hausdok

Shoot, looks like I can't get on the list this year. Stuff just keep going up - everything was going so well, too. Drat! [:-banghea [:-gnasher http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/In ... ?GT1=10423

Suppository

Hi Mark, First impression, it looks like one of the Omni-Wood patterns, but I'd need a sample to know for certain. OT - OF!!! M.

Oooookay, swell. OT - OF!!! M. [:-sonar]

Hey guys, The idea is that, once you click reply with quote, you insert your comment in the composition box, either above or below the quote, and then you click 'submit reply' and I'll be able to see your comments. OT - OF!!! M.

So, Ms. Rice, Did you want to comment on my comment? I'm not sure why you're replying to me with a quote. OT - OF!!! M.

And this is the guy that, after more than 5 years still can't figure out how to post a photo to TIJ? Waddueyeseewrongwiddispicshure? [:-magnify ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I never get calls about appliances and don't expect that I ever will. If I do, they'll be reminded about the pre-inspection contract they signed and the pre-inspection talk that we had. One of the things that I do during my pre-inspection phase with the clients Is explain to them what criteria must be met for me to pay for something, in the event that they think I made an error or omission. I specifically exclude appliances. I tell them that I'll do an on/off check of the appliance to verify that it was "working" at the time of the inspection, but that's it; I don't care how well it was working. I tell them that, where appliances are concerned, if one breaks, even if it's when I'm backing out of the driveway, I'll feel bad for them, but the appliances aren't why I'm there and my inspection isn't a warranty. I tell them that if an appliance is over a year old and out of warranty that they're going to be out-of-pocket for whatever it takes to repair or replace it, because I won't. Then I tell them what I will do to confirm that the appliances are operational at the time of the inspection. I tell them that, if there aren't any dishes in the dishwasher, I'll run the dishwasher through a cycle to see if it leaks, but that I'm not checking to see how well it actually cleans dishes. I tell them that I'll check the range and oven burners to ensure that they get too hot to touch, but I won't be checking them to verify that they reach a certain temperature and can hold it for any given time - only that they're coming on and going off. I tell them that I only check the disposal to ensure it spins up and doesn't leak, not how well it will grind up food. I tell them I only verify that the built-in microwave works; not how well it works. There's no ambiguity involved; by the time I'm done with the pre-inspection phase they know that anything related to an appliance failure is going to be their's to deal with. They know this before they even sign the PIA. The amount of water that a dishwasher uses is not enough to actually overflow the pan, unless there's an internal fault with the dishwasher. They won't leak - even when there's a full wash load of water sitting in the pan - unless there's a leak in the pan, a pump or a hose connection, because the pan is large enough to hold all of that water without overflowing. They won't overflow the pan unless there's a control problem that allows them to overfill, because they're specifically designed not to overfill. They have to design them that way, otherwise someone might start a cycle, turn the thing off, reset the timer and then start the thing filling again, resulting in a flooded kitchen. If the dishwasher were functioning properly, even if he'd walked out and left the thing full of water, it should not have leaked......period. That's what the 'zoid/owner needs to understand. I've said it here a kajillion times - you've got to manage their expectations up-front - not after the inspection. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I got nothin' OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Mike, No, that wasn't the test I was referring to. I was wondering what test he used that caused the top of that door to crumple. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Randy, The course is on the entire 2008 NEC plus grounding and bonding. OT - OF!!! M.

I'm dying to know what the "Test" was. OT - OF!!! M.

Nah, You're missing the obvious; the guy homes home tired, has dinner, and then retires to the bathroom for his evening constitutional and a nice long foot soaking. [:-bigeyes

Hi Walter, You're right about that. Kurt had his laptop with him last week and I was marvelling at how fast he could type on that tiny keyboard. I need a full sized keyboard as big as an frigging old Underwood or an IBM Selectric in order to get up to speed. Otherwise, I'm constantly backspacing and deleting. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi All, Well, it officially hit the market today at a price of $999. Why the hell don't they just say $1000? Jeez! Check it out by clicking here.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 Despite reporting increased traffic by prospective buyers, condominium builders and developers are extremely concerned about the current conditions in the condo market, according to the latest results of the Multifamily Condo Market Index (MCMI), released today by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The index lost 14 points in the second quarter of this year to stand at 18, which is 14 points lower than it was a year ago--and its lowest level since NAHB created the index five years ago. "The problems in the mortgage market are rattling consumer confidence in for-sale housing at the same time that the condo sector is trying to shake off excess inventory in a lot of markets," said NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders. "That combination is delaying any recovery in the condo sector." The index is derived from a quarterly survey of multifamily builders and developers, in which their responses are rated on a scale of 1 to 100, with a rating of 50 generally indicating that the number of positive responses is about the same as the number of negative responses. According to the index, multifamily builders do not expect improvement in the condo sector through the end of the year. The index gauging condo builders' expectations for the next six months declined to 26.3 in the second quarter of 2007, compared with 33.6 at the same time a year ago. On the positive side, multifamily builders did report an uptick in traffic of prospective buyers in the second quarter: The index tracking this measure of demand jumped 10 points, up to 36.8 in the second quarter, compared with 26.8 in the second quarter of 2006. Editor's Note: NAHB created the MMI, a quarterly nationwide survey of multifamily builders and property owners who are asked a series of questions about current market conditions as well as their expectations for the next six months, tracking builder confidence in both the for-sale condo market and the rental apartment market. To more accurately gauge both segments of the market, NAHB separated the indexes into two versions in 2006: The Multifamily Rental Market Index (MRMI) tracks multifamily rental conditions while the Multifamily Condo Market Index (MCMI) tracks market conditions for condos. ##### ABOUT NAHB: The National Association of Home Builders is a Washington-based trade association representing more than 235,000 members involved in home building, remodeling, multifamily construction, property management, subcontracting, design, housing finance, building product manufacturing and other aspects of residential and light commercial construction. Known as "the voice of the housing industry," NAHB is affiliated with more than 800 state and local home builders associations around the country. NAHB's builder members will construct 80 percent of the more than 1.45 million new housing units projected for 2007.

That's a good question; one that's hard to answer. There were very subtle differences in overall texture of the wall that I could see when the light struck it from an oblique angle. Moisture had gotten in all around the foam and affected the way the wall looked - at least to me. It's hard to define. If you look at something over and over and it's fine and then you look at the same thing with a slight imperfection, those imperfections kind of jump out at you. EIFS is waterproof on the outside, but the basecoat is portland cement based. Get it wet and it changes the look of the wall. Yeah, lower corners of window opening, bottom of the walls - especially on the weather sides of the house. Yes, but sometimes it's hard to see. There are various type of weeps and some don't have any holes on the bottom but have holes on the foundation side and nothing more than a very narrow slot between the back/bottom edge of the lamina and the foundation. Plus, if it's a drianage plane system with this type of bead, and it's been properly detailed, things could be perfectly fine and there's nothing overtly obvious, other than the fact that that it's EIFS, to tell you how it's been done. Check around locally and see if you can find a copy of the EIFS Primer by Robert G. Thomas Jr.. They guy worked for Dryvit for more than 25 years and has had an EIFS consulting business for about the past 10 to 15. He's forgotten more about this stuff than most of us will ever know. Well, even after you get the training, it won't be your strong suit unless you see the stuff all the time. I'm still uncomfortable with the stuff. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

For anyone who's interested and has the money, National Technology Transfer is putting on a 5-day 2008 NEC and grounding and bonding course in Portland, OR, November 12 - 16. This course is $1500 and some change, so it probably isn't going to attract many inspectors - especially since it's in the middle of the slow season as we're going into a slump. Thought I'd mention it just the same. Those interested can learn more by clicking here.

Anyone recognize that orange PEX? OT - OF!!! M.

Yeah, Kurts right on (Duh, you think so, O'Handley?) If that contractor wanted to put them in flat like that, he should have insisted on a full pan flashing under that window all the way out to the end of the sills. That's going to leak, sooner or later. Did you look under that row to see if there was a gap? Sometimes I find them where the framing has shrunken and the window slips down in the opening and levers the row up a little bit. When I find those, I can usually find a gap at the top of the window opening as well. Sometimes they've pumped the gap full of caulk, hoping I wouldn't catch it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Terry, I do EIFS and stucco houses on a fairly regular basis. With stucco, I just do the inspection like any other, but with EIFS I inform the client that I'll do a cursory scan but will not do a complete EIFS inspection as part of the home inspection. If they want to pay more for a full EIFS inspection, I'll do them but those are pretty few and far between. It can take several hours to do a full EIFS inspection correctly, so it's a whole different ball of wax. If that middle photo is of a little bit of damage to the lamina and the white stuff is foam and you saw strands of fiberglass mesh around that break then it is indeed EIFS. The other giveaway is the lack of accessory and termination beads. If it had real stucco you'd expect to find accessory joints, expansion beads, and termination beads - not necessarily in very old stucco homes, but most do have them. If the house was built between 1985 and 1995/6 it's probably a barrier EIFS systems, which means there's no drainage plane behind it and any improper detailing around openings will eventually result in water trapped behind the lamina and all of the attendant problems that will bring. If it's from 1995/6 onward there's a 50/50 chance that it's a water-managed EIFS, but the lack of any type of obvious weep screed at the bottom edge of that wall is a good reason to doubt that it is. Did you examine the terminations around windows and doors to see if they were soft compared to the rest of the lamina? If they're done correctly, the installer will have used backer rod behind flexible caulk and will either tool the surface of the butyl and leave it exposed or extend the finish coat over the butyl and backer rod to conceal it. It looks to me like it's concealed. Everything that Chad said is true. You're safest course of action, if it is EIFS, is to scan as much of it as you are able and to in a few minutes, write any moisture you find, and defer further inspection to a trained EIFS inspector. The realtors and most of the clients bellyache about cost, but they're usually happy, after they've had the EIFS inspection, to realize that the job could have come back to haunt them. True story: A friend built a house with an EIFS system facing the street and parking area. About 3-4 years after he moved in I drove over there and noticed something fishy about the lamina. "You better get that cladding checked out; it's got water behind it," I told him. "What, are you nuts, the house is great and there's no water or dampness or odor or anything on those walls of the house," he said. "I don't care," I insisted, "There's water in there," whereupon I took my Protimeter and scanned the wall and it started beeping up a storm. He continued to protest - "But we insisted that they install a water-managed system on the house, just like you told us to when we were having it built." "Well, you should have had me come by and look at it then, because this obviously isn't a water-managed system. Look here, there's no weep screed at the bottom of this wall and none of the mesh is back-wrapped." I took a pencil out of my truck and, using my Protimeter, I outlined all of the damp areas that I could reach from the ground. "You've got a ton of water behind this lamina. If you don't get after it, you're going to lose this house." He was skeptical but said he'd get the contractor back. He called me that evening and arranged for me to be there at the same time as the contractor. The following week I met them both there. The contractor, a Ukrainian (or maybe a Russian - I can't tell by the accent), was mad as hell at me and told me that I was nuts. I showed him the moisture using the Protimeter and he still insisted I was nuts. I told him to cut a hole in the wall at the center of one of my marked-up areas and if there wasn't moisture there I'd pay for it. He was pretty cocky. He grabbed his saw, cut a 10 x 10 hole where I'd indicated and popped out the square. As soon as he popped that square out of the wall, the smell of funky rotten wood just rolled over us. The sheathing was rotting and so weren't the studs. I left. The next week he showed up to strip the front of that house and I came back a couple of hours into the job to see how it was going. You would not have believed the amount of damage. The framing was literally black with rot - even the pressure-treated sills and rims and the 6 by 6 pressure-treated posts buried in the EIFS-clad columns at the front porch. There was a nice thick black layer of mold on the backside of the drywall. To this day, I don't understand why that hadn't shown up inside the home. Maybe it was because he'd used a CPVC based moisture-barrier primer on all of the walls. To the contractor's credit, he ate the whole job and put his crew on that mess for a full six weeks to repair it all. With time and materials, I'd guess it probably cost him $60,000 to repair and would have cost my friend nearly $100,000 if the contractor hadn't stepped up, because his insurance company refused to pay for anything but replacement of interior drywall that had to be destroyed in the process of tearing out and replacing all of those studs. Now that I've scared the bejezuz out of you, make sure you're careful to cover your rump on this one. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, dat's da wun! wun teem - wun fyte!!! Myk

Hi, Sure, you can, but the traditional description of the sheathing on a roof is the "deck." OT - OF!!! M.

Well, Sheathing forms a hard protective "sheath" around the house. Sheeting is a lightweight sheet of a usually temporary material used to protect it from rain, etc., so I think there is an actual difference. I saved you from Chad in your post Gary. Can you guess which word it was? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jeez Gary, Don't encourage the guy; I'm already feeling dumb enough as it is. [:-dunce]