hausdok

You found mold. Big surprise. Mold can be found on 100% of every property out there. What's the point? He wants the mold to be gone. He shells out a lot of money to remediate it. A week later it's back again. Smoke and mirrors. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I believe that opening is just over 6 square feet. Measure it. If that opening is less than 6sf, the material at the sides and top ofthe opening has to be a 8 inches wide; if it is larger than 6sf it needs to be 12 inches wide. If that opening is less than 6sf, the hearth extension in front only needs to be 16-inches or more. If it is greater than 6sf, the hearth extension needs to be not less than 20inches deep. (09IRC 1001.10 per CodeCheck) ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Maybe they smeared Preparation H around there. OT - OF!!! M.

Slug slime. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi All, Has anyone seen one of these Rheem units yet? Seems like it would be an interesting choice. Induced draft with standard 3in or 4in. B-vent. Holds 29 gallons but has a first hour rating of 90 gallons and can recover 61 gph at .70EF. Certified for both potable water and/or hydronic heating and .17 lower operating costs than Rheem's standard 50-gallon model. All on a 17-3/4-inch footprint. Looks pretty good in the read up. Now I'm wondering what the catch is 'cuz I haven't seen a single one yet. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

We aren't health professionals. If they can't figure it out yet, we have no business even opening our mouths about it. Even when they do finally figure it out it will be years, possibly decades before they are ready to boil it down to everyday language that a snuffy can understand. Spouting off about this stuff to any client would be like me giving someone advice about brain surgery. Believe me, you don't want to have me doing that. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Grrrrr. [:-banghea[:-gnasher

I didn't find any instructions for a "bond screw when used" on the label and didn't find a strap or bar. Maybe I'm just tired but I've studied it over and over and I just don't see where it's bonded to the enclosure - does anyone here? Click to Enlarge 35.89?KB Click to Enlarge 31.55?KB Click to Enlarge 28.04?KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nah, it wasn't the report that ticked 'em off, it was that dusty old bowler.[:-smile_g OT - OF!!! M.

The remark does not bother me. I frequently do this. Too often clients needlessly go off the deep end due to a lack of adequate information. I view my responsibility as providing my clients the knowledge necessary to make sound decisions and this often saves the sale. Of course there are also the times when the client runs screaming out of the house and for good reason.I'm kind of the opposite. I'll often stop partway through a job and say to the client, "Oh, you're still here? I thought you'd burned rubber out of here long ago." It seems to break the tension. We all chuckle and they seem to loosen up once they realize that I'm not trying to sell the house to them. Different strokes for different folks. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Traditional timber framing with an Asian flair. I love it. Want to see some real timber framing art? Take a trip to Japan. Can't do that, go to the library and borrow a copy of Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, written and illustrated by Edward S. Morse and published in 1886. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. You're right, it is too small for my fat ass; however, what you don't know is that I've invented this fiber-optic bomb sight device that I just buckle on and then I don't have to sit down - I just squat above the seat and take aim like they do in Asia. You see the way it works is.......

Not sure I can agree with that, Bro. A professional upholds the tenets of his or her profession and doesn't abide those who don't. ASHI has known for decades about the wink-and-nod stuff and has never once publicly taken a real stand against it as far as I can tell and has allowed it to fester and grow under their watch when they should have been railing against it. Going head-to-head against all realtorzoids and wink-and-nod inspectors, investigating them and exposing them and kicking them out of their ranks would have been professional; continuing to accept their membership dues while claiming to be the most professional of all of the clubs is not. No offense meant to any of the ASHI brethren; I know that the great majority of you are honest inspectors - but you all have an ethical duty, to expose this kind of shit and very very few of you even try to do so. It's like everyone is only interested in his/her own little company and could care less what happens to the profession as long as they are able to seed away enough to retire comfortably while not getting involved in any sort of controversy. It's not confined to ASHI - it goes on with members of every one of the clubs and it probably happens even more with the independents; but it still goes on when it should have been squashed years ago and the first club out there should have been the one leading the charge against it, since they always seem to claim to hold the highest moral ground in the business. Just my opinion. You know me; never afraid to plant my foot squarely in my mouth. (I think getting sick this week has riled up my cantankerous gene.)[:-gnasher ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Maybe I caught it here, A gross violation of inspector etiquette but when ya gotta go ya gotta go. This was not a comfortable sit down. Somehow it just didn't seem right. Maybe it was revenge of the treasury virus. Click to Enlarge 29.52 KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, I heard that Rich. I'd tried to refer some of that work to you and they called back and said you were sick. She's not shopping for a new tub but I think she's probably worn through the gel coat on it; scrubbing it down with cleanser. She heard me heaving, came upstairs to see what all the racket was about and walked in just in time to see me start spazzing from the opposite end - standing there surrounded by water, dinner, fecal matter and more blood than you'd think the human body could do without. Bet she thought she'd walked in on a Linda Blair type possession. It sure scared the...ah, er...crap out of her. I guess I forgot to mention the blood above. According to the doc, the blood is from when the parts of your intestinal lining that absorb water die and slough off and leave the body with the waste. Until the body can rehydrate and start creating new ones you bowel is basically bleeding. There's a lot of blood with dysentery. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hey, If I'd just said I'd had a bout of dysentery you would have said, "Gee, that's too bad," I wanted you to realize just what a really bad experience this could be so that you'd be sure to take measures to avoid ever having it happen to you. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Gary, It might be fire retardant. Borate is used as a fire retardant as well as a fungicide and insecticide. OT - OF!!! M.

I would have omitted that narrow vertical band of contrasting tiles and narrowed some regular width contrasting tiles to transition from the backer to the wall. OT - OF!!! M.

Hey All, Haven't been too active this week because I've been sicker than Donald Trump was the last time his pet chinchilla woke up unexpectedly, jumped off his head and let everyone see his shiny bald nut. It started out Tuesday night. I sat down to get started on the day's report and got a chill and couldn't get warm. I figured I'd go soak in a hot tub full of epsom salts 'cuz I was feeling sore from some crawling around in a particularly nasty crawlspace a few hours before. I filled the tub, climbed in and had no sooner gotten comfortable when I started vomiting...something like 6 or 7 times before there wasn't anything left. Then I got hit with the squirts - all before I could get the tub drained and get myself washed off. Pretty friggin' gross. All night Tuesday I literally slept on the bathroom floor where I could reach the toilet quicker and my wife stayed up supplying me with water bottles to keep hydrated. The next day, I canceled or postponed all appointments for the rest of the week and went to see the doc. Doctor says it was viral dysentery picked up by exposure to some kind of noral virus. Given the kind of crap we're exposed to when checking out heating systems, crawlspaces, attics and wet icky places, he says it could have come from anywhere. It was accompanied by a high fever - 101.9 according to the doc. I didn't realize it - I was so miserable I had no idea whether I had a fever or not. Everything you drink goes through you like it's flowing down a plastic pipe and seconds later it's coming out the other end. Your bowel almost completely loses the ability to absorb water that you take in, so no matter how much you drink you still feel weak and like you're completely out of gas. It's not something I'd wish on my worst enemy - even a mold-is-golder or that fat little weasel that rules North Korea these days. Doc checked the urine and blood. White blood count a little elevated but nothing really abnormal. He put me on an IV drip to get some fluids in me and then sent me home and told me to go buy a few cases of Gatorade and some Pepto Bismol tablets and power hydrate and take in as much Gatorade per hour as I could handle and to use the tablets as often as needed right up to the maximum dose until my body started holding fluids long enough for them to be absorbed. He forbid me drink any caffeine and said the only thing I was to eat was bananas, rice, applesauce and toast. For the past two days I've been within feet of the crapper at all times and I've gone through nearly three cases of Gatorade and had a few of those crappy meals. I thought he was nuts; but I can be a good little soldier when I have to so I complied and today I can happily say that I can burp again without puking, piss again without crapping and fart again without crapping. The order of the universe has been restored. Not a minute too soon either since I'd canceled nearly $2000 worth of inspections. I'm going to change my way of doing things a little bit and start wearing a dust mask when I open up furnaces to check the filters and such. I already wear a nose/mouth respirator with a P100 filter for crawlspaces, so I don't think it came from a crawlspace through airborne contact but it might be something that got on my gloves. I've been wearing some nylon fabric gloves with rubber palms that are pretty comfortable when doing crawlspaces but I think I'm going to change up to some heavy duty nitrile gloves. Whatever I got might have come from something that got through my gloves and was on my hands when I touched my face or nose. Gonna invest in a bunch of disinfectant wipes too so I can wipe down before leaving every job. I've used ordinary diaper wipes forever but they don't have the germ killing capability of some of the other stuff out there. Gonna have to check into some medical supply products I think. Sure don't want to go through this again. It'll be 17 years in April since I started this gig. I've had a few issues here and there - a couple pretty serious - but I'd always shrugged off the sniffles and stuff and felt I was immune to most of the crap I might come into contact with. Guess not, this one might have been prevented if I'd given more thought to what kind of stuff we can come into contact with when doing this gig. Be careful out there. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I would have used cut tiles for that last area and taken them all the way down to the floor. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The mold is gold thing will continue to pervade. The mold-is-golders have quietly hung in there and plied their smoke and mirrors trade for over a decade, constantly reinforcing the notion that there is "toxic" mold floating around out there that is deadly to anyone that breathes it. The media and attorneys hyped it because it sold copy and brought in clients and now a lot of folks have pretty much accepted the notion that it's a legit business. ASHI should be ashamed that their name is attached to that; worse yet they should be doubly ashamed that they haven't come out publicly with a strong stance against this whole "toxic" mold fiction and the mold-is-golders. Instead, the mold-is-golders seem to have risen up through the ASHI hierarchy and are now positioned right where they can ensure that this kind of nonsense continues to be perpetuated. It's the same with the other associations. As far as I can tell, none of them has publicly come out strongly and declared the mold-is-golders a bunch of charlatans. I used to be angry that ASHI, being the oldest and then the largest, failed to take a strong public stance against the whole wink and nod relationship between 'zoids and suckup inspectors; now I've got two good reasons to consider them lacking any semblence of courage. If ASHI were a man, I'd call him a p**sy to his face. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's probably a borate product that's competing with blue wood. It's the new builder fad in areas where folks have been freaking out over the fictional "toxic" mold. Spray it some kind of color and call it mold proof and it helps sell the house. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Wish I had a photo of the converted 400sf chicken coop I once inspected. OT - OF!!! M.

Yep. Lead tomatoes. That's why I scraped and brought in new soil. Well, yeah, tomato plants have a high phosphate content. So don't sunflowers. Lead is attracted to phospates. Planting tomatoes or sunflowers around a house for a few years can completely decontaminate the soil. Throw away the harvest but let it continue for a few years and you end up with clean soil. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

UPDATE: The Virginia Supreme Court Rules Bad Yelp Review Can Stay. The Virginia Supreme Court says that the contractor will be able to recover damages if/when he wins his lawsuit for $750,000 against the disgruntled client. To read more click here.

That's his first. My guess is that it it is probably also going to be his last post. He probably won't come back again unless someone says something positive about American brand water heaters, in which case he'll probably show up to mope some more. Sometimes folks get ticked off at a particular manufacturer over something and then they google the name and spend all of their free time going to those sites on the net to post negative stuff about the product they're unhappy with. I suppose if one doesn't have anything better to do...... ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike