hausdok

Chad Fabry - Wackatto Inspector

Randy, The Sure Lock stuff has a very narrow edge because they lock together behind the lap. That's probably what you've got there. OT - OF!!! M.

You could go by Plywood Supply occasionally and see if they've got any of the various siding products on the damaged stuff heap and ask them if you could have a little piece for comparison purposes. Get a plastic tie, drill a hole in the corners, hook them all together with the tie, and keep them on your truck. Jeez, did I just say that - I could have been manufacturing these danged things and selling them on the net. By next week, I'd have enough money to start my own new home inspection association. I've been considering: Superior Home Inspectors Technical Training Institute - S.H.I.T.T.I. - waddayu guys think? Whoops, sorry, Randy. I drifted for a bit there. I'm back on track now, though. Eeeeehaaawwwwww! (I'd probably actually be enjoying myself if I were a drinker. Oh well.) OT - OF!!! M.

Is the flue intact, are the flue sections connected and locked together all the way up, and does it meet the requirements for the flue pipe that are required by the manufacturer? Bet you can't answer the first couple - only a sweep doing a level II is going to be able to answer those, unless that flue is really, really short and really, really clean. OT - OF!!! M.

I'll bet he could spot you if you came sneaking up on his house wearing that ninja suit and carrying that sword. Can you say Glock, children? It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood, would you be mine, could you mine, would you be my target. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Randy, It's from Collinswood TruWood - a Weyerheauser subsidiery. It's either the Sure Lock or the Self Aligning series. Go here. OT - OF!!! M.

Nah, No thanks, I hear they're like Ex-Lax with legs. OT - OF!!! M.

Go back, catch 'em and box 'em up. We can sell them to chinese cricket fighting dealers via the internet and make a killing? See that quite a bit. That looks like a deer mouse. Around here, about 10% of those carry the Hantavirus and you get it from breathing dust from their dried droppings. Catch it on Monday and they'll be planting you on Saturday, unless you have a really strong immune system and can fight it off. Yep, kiddus aggravatus, the most fearful creature on the planet. Did you shoot it or step back and let the mother pick it up and carry it back to its lair? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

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Washington - January 29th Now Congree Must Act on Stimulus, Builders Say The Federal Reserve’s decision to cut short-term interest rates today by half a percentage point is another step in the right direction to shore up a weakening economy, according to the nation’s home builders. “We urge Fed policymakers to monitor events closely and be prepared to enact further cuts in the future,â€

This is going to be way kewl when it hits the streets. OT - OF!!! M.

WASHINGTON - January 30th As members of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) prepare for the launch of the NAHB National Green Building Program, they’re planning on getting educated – in droves. Those attending the International Builders’ Show (IBS) in Orlando, Fla., Feb. 13-16 have been filling their online show planners with educational seminars on all things green – from marketing sessions to technical presentations to courses needed to meet the requirements for earning the new Certified Green Professionalâ„¢ designation. “NAHB has been preparing its members for the day that green building takes center stage in the marketplace,â€

Shhhh, Quiet! Please, don't even think about a convertible BMW!!! Those brain emissions are liable to reach my wife, who hasn't stopped dreaming about one since she first saw one back in 1980 after coming to the states. Every once in a while she'll start up on the subject again and I have all I can do to change the subject and get out of the room. [:-scared] [:-shake] I beg you, have mercy. [:-cry] ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It seems to me that if you use that phrase in your report a few times, in bold before the narrative, it becomes a convention, at last for the reader. Someone looking through the report sees that once and starts to look for it again (or at least the repair part) as a reference point, since I could imagine that your reports are voluminous. Yeah, that's true; sort of. However, I've also prefaced that same comment with something like, There are torn shingles on the roof: On the south slope of the roof ..... Other examples are: There's a drain leak in the master bath: Under the left-hand sink in... The water heater is installed wrong: Whoever installed the water heater.... Some of the electrical receptacles need to be corrected: Throughout the house.... Toilets are loose and leaking at the floor: In every bathroom.... I'm not constrained by specific language. I can say the roof needs repair now or I can say there are torn shingles on the roof or I can say The roof cover was installed incorrectly or whatever I care to say to lead into that. It doesn't really matter as long as I report the issue and the comment makes it clear what the issue is, why it negatively impacts the home, and what to do about it. I can use the exact same boilerplated text for any of those lead-ins, as long as I'm careful to insert text or delete text from the comment that's necessary to make the comment fit that particular house. I dunno if my reports are voluminous, most of the volume is taken up by the format. I have a cover, a separate page for the table of comments, a page for scope of the inspection, a page for exclusions and limitations, a page for an introduction, a page for the General Information (client, seller, location, etc.), and then I use page breaks between each section; Structure, Exterior, Roof, Landscaping & Drainage, etc., so that increases the length of the report. However, since I don't waste page space with long lines and columns of checkboxes, it's a lot shorter than if I were to say, "The condition of the roof is satisfactory," "The condition of the siding is satisfactory," "I just love the way that the hydrangeas set off the color of the house so effectively," and that kind of needless pap. My reports average about 21 to 23 pages, including the cover and the other 5 pages that basically say nothing about the house. Sometimes they are more, sometimes they are less, but, even if it were a perfect house with no issues, the format wouldn't allow a report to be less than about 17 pages long. Could I make is shorter? Sure, I could do it without page breaks and it would be about 60% as long and much more tiring to read. You have to have plenty of white space on a page or a reader's eyes get tired. Hell, reading checklist reports, with their constant single spacing and narrow columns, and icons, and explanations, and keys to this or that, are a whole lot more difficult for me to read than any narrative report and I do this every day. I can only imagine what it's like for the poor client who has to tread through one. Sometimes I go on the net and check out examples on other folks' websites. For me, the narrative formats are the easiest to read and understand and I don't experience the anxiety that I do when I have to read a checklist or semi-checklist example without plenty of white space to let my eyes rest and give me a break between sections. Works for me. OT - OF!!! M.

Cute, That's the second time I typed that. I had it all done and then the box locked up when I went to post it and I hadn't done it outside of the program, so I had to re-type it. It took me about 10 minutes. Do I get paid by the word? Nah, I don't get paid at all - even for inspections; Yung gives me an allowance. [] OT - OF!!! M.

Whoops, Just realized that this thread was two years old and that I just repeated what I'd said in January of 2005. Oh well, two years older and my CRS is advancing so rapidly that I'm going to order up at least 10 years worth of Depends and plenty of pacifiers so that when my mind finally does go I don't completely suck the skin off my thumb. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Like Walter, when I had a co-inspector that could inspect, explain issues to the clients, and who could type rapidly and work with a computer, I was able to produce on-site reports pretty easily. We kind of sped things up by wearing FM intercoms while we worked. We did a walk-n-talk and call it the School of the House (still do). Whoever was sitting at the computer in the house, was listening to every word that the other inspector was telling the client. As soon as Steve would say that there was a rot-damaged clapboard that needed to be replaced, because someone had piled earth against the side of the house, I would choose the appropriate drop-down, slam in the boilerplate, and customize it to fit that house. Usually before he'd moved onto the next issue. However, when Steve left the business to go into repairing doors and windows that need correction in order for home transactions to move through after inspections, my co-inspector became my wife Yung. Yung is very good at what she does, and has made some incredible finds over the years - stuff that I had or would have missed - but she can't talk to the clients or work a computer, so I reverted back to taking notes on-site and compiling the report at home. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

What you are talking about are what the folks who write these report programs call, for whatever reason, "conventions." If you're going to use those, you'd better include a definition of what you intend them to mean and that definition had better pretty much fall in line with what's commonly accepted as their meanings or you're going to get in trouble. When I first got into this business, the report system required by the franchiser had conventions (probably still does) and I was pigeon-holed into saying that something was either satisfactory, functional, attention, or action needed, or something like that. After I sold the franchise, I began using a different software and even helped the developer include conventions. The difference being, the user can customize the convention anyway he or she wants to. If a user wants a convention that says, "Seriously dorked up," and wants it to be bolded and in red, green, or pink, then that's how the customer sets up the program. I stopped using conventions completely about 5 years ago. Now I simply write something like: Repair the roof now: On the south slope of the roof there are about a dozen shingles torn off. These were probably torn off by the wind because whoever installed this roof cover failed to ensure that every shingle was properly adhered to those it overlaps. There's an adhesive strip on these shingles. When they are installed, the heat from the sun causes the adhesive to soften and the shingles to adhere to one another, so that the wind won't lift them and cause them to snap off. If it's too cold at the time the roof is installed, the adhesive won't soften and the shingles won't bond to one another. When shingles won't adhere, the roofer is supposed to use mastic to hand adhere every shingle shingle. Obviously, that wasn't done here. Get a competent roofer to replace the torn shingles and hand adhere the entire roof. Why use a convention when you can simply say what's wrong, why it's wrong, and, if you know, what needs to be done to fix it? Let's get real; if you're writing a narrative report and you describe the exterior as having, "stucco siding with wood trim," do you need to add, "....that's in satisfactory condition," if you didn't see anything to be concerned about and have told the client that? Seems to me that if you stick that in there, six months, a year, two years down the road, when the nails might have worked there way out or the trim, and water has gotten into the wall around a window because the client hasn't been keeping up with exterior maintenance, when the client goes to sell and another inspector writes those issues up, that you're handing a certain type of client the tools to use to come after you in a frivolous action. I say no. We have a problem in this profession, and it's one of our own making. Instead of focusing our attention on what's right for the client, on charging enough to make a fair profit, and on taking out time during inspections, so that we don't miss anything, we've allowed those in real estate to practically dictate the fees that we can command, our time on site, and what's acceptable language to be used if we expect them to refer us. Consequently, most of us have come to equate success in the business with the number of inspections we can do per year and that, for many of us, is mostly dependent upon how many referrals we can garner from agents. Indeed, in some places, the client's expectation of what a fair fee is, based on what they've been told by their real estate agent, is so low that an inspector must do a lot of inspections very quickly or they'll find themselves out of business, and maybe even out of home, very quickly. Over decades, many in this profession, whose path to success was through currying favor with those in real estate, stopped doing inspection and got into something with a much better profit to liability ratio than inspections - teaching. They began teaching their students that the secrets to success were by not upsetting agents, by being "fair to the house," by "keeping things in perspective," and by ooh'ing and ah'ing all of the features of the house in order to give the realtors a warm and fuzzy. Over time, they stopped teaching but those they taught began passing on those same tips. Now, most instructors automatically teach this stuff without giving a second thought to why things are done this way. They teach this because they know that a new inspector that is not friendly to the house is liable to find referrals to be few and far between, and is liable to blame their course later on for their failure. They don't want students bad-mouthing their curriculum or coming back and breathing down their necks accusing them of not giving them the secret to success. It's backasswards, but that's what it is. Hell, one of the most used testing texts out there by one of the largest firms in the business says in no uncertain terms that the inspectors ultimate obligation, according to some/many, is "to the house itself!" Huh, shouldn't our ultimate obligation be to the "truth?" So, back on point, most of the reporting systems and most of the unwritten "doctrine" is that you need to balance everything bad with something good. Checklist report systems are designed to do that and some states have some pretty lame licensing laws that require one to use these realtor-friendly report formats; Texas is the first one that comes to mind with it's weird I-inspected, NI-not inspected, NP-Not present, NR-Needs repair report format. You are required to put a check in those boxes and when the report is done the client is usually going to see that there are fewer Needs Repair boxes checked off than there are the others. So, in the client's mind, the repairs needed may be much more insignificant then they actually are. In the case of the franchiser who's report format I used to use, the client repeatedly would read the words satisfactory or functional, and, unless I was very careful to ensure that the client focused on those things that I wrote up for Attention or Action, which were always far fewer, it was easy for a client to end up bean counting the number of issues needing repair versus the number that don't need repair. It's a system that's designed to ease the client's anxieties and move things along; that's why realtors hate narrative reports written by folks who tell the truth and won't include the good stuff about a home. My reports are very blunt and contain almost nothing good to say about a home. In each section, I simply describe that particular component or area of interest, and report those issues I'm concerned with. A few clients, who themselves have been conditioned by previous inspection reports on other homes that are more friendly to the house, have remarked something like, "Jeez, Mike, there's nothing in here talking about what's good about the house. It's kind of a bummer," to which I always respond, "Look, you need to consider my report your reality check. You already knew what you liked about the house when you made your offer and before you hired me. You don't pay me to make you feel good - you pay me to investigate the condition of this home and give you as truthful and accurate report as I can about what's not right with the home. That's what I've done. You don't need me to make you feel good about all of the neat things in the home; your realtor will be more than happy to remind you of each and every one of those things every time you express some concern about stuff in my report." It's my opinion that we waste our time, the client's time, and do the client a disservice, by commenting on stuff that's functional, and on all of the neat-to-have and great stuff in the home, when we're fact finders that are paid to discover the stuff that clients are hoping and praying we won't find, but still want to know about nonetheless. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

An real world example of a possible trip to the defendant's table. A inspector comments about an A/C system that doesn't work properly. Needs Repair. Pretty straightforward. Tech comes in and says the entire condenser needs to be replaced. Owner calls inspector and says You didn't tell me it had to replaced, you just said the A/C needs repair. A written description of Repair could say that some or all of components might have to be replaced. I think the descriptions are worthwhile. I'm sorry, but that just doesn't compute with me. Using that logic, we're supposed to be HVAC specialists who can diagnose what's causing the ills in an AC system and prescribe specific repairs. How is that "real world?" What is the point of then recommending that an AC guy come in to look at the AC system, diagnose what's causing it not to function correctly and fix it?" We get hired to find the things that the client can't find. The AC system might have a 7 degree temp split and the client thinks it's functional. We come in, discover that 7 degree split, we know that's not sufficient, so we write it up and we tell the client to have an AC guy find out why it's not functioning properly and then fix it. We don't tell them, the AC system only has a 7 degree split because the whatsis is worn out and needs to be completely replaced, unless we can physically see, without invasive inspection or use of specialized tools and equipment, that the whatsis is completely worn out. Someone in this business with a background as an HVAC installer might be able to easily do what you say, but someone whose entered the business from a background as a framer, and comes from a state where air conditioning systems are rare, such as my own, might not have the faintest idea why that AC system isn't functioning correctly; and shouldn't have, because that's not our function. No course for home inspectors is going to teach them what they need to know to be able to do what you're saying with every system in a home. We are basically quality control consultants; we are not diagnosticians. We have set parameters to work within that have been defined for the past half century and those don't require us to be "experts" on every aspect of every system in a home. That would be an unreasonable expectation. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I told a client two days ago that from the very first day that the first owner got the keys that the house she is buying has been trying to break down, that the only way to prevent it from winning is with constant on-going periodic maintenance of the house and every one of its components, and that she needed to understand and accept that fact. I've never seen a house, by itself, get better - they always get worse. Staying out of trouble in this business really only boils down to managing the client's expectations and then doing the right thing. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, The post showed up today because Steven T. found it and made a comment to it. It doesn't matter how old a post is, if someone makes a comment to it, it's going to display as an active topic under "What's New" on the menu bar. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Rich, Actually, the chicken and the egg issue is something that the board director would be responsible for. If you read the bill carefully, the director, whoever that's going to be, will have broad powers to establish rules for that first group of folks that sits on the board, in order to get things ramped up. As long as we can get them to buy off on allowing very experienced inspectors to challenge the requirements with a test, in order to allow some segment of inspectors to be grandfathered, there will be enough inspectors available to do the supervising. The conundrum that Spanel and the other pols has to deal with is where they are going to draw the line in time-in-business and experience and education requirements in order to allow grandfathering. I think the committee understands clearly though that WHILAG's position is that, regardless of what kind of grandfathering is decided upon, they feel unanimously that every practicing inspector in the state needs to at least be able to pass a psychometrically-validated exam. However, since there are currently only two of those, the selection is limited. At this point, I think that the exam is kind of like a high school diploma. We tell our kids that most people in this country can't be successful in the world without a high school diploma, because it shows that you have the bare minimum amount of learning necessary to get on in the world. I think that these exams do the same thing - they show that the inspector has the bare minimum amount of knowledge necessary to get started in this profession. The committee will probably go into executive session in the next day or two, if not today, and Sen. Spanel may, like last year, offer a substitute bill with amendments. At that point, there might be more hearings, it might die in committee, or it might be brought before the house for a vote. If it were to be brought up for vote and passed the Senate, it would then move on to the house where the process would be repeated. Keep in mind that Rep. Springer has submitted his own version of a licensing bill. So far, no hearings have been scheduled for that. It too could move from the house to the senate for debate. There's still a long way to go and, even if one or both gets passed, they still need to move to the Governor's desk for a signature. She could veto one and pass the other, veto them both, or send them back for more revisions. Whatever happens, it would be about two years before everyone had to physically have a license. The amounts you were hearing are what the finance people in Olympia figured last year would be required to find this thing. They figured $800 for the first two year licensing period ($400 a year) for ramp-up and $600 every two years ($300 a year) after that. At least one Senator on that panel, Sen. Holmquist ® is very concerned with this aspect of the whole thing because Tim Eyeman's latest anti-fees initiative has kind of tossed a wrench into the works of anything in Olympia that's going to require new fees or taxes. Stay tuned. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, not exactly. They leave the building in search of food sources. Within a few days of swarming, they shed their wings. However, the wings don't fall off in flight; the termites have been landed several days by then. Those that have found a food source will try to start a new colony but most of the swarm will have become prey to other insects, birds, small mammals, and exterminators. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, this is from this morning's Olympian: http://www.theolympian.com/legislature/ ... 41666.html The hearing lasted about an hour and the video of the hearing can be seen and heard in its entirety here. OT - OF!!! M.

In his syndicated column today, columnist Kenneth Harney of the Washington Post explains why an appraiser is suing the country's largest thrift, Washington Mutual, for being blacklisted. Could there ever be a situation where home inspectors might be able to make a similar case against real estate folks? To read more, click here.