hausdok

Hi, Okay, I spent a half hour with it. That's all I could take. I'd give it a D-. Not because it's technically inaccurate, but because I experienced a certain amount of angst trying to figure out what's what and found myself constantly rifling back and forth between portions of the text. I'm used to this stuff, but if I were a first-time home buyer trying to figure that report out, I think I'd feel a little bit of stress while doing so. Cover Design - Turn-off, looks unfinished, poor placement of graphic and title block on the page, photo overwhelms the page. Too much emphasis on your company. Tone it down and place more emphasis on the clients. Why say?: WALLS Siding on the west and south sides is heavily weathered and checked. Yadda, yadda. You've already got it under the sub-heading Exterior/Foundation. Why not just bold it and say?: The siding on the west and south sides is heavily weathered and checked - Yadda, yadda, yadda. There are cracks in the slab in some areas of the kitchen - Yadda, yadda, yadda. Ditch the robot talk (passive voice) and speak like a person. Only Al Austin actually speaks in passive voice. What ever happened to The roof, The flashings, The east addition roof (or better yet, the roof over the east addition), There are multiple stains... Stains of what? Grease? Paint? Shit? Water? Too many font variations. It's distracting. Could you lose the text boxes around everything? We need lines on a legal pad to guide our handwriting. Why would we want it to be in our texts? Descriptions are lumped together with deficiencies in the main report. It causes the reader to have to hunt for the issues. If you're going to have photos, why aren't there photos in the summary report? The main report is so confusing that it forces the reader to go to the summary in order to get to the gist of what the issues are, but then the photos aren't there, so the reader has to go back and forth, back and forth. Disclaimers use up too much space. I'd use smaller font and justify spacing. You need to use your page breaks. In the summary report, the Plumbing System ends and then the Heating and Air Conditioning header is the last line of the page and is disconnected from that section. If you see that a header is going to end up on the bottom of a page separated from it's relavent text, insert a page break. Report limitations on page 2 & 3 - place it all on one page. Use a page break. The company logo at the top of every page isn't necessary. The product, the report, is your advertisement. Use the company name sparingly. If the reader is impressed with your work product and wants to find the name of your company, they can go to the title page - there's no need to splash the graphic all over everything. Get some white space between the photos and place the captions where they're more easily seen. The ones with the caption in the box at the left side are far easier to read than those where you've scrunched the captions into narrow little text boxes (those friggin text box lines again) at the bottom of the photo. I liked the roof plan graphic on page 12. Wish I knew how to do that without it taking me an hour to accomplish. If you're going to take a picture and caption it, make the caption relate only to what's depicted. You've taken a photo of the PVC pipe extention on a TPR valve on page 14 and written the PVC pipe (a non-issue IMO) and then crammed a bunch of other text in next to it. I understand it, but the way it's presented it will have a non-inspector sitting there staring at the photo wondering what pan you're talking about and where should the cutoff be. Why pictures of a burner flame with the caption "Burner flames appear typical"? - What's the point? On page 21, you show the photo of the service panel. Then you place the following in the box next to the photo. Circuit breaker and wire sizing correct so far as visible. Grounding system is present. Labels are incomplete or breakers are not well labeled. Properly label all breakers for safety. The uninitiated is liable to think that "Grounding system present" means that it's a deficiency because it's lumped together with the deficiencies. To me, the whole report presentation felt disorganized and confusing. There's way too much stuff going on with a lot of text crammed together in tight places; one must look at the pictures and captions and try and decide whether the caption on this one is now on the top or at the side, etc.. Like Les, although I didn't read much of the technical stuff, because the presentation was so overwhelming, I think that it's probably alright technically but I, quite frankly, hated the format and presentation. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Quantumfields is currently offering a reduced price for home inspectors on their Pocket CO detector. To learn more, www.transducertech.com. OT - OF!!! M.

by Mary Maclay, Quantum Fields LLC Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless, highly-poisonous gas formed by the incomplete combustion of carbon or a carbonaceous material, such as gasoline. Some producers of carbon monoxide (CO) are industrial processes, heating equipment, accidental fire, cigarettes and the internal combustion engine. Generators, candles, and space heaters can all create CO emissions. CO is always produced when natural gas, liquid propane, oil, coal, gasoline or wood are burned; often at dangerous levels. Exhaust gases need to be vented properly to avoid CO accumulation in any living space. If the combustion takes place with excess oxygen in a properly tuned burner, not much CO is produced but improper adjustment or any smoldering fire can produce significant CO emissions. How much is too much? There are many standards for CO exposure limits. The OSHA standard is 50 parts per million (PPM) in the air as a maximum exposure in the workplace. One PPM is defined as one CO molecule in one million molecules of air. This is about the same dilution as one shot glass of gin in a railroad tanker car full of tonic. The majority of off-the-shelf home CO detectors are designed to alarm at 100 PPM and above, to satisfy current laws concerning home CO alarms. A few home CO meters have digital readouts to show lower levels but they will not alarm at these lower levels. The American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) lists a maximum allowable short term limit of nine PPM of CO. The EPA has set two national health protection standards for CO: a one-hour standard of 35 PPM and an eight-hour standard of nine PPM. From the above standards and guidelines it follows that any CO reading over nine PPM should be investigated and acted upon. Health Effects Low-level exposure can cause chronic health conditions from cardiovascular disease to a Parkinson’s like illness. The following is an excerpt from the EPA: “The health threat from lower levels of CO is most serious for those who suffer from heart disease, like angina, clogged arteries or congestive heart failure. For a person with heart disease, a single exposure to CO at low levels may cause chest pain and reduce that person's ability to exercise; repeated exposures may contribute to other cardiovascular effects. Even healthy people can be affected by high levels of CO. People who breathe high levels of CO can develop vision problems, reduced ability to work or learn, reduced manual dexterity and difficulty performing complex tasks. At extremely high levels, CO is poisonous and can cause death. CO contributes to the formation of smog ground level ozone, which can trigger serious respiratory problems.â€

Here ya go, Gary, These oughta wet your appetite for tinkering: http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=184 or http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=40755414-c ... f&s=5&fs=0

Aw, man, Why cold? I did add a smiley with a wink. [:-eyebrow

I firmly believe that grading and drainage issues fall into our laps. I agree; they do, but sometimes there's no way to know, when you're on-site, what's causing the issue. That's why owners need to go down there every once in a while and look around. If they don't, it can be months - sometimes years - before someone will need to go under the house for something and sees that there's an active infiltration issue, or something else, going on. Around here, the best time to do that is in the middle of the winter-spring rainy season. It starts raining pretty regular at nights around here in the fall. By December it rains most days too. By March it can be back to nights again and stay that way until around June. My experience is similar to Jim's, in that I think it's best to check things mid-winter after the ground's had a chance to become waterlogged. The quandry that the clients find themselves in is that we aren't always able to tell them whether it's an on-going issue or something that's been resolved, so they have to make the choice of whether to purchase anyway and then to check things out on their own once they've moved in. Your discription of gravel-filled-and-filter-fabric-lined swales is what's done a lot around here. They rarely use pipe unless it's a very serious water issue that directed swales can't resolve. Sometimes infiltration is unsolvable but there's no question that it's occurring and nobody cares unless it's not being managed correctly. I know of one house out in Sultan that's built down on the flood plain of the river. Nice house, except the "crawl"space is about 10ft. high and floods every winter. To me, the house looked strange way up on top of that tall concrete foundation, but most of the homes in that neighborhood were done that way. When I arrived to do the job, the homeowner brought me a set of river waders, smiled, and said, "T think you'll probably need these." He was right. On another one in Everett, I rolled around under a then-27-year-old house for about 10 - 15 minutes on top of a pristine 27-year-old vapor barrier that felt like a water bed. It'd been sealed to the walls and piers and whenever water from the nearby marsh surfaced underneath the barrier would float on top of the water and later recede. The underside of the house was beautiful; no mold, no rot, no bug issues, no funk, because they'd installed a perfect barrier. Now, with those two houses, the cause of the infiltration would have been duck soup to diagnose. Looking at Chris' photos, maybe not so simple. Hard to say without being there. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Maybe she wasn't sneering. Maybe she was biting her tongue so hard that it hurt. [] OT - OF!!! M. Image Insert: 53.91 KB

I disagree. Even if it was okay when the house was built, if it's a safety issue NOW, regardless of age of the house, it needs to be in the report. If it's an issue like baluster spacing, GFCI, etc., how do you prove, when someone is hurt later on, that you ever recommended to the client that the baluster spacing be corrected or the GFCI's installed if you don't document it in the report? I don't use conventions like Improve, Maintenance or Repair. Those are too easy for the reel-tours to try and pigeon hole into a non-issue category. For the baluster spacing I start the comment with Unsafe Baluster Spacing. That is a definitive statement. I don't start it with Possibly Unsafe Baluster Spacing or Previously Accepted Baluster Spacing. I wouldn't start it with Improvement or Maintenance or anything like that, because the reel-tour will automatically tell the client to disregard it and only look at the stuff that says Repair. I don't care who fixes something, I only care that the client knows that it needs to be fixed. If that "fix" means to upgrade it, repair it, or perform maintenance on it, I just say what it needs. There's no confusion in the client's mind that way. If the client reads "Unsafe Baluster Spacing," and reads the explanation, the client will understand the recommendation and can make up his or her own mind whether it's important or not. If the client wants to try and get the seller to do it, or wants to do it himself, that's up to the client. Again, I disagree. A deck might be perfectly okay but long overdue for maintenance that a homeowner neglected to do. If that's the case, why not say something like: The deck has been neglected and is overdue for maintenance - followed by an explanation of the maintenance that should have been done, what the consequences of not doing that maintenance will be and a recommendation to contact a couple of handy guys who clean and reseal decks to find out what it's going to cost to get it done. Heck, if you know what it'll cost to get it done in your area, give 'em a ballpark figure. The client deserves to know what's been cared for and what hasn't. If a house is a huge list of deferred maintenance items that are functioning but have been neglected, it sounds like you advocate not recording that fact in the report because things might not actually be broken. Stuff can need to be upgraded or improved but not be a safety issue. That's fine, just state that fact in the description of the house, but don't leave it out. If it needs painting, just say so. There's no need to say it needs to be "Repaired". Start the comment with The house needs to be painted - , not the words repair or maintenance. For crying out loud, why are folks pigeonholing things into conventions; just say what needs to be done and then write it up the way you tell it to the client. It sounds like you want to say that only stuff that needs to be repaired needs to be mentioned in a report and that everything else should be left out. Excuse me for saying so, but that's the reel-tour's approach to reporting. Clients need to know about it all, not part of it, and including it in a report isn't just about CYA, it's about giving the client what the client is entitled to, which is a report containing everything that you know about their prospective new home. I covered this above. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, When one is shaped like a cauldron it's sort of second nature. OT - OF!!! M.

That barrier was put down before the home was framed and there isn't a water line. A lot of that silt could have accumulated over the time between installation of the barrier and when they finally got the roof over the whole thing and dried it in. Sometimes there can be a foot of water in the foundation with the plastic half-floating on top before they ever get the roof on. If that had happened, there probably would have been some kind of water line evident. When I see them with that much muck on top, no water line, and the exterior drainage and guttering seem to be fine, I recommend putting down a clean barrier over the existing one and then checking the crawlspace at least once during the rainy season. I don't specify January - usually I tell them 'sometime in the middle of the winter rainy season.' Unless you do that, it's probably going to be impossible for the client to know at some future point, unless he or she actually enters the crawlspace when there's water in there, whether the muck was left behind from flooding that took place before the home was framed in or water has entered since taking delivery of the home. Yeah, that is a form of monitoring, I suppose. I don't know whether I can totally agree with Chad; that's it's Chris' or any other home inspector's job to know what's causing it. Sometimes, there's no way an inspector can know anything except, "There's been water over the vapor barrier that's left silt deposits." If there's no evidence of current flooding, and it could have occurred during construction, or was caused by an issue that's been repaired, the only way to know and be 100% certain that it's not still occurring is to conduct a grading test around the structure. How many homeowners are going to allow that? So, you have to create a situation where the new homeowner at least has a way of knowing whether there's been flooding or not. The cost of a whole new barrier that's not completely sealed to the walls and piers and at overlaps can be less than $50 in materials and an hour or two of labor. That's a relatively cheap way of knowing in the future if you've still got water. I tell every client that he or she needs to either personally, or hire someone to, inspect conditions in their attics and crawlspace at least annually. If you're going to tell your clients to make sure they're checking and cleaning their gutters, telling them to make sure they check the roof for missing/torn shingles, telling them to ensure they keep vegetation off the structure, maintain proper earth-wood clearance, and periodically inspect and touchup the exterior paint and caulking, you need to tell them to make sure they periodically look at these areas as well. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Beginning last Friday, a new form of malicious email masquerading as credit card statements containing PDF copies of a statement began circulating the globe. When these are opened, hidden code in the PDF will begin downloading data from foreign computers onto your hard drive. Adobe has posted a filter upgrade to their site that will screen and filter PDF's before they display. However, until more fixes are out there for this, it would be prudent not to open any pdf email attachments from anyone that you don't know. To learn more about this issue, click here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You're talking to the choir, Al, It's not about soil conditions - at least not insofar as why I linked it to TIJ. It's pretty clear that the author of the article is referring to soil conditions in the San Francisco bay area. That was the point of her article for her local readers. From my point of view, the article is interesting to home inspectors because it illustrates how sometimes folks will even purchase homes that we'd run away from screaming. Been hunting lately? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Mark, In your balustrade example, I wouldn't call it a "repair" because the balustrade isn't broken, is it? It's built to the standard allowed when the house was originally constructed and it's functioning as intended, right? So, does it actually need to be "repaired" or should we recommend that the prudent thing to do from a safety standpoint is to improve it or upgrade it? Take Chris' quote from another thread and write something like: Unsafe baluster spacing - You don't have a framajam on your thingamajig The balusters at the railing around the deck are installed 8 inches apartid="blue">. If this home were being built today, there'd be a framajam on the thingamajig Today, in order to prevent a toddler from slipping through them and being injured or worse, we install balusters no more than 4 inches apart. id="blue"> because the framajam makes the thingamajig safer, and that's why the framajam is required by current code (cite code). Now, there's no law requiring you to bring your thingamajig the railingid="blue"> up to current code by installing the framajam altering the baluster spacingid="blue">, but from a safety standpoint it's the prudent thing to do. Contact a couple of framajam decking contractorsid="blue"> to discuss options and cost find out what it will cost you to add more balusters between the originalsid="blue">. OT - OF!!! M.

So, do the staging companies in Nashville haul around cow trailers and pay the neighbors to stake those cows within sight of the house? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Chad, Yeah, That's been knocking about the net in one form or other for years. I think I've got another version around here on one of the old drives. Tring to track the pedigree of some furnaces is tough. Wonder if iron has a form of DNA to test. [:-magnify OT - OF!!! M.

Have you ever had a client that bought the house despite some very serious issues you'd included in the report. If so, you can appreciate this article written by a bay area real estate agent. Click here to read more.

Hi Kyle, I don't think what you've quoted is what Kevin is saying that he'd write about this. I believe that's his definition of what the term Maintenance Issue means in his report. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, You're in an area where your frost line probably goes down at least four feet. Without establishing shots of the inside and outside of those areas, it's hard to tell from the photos, but it looks to me like there'd been a drainage issue at the exterior that'd been allowing water to back up around the base of the foundation. When that water-saturated soil freezes it expands and can sometimes cause damage like that. There's also supposed to be a footing drain installed around the base of that foundation wall to remove that water. If there isn't one, it's been placed in the wrong location, has become occluded with silt, or isn't deep enough and it freezes, you can end up with water in the basement and the same heaving issues outside. Did you ask them what caused the water in the basement and what's been done to fix it? Find out who did the work, check them out to see what kind of a reputation they have, give them a call and ask them to tell you about what they found and what they did, and then talk to one or two local drainage specialists in your area to see what they'd have done under similar circumstances. Maybe the issue has been corrected. The grading around that foundation needs to slope away from the walls at a rate of about an inch per foot for at least the first six feet. Does it? If it does now, but they tell you that it used to slope toward the foundation and they'd had to correct it, that would be a plausible explanation. The water from the leaders (downspouts) also needs to be conveyed at least six feet from the foundation or into an intact tight-lined drain system that discharges to a drywell on the property or into municipal drainage. Does it? If the answer is yes, and they explain that the cause of the flooding had been broken or improperly oriented downspouts that were dumping water at the foundation, that also would be a plausible explanation. However, if the owner tells you that the problem had nothing to do with either of those issues, and the owner claims that the issue involved the footing drains and it's been corrected, there's no way that anyone here can help you - you'll need to talk to a drainage specilist in your area. In the end you'll be left with the choice to either believe the seller or walk away. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's true. "Recent Topics" only lists the most recent 10, 25, or 50 topics posted to TIJ. If the topic responded to, like this thread, was 51 or more topics ago, it won't display. "Active Topics" is what you want to check. When you click on "Active Topics" it will display anything that's been posted, within the search terms you ask for - 1 minute, 2 minute, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, Last Hour, 2 hours etc. - since the last time you visited. When you click on "Active Topics" and it displays a list of threads, just click on the arrow/clock icon and it will take you to the first post made to that thread since the last time you visited TIJ. That way, you won't have to scroll down the thread from top to bottom to find where you left off last. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi John, Though I occasionally do have to do battle with one of the trades or an obstinant seller or AHJ, it's pretty rare. Folks sometimes talk about how calling something out is going to create this huge hassle for everyone involved, including themselves, but that hasn't been my experience. It only happens occasionally. Powers of enforcement or not, we're paid to tell the truth as best we know it, aren't we? OT - OF!!! M.

Really, then how do you suppose Jim and I knew to check out this thread to see that someone had posted something to it? If you're logging off TIJ when you leave or you're computer isn't set to accept cookies, when you return, the software has no way to know when you were here last. Make sure that your computer is set to accept cookies and don't log off when you leave the site. If you're already doing those things, I have no idea what's causing it. OT - OF!!! M.

You didn't directly answer my question from the previous post. You have made a long winded argument on "drip edge" flashing, which is a recommendation from Roofing Associations. While I agree with you on that issue, it doesn't relate to the conduit issue. What we are talking about is weather conduit is required by code in my area (MD, DC, VA). So, I will ask the question again. Are you saying that every builder, every AHJ in my area, every electrician, and every HVAC tech who has installed cable that is not in conduit from the disconnect to the condensing unit is wrong? Kevin Thank you, I just love it when folks imply I'm a windbag. However it does relate to what you are saying. You are saying that just because all of those contractor, builders, and electricians do it that way that it's acceptable despite the fact that experts in the electrical business say differently. I'm saying they are wrong - in exactly the same way I was trying to show you with my drip edge example how those folks installing those hundreds of thousands of roofs out here, though they believe they are correct, are wrong. Just because a way of doing something wrong is accepted and done by everyone in your area, doesn't mean that you have to accept it if you know that it's contrary to what the best experts in the business are saying. Then again, maybe it's just me. I used to be a cop, remember? Cops make a lot of calls on their own, based on a set of rules that have been established, that are pretty unpopular with a lot of folks. Want to know what the most common "excuse" was that I heard from folks I had to cite for committing traffic infractions that endangered others or caused accidents; "Why are you giving me a ticket for something that everybody does?" Sorry if this is too long-winded for you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Kevin, What you are advocating is accepting the status guo just 'cuz that's the way it is; since everyone does it that way, it has to be okay. Some folks are comfortable with that approach. I'm not. Call me stubborn, but for 11-1/2 years I've written up every single home I've inspected where I don't find drip-edge flashing at the perimeter of a comp roof. Guess what? Sometimes it seems like only one or two roofers out here even knows what drip edging is. However, the National Roofing Contractor's Association (NRCA) and the Asphalt Roofing Manufacturer's Association (ARM), organizations made up of professional roofers and professional roofing products manufacturers, not home inspectors, recommend drip edging at the eaves of all comp roofs as a best practice. Some manufacturers even require it in their instructions. Since I know that probably 199 out 200 roofs aren't going to have any drip edging installed, should I simply ignore it because, "That's the way it's done here," thus helping to maintain the status quo, or should I call it when I see it and try to reeducate folks and try to get them to do it correctly in the future? After 11-1/2 years, I've suddenly started seeing drip edge flashings at the perimeter of more and more new roofs. I wonder if maybe, just maybe, my stubborn insistence on writing this up on every house, knowing that nobody is going to correct it, might have contributed in some little way to some changed attitudes where drip edging is concerned with some of these roofers. Maybe, maybe not, but one thing I do know is that accepting something that's wrong without protesting, just because that's the way it is, is, for me, counter intuitive. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, When I can, I try to avoid getting into a wrangle about "the code," but I'm not afraid to use it when I have to in order to make my point. Around here, the only time I've seen exterior disconnects installed with the cable exposed like that has been when a do-it-yourselfer was the one that did the wiring. The electricians apparently are on the same sheet of music on that issue. I wouldn't be willing to fall on my sword over the accessibility issue. Although not perfect, I don't think anyone is really going to have that difficult a time getting to and working on any of those; maybe that's just me, though. Here's Douglas Hansen's take, from Chapter 5 of Electrical Inspection of Existing Dwellings - 2001 Edition (The underlining is mine): Reading that, I'd say that cable should be protected in conduit on the wall where it's exposed. If I'd done the inspection, I would have written it up that way and quoted Hansen, since he's the best independent authority on the subject that I know of, and I would have recommended that they have it corrected by a licensed electrician who follows the electricians' own rules - not the one who installed the wiring incorrectly in the first place. I would have used exactly the phrase that I've underlined in the previous sentence. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike