-story house in a neighboring town and thought that it would be temporary. I got knee surgery on one leg after a time but then COVID hit, and I couldn't get the other knee fixed. When restrictions were lifted again, I got the other knee replaced, but by then doctors were telling me that I'd need, sooner or later, to get cataract surgery. So, I just kept puttering in my shop and making the legs stronger by walking a few miles every day. The day came that the doc told me that I needed to have eye surgery, so I got that done. However, like the knees, they can't do both at once. I got the first eye done and then, as luck would have it, I came down with COVID, and the doc postponed the surgery. After I'd recovered, my surgeon had COVID too, and that postponed it again. Finally, everyone was well again, and I was able to get the second eye done. By then, I was collecting social security, but I was bored out of my skull and wanted to get back to work. It was not to be. Last May, just a couple of weeks after having my second eye surgery, I had a stroke. It was about three more weeks before I got out of in-hospital rehab and started at home rehab. I'm just about back to normal now - my speech isn't slurred anymore, though it's slow, and I'm walking with a cane about a mile twice a day. Still, it looks like my sense of balance is never going to be fully back to normal and manual dexterity may never return. I used to be able to slam out about 180wpm. now I'm lucky if I can make 40wpm, so, I'll never be able to get back on a roof or get up on a ladder, and I won't be able to use my hands on the job like I used to. Now, the doctor tells me that fifty years of walking with one leg shorter than the other (I broke one femur in 1971) is the cause of all of the irritation I'm feeling in my left hip and that hip replacement surgery is on the horizon. It's time to call it. I'm getting rid of a bookcase full of home inspection and construction related books, the Packard Hawk I was restoring, and all of my tools and equipment. Interested? Give me a call to see what I've got. 425-806-4875 ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Chad, Is this the one where you made the boiler yourself and it's installed in an outside shed with pipes underground to the house?

They reached the end of their expected service life decades ago. They will be energy inefficient when compared to modern furnaces and it's more than likely that they DO have cracked heat exchangers. If I owned a building where they were in place, I'd call 1-800-GotJunk, get rid of them, and purchase a couple of new ones with a nice long warranty on them.

Chad does everything well. He should have gone into politics and brought a little bit of sense to D.C. Good Job!

The company has gone out of business. My sister has one of those systems and has been trying to get it fixed for months. No luck. She has found parts on ebay and craigs list, but nobody wants to work on it. She had to get a quote for a new system. Cost to replace with something else is exorbitant. Good luck.

That label is marked CU-AL, so I would have been more interested in what it was connected to at the other end. So many electricians seem to ignore or overlook that. In my own place, about five years ago, I lost power to a bunch or receptacles. When I pulled the cover on the panel, I found the electrician who wired the place in 2005 had ignored the rules and the bus was burned through. Needed a new panel and it was less than 15 years old!

Before you decide on what/how to insulate it. For good measure, saturate the rafters and underside of that wood decking with BoraCare so that it will forever after not support any growth of fungi. It's no more dangerous than table salt - just a pain to apply because you have to keep it constantly stirred to keep the borate in suspension. Now, as Bill said, we need to know where/what climate zone.

An establishing photo of the house would help. Some houses never had the electric or plumbing added until long after they were built.

If he demolished the wall and is rebuilding it, I think your current codes may apply. Usually, if you go higher than four feet you have to have the wall permitted, which means an engineer specifies the materials and type. If there is a rule about required drainage, he may be required to install drainage at the bottom and behind that wall as he builds. I don't know about vehicle fall protection.

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The doctor analogy, if it's meant to mean that an inspector is more knowledgeable than anyone else on the topic, is a bit over the top. If by doctor one means a simple general practitioner, that works a little better. A GP doesn't pretend to be an expert on every subject - but he or she should strive to be really good at knowing how to spot issues with a patient, that many medical specialists might miss at first glance, and then know which specialist the patient needs to be referred to for follow up. After all, a GP gets to do a mostly non-invasive inspection of your body (Except for that damned rubber glove bit.); and, if the GP finds what he/she believes to be an abnormality, tells you what's been found and then tells you what your treatment options are, if any. Like the GP, we get to take a short, mostly non-invasive look at the patient (home) in order to spot symptoms. We report the symptoms we're seeing to the client; and, when possible, briefly explain, based on what is seen, how serious an issue it could be. From there, it's up to the client what happens next. Surely inspectors should be professionals but not to the point where they think that their primary function is saving lives only. Usually, when I run into the "safety-related issues only" types, they are realtards trying to tell me how to do my job. They maintain that I shouldn't sweat the small stuff and should only report on safety issues. Translation - My client doesn't need to know about all of the stuff you see. Just tell my client about anything that has the potential to get me sued. If you want to report on small stuff, just bury it in the main report and leave it out of the summary. Make the summary only about the stuff I can be sued for. I think our job is to thoroughly examine as much of the home as is possible, as best we are able without an invasive inspection, in order to spot condition abnormalities and/or maintenance needs, and objectively, without embellishment, report what we've found to our client(s). It's important to remember that, once you meet the client onsite, he or she is not the agent's client during the inspection but is your client. Ignore all of the visual signals that the realtorzoid is trying to make you pay attention to, and concentrate on what you're being paid to do - perform as thorough an inspection as you are able. Once you've done the inspection and reported your findings to your client, you can turn the client back over to the agent. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I like Jim's suggestions. He's right, in our climate you don't want it airtight on the underside - just pretty tight so any vapor diffusion that finds it's way into that space can dissipate. The only improvement I might try to make with that is to use two-inch-thick EPS placed against the underside of the floor before adding unfaced batting. Just trim it carefully so it's a light press fit, add the batting and then the covering. Don't seal the perimeter of the foam, you want to allow diffusion to continue to move naturally toward the colder underside of the space and escape. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Sounds about right. I can picture Les, a couple of dogs, and his good lookin' neighbor all lathered up standing under the shower head together as the hot water runs out.

As the first respondent said, it's easily corrected with a pigtail and a wire nut. It will take longer to get the cover off than to make the correction.

It's Poria Incrassata - I like to refer to it as A.I.D.S. for wood.