hausdok

Hi, It sounds like a new kind of splicing device that I remember Doug Hansen telling folks about not too long ago. Maybe Kurt or Jim K. will remember what that's about. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I dunno, It makes no sense to me that lightning would strike twice like this. Vino isn't an idiot and after Landis' situation last year everyone, including Vino, knows that the focus is more than ever on doping. Knowing that he's going to have to pee in that cup immediately after the race, and knowing that his result would immediately be under the microscope, this doesn't compute. Doesn't it seem really, really odd that the very same French lab that made allegations that Lance Armstrong was doping by publicizing incomplete results, and then publicly leaked a positive A test with Landis' results - Chatenay-Malabry - has been the one breaking the news in all of these sensational cases? Why is it that all year long, during other competitions, and with the doping agents showing up at their doors unannounced at all hours of the day and night to have them pee in a cup, that the urine of these guys never tested positive in any other labs used by WADA anywhere in the world - except for at Chatenay-Malabry? That's a pretty odd coincidence, don't you think? I sure do. My cop's radar is up on this one. Here's where I'd be if I were an honest French cop seeing this going on - I'd be investigating every single employee at Chatenay-Malabry, as well as the pee collectors that have been carrying the results to that lab, looking for a connection to a big player in gambling. All one has to do to contaminate these results is coat the inside of a pee cup, allow it to dry clear and then use that "special" cup to collect the urine from the fellow you want to burn. My theory is that Landis winning the tour last year probably put a serious kink in the wallet of some player who had huge bucks riding on someone else winning. If that were the case, some money placed in the right place to convince one of the pee collectors or a lab technician to manipulate a result, in order to dethrone Landis' would have reversed a perp's losses. When whoever it was got away with it once, he, or she, figured that they could get away with it again. Perhaps it's not even an outside player. It could even be one of the lab techs at Chatenay-Malabry laying off money on a bet with a bookie and then making absolutely sure that he or she gets the result necessary to plump up that bank account by targeting those that need to be burnt - in this case, Vino. I think they're looking in the wrong direction. Jeez, how I'd love to be able to get out there and dig into this one. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I repeat, What is it that you are fishing for here? This is a professional home inspector's site where HOME INSPECTORS discuss their profession. You've already expressed some disdain for inspectors, so I don't know why you are wasting your time coming here when you obviously know better than we do anyway. We get paid to proffer our advice about homes to non-inspectors. If you want free do-it-yourself advice, you'd be better off going to one of the sites put up by This Old House Magazine or Popular Mechanics. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jim is right, Mold spore is ubiquitous. Believe it or not, you and I are both breathing. right now, this very instant, two or three varieties of (gasp) TOXIC mold. I bet when you look around you won't see it though. Out here in the western corridor of Washington State, I bet I breath as much mold spore in a day as most folks in your state do in a month. S'funny how that works. If mold were so TOXIC, one would expect that most of those of us in western Washington would be in the hospital or walking about wearing masks and carrying oxygen bottles. That's why CDC and EPA have said that it's pointless to look for mold spore during the course of a home sale. Mold only became "TOXIC" after Melinda Ballard was awarded $34,000,000 in a lawsuit about 10 or 11 years ago. For a couple of million years before that, it was just mold. Nobody remembers, though, that Ballard's award was later tossed out on appeal and that the court found that there was NO evidence that any of her symptoms were caused by mold. They tossed out all but $4M of her award and only gave her that to punish the insurance company for dragging its feet. Still, I suppose $4M is a pretty good outcome for a frivolous lawsuit. Before Ballard, guys in this business used to say something like, "There's some mildew in the shower stall in the bath; it smells, you probably oughta clean it up." Now, we have to have a legal team standing by to consult with in order to describe smoke stains on a ceiling, because of the fear that some buyer whose allowed himself to be spooked by junk science spouted by sensationalized remodeling shows is liable to sue us over it if we don't go out of our way to write 6 paragraphs about it. Just so's you know; they could have used Kilz to seal old water stains on a ceiling, or to prevent nicotine from bleeding through new paint, or to seal crayon stains on a wall, or to seal a greasy kitchen ceiling before repainting, or for any number of other things besides mold. It looks like you don't trust the buyer. I'd advise you to get a good home inspector, but you've already sort of implied here on this board that what WE do is a ripoff, so I guess it really wouldn't be appropriate for any of us to advise you on what you should do next. What exactly is it that you're fishing for here, anyway? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, I found it at hobby world. It's battery operated and about 2-1/2 ft. long. You guys can take turns with the joystick control while we walk along behind it. OT - OF!!! M.

Yeah, You have to give Vino credit for effort. I was actually thinking of sending an email to the Kazakhstan head-of-state to thank him for guaranteeing that they'll back Astana for the next ten years. He may never win the tour, but if that stubborn SOB ends up being the team manager we're going to see some great things coming from Astana. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Why say anything about whether they are original? What has that to do with the inspection? Describe them as aluminum, wood, vinyl, fiberglass framed, or whatever, and whether they are single or double-paned, but I personally wouldn't be worrying about trying to figure out whether they are original or not. I'm only interested in whether they're installed properly, their condition and whether they function alright. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Kevin, Just disregard what Bob said. As long as you are a client and not a principal or employee of Newsletter Junction you haven't violated any rules here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You might be trying to post too large a photo. If you've got windows, go to powertoys for windows and downsize the free image resizing tool there and then try again. Also make sure that there aren't any blanks and special symbols in the photo and that you've saved it in an acceptable format such as .jpg. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, While I agree that clarity and brevity is what clients prefer, coming from a law enforcement background, I have a hard time separating myself from the need to assiduously document every detail of an issue, so that if I'm called on later on, even many years later, to recount conditions - what I found, what I did, and how I reported it during an inspection - I can do so easily just by reading my inspection report. A couple of months ago, I ran an article on TIJ by Alan Carson about report writing. Carson wrote that he saw no point in noting the weather conditions on site during the inspection. Apparently, for all of his experience, Carson really doesn't understand one fundamental truth - that the report is as much an inspector's own technical record of everything that was seen, done and reported on during an inspection, as it is a report of the facts about the house provided to the client. Your report can become evidence for you or against you during litigation later on. Leave out a simple detail of whether it was raining or dry at the time of the inspection, and how do you disprove someone's allegation that you missed an obvious roof leak if you don't know what the weather was at the time of inspection when you're testifying at trial. You only get one real shot at providing credible testimony. Sure, you can get back on the stand later and try and mitigate any damage the opposing party's lawyer does, but by then the jury or a judge has decided whether or not you're credible. It's best not to look like a boob because you can't recall the facts. A carefully-written report enhances your ability to recall what you saw, did and reported and enables you to be well prepared to answer questions. For instance, if in the example cited here someone were suing you because you failed to call for increasing the amount of combustion air available to the furnace, the person reading the report would need to first understand why the combustion air was necessary, how much was necessary, and what mitigating factors compelled you to not write the issue up. If you were careful to document the circumstances well, you can show why you didn't make a wrong call, in spite of the code. If you haven't documented it well, how are you even going to recall it? That's why I despise checklist type reporting systems. Conversely, you might end up testifying against a builder who failed to provide sufficient makeup air and claims it wasn't necessary. If the builder maintains that there were mitigating circumstances, and can document those circumstances and can get someone to back him up, you can end up looking like a ninny. However, if your report is detailed enough to ensure that you are able to vividly recall why those matters of mitigation are irrelevant and there definitely was a need for increased combustion air, you won't be caught flat footed getting red-faced because you can't remember enough about the house. In a job where attention to detail is important, not recording details properly is in my opinion short sighted. You've got to understand how to strike a balance between writing enough for the client to "get" the issues while not tuning out, and documenting the facts of the house well enough so that there will never be any doubt in anyone's mind that you inspected and documented everything that you should have. That "anyone" can include a judge, an arbitrator, or even the irate client that calls you up ticked off that something isn't working properly. If you haven't got a good record to backup your findings and the decisions you've made, you might find yourself paying out for something only because you can't recall the facts well enough. Man, wouldn't that really suck? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

As humorous as ever, columnist Walter Jowers once again shines a light on some of the dirty, little-known secrets of the home buying process. To read the full article, click here.

Hi Scott, I had one a couple of years ago from 1955. It was nothing more than an oil-burning furnace with a gas burner. That in itself is not unusual, but that unit had been built that way from the beginning and hadn't been converted. It was very obvious from the way it was made that the manufacturer had opted to use one housing, heat exchanger and air handler to accommodate both oil burners and gas burners. It wasn't very efficient - the ducts were sized like those on an oil-burning unit. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, I see that here sometimes too; A coils installed with new furnaces, because homeowners think that they'll oneday install an AC system, and they never actually get around to doing it. A check of temperature split should have told the tale. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Did you intend to post a photo, or are we supposed to use our tea leaves to figure it out? []

It's parging. Very common back in the day. If it's sloughing off, just write it. It's mostly cosmetic with concrete but it was used for waterproofing on masonry. OT - OF!!! M.

Washington - July 17 A surplus of unsold homes on the market, combined with ongoing concerns in the subprime mortgage arena and affordability issues associated with tightened lending standards and higher interest rates, continue to take a significant toll on builder confidence, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), released today. The HMI declined four points to 24 this month, which is its lowest level since January of 1991. "The bottom line is that the single-family housing market is still in a correction process following the historic and unsustainable highs of the 2003-2005 period," noted NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders. "Builders are actively trimming prices and offering buyer incentives to work down their inventories, but meanwhile there is a large supply of vacant existing homes on the market, and affordability problems persist despite efforts to attract buyers. "In spite of these challenges, we expect to see home sales get back on an upward path late this year and we expect housing starts to begin a gradual recovery process by early next year. At that point, this market will be operating well below its long-term potential, providing plenty of room to grow in 2008 and beyond. " Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for more than 20 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as either "good," "fair" or "poor." The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as either "high to very high," "average" or "low to very low." Scores for each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. All three component indexes declined in July. The index gauging current single-family sales and the index gauging sales expectations in the next six months each declined five points to 24 and 34, respectively, while the index gauging traffic of prospective buyers declined three points to 19. Likewise, all four regions of the country posted declines in the July HMI. The Northeast and South each saw five-point declines, to 31 and 26, respectively, while the Midwest slipped a single point to 19 and the West declined three points to 25. EDITOR'S NOTE: The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index is strictly the product of NAHB Economics, and is not seen or influenced by any outside party prior to being released to the public. HMI tables can be accessed online at: www.nahb.org/hmi. More information regarding housing statistics is also available at www.housingeconomics.com. ##### 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

Randy, Then next time you run into a flat roof issue, contact Lee Cooley at Action Roofing in Renton. Or is it Redmond? Oh, well, there are two; make sure it's not the Action Roofing in Seattle. Lee is retired but he still does roof consults. The guy is like the god of modbit and EPDM. When it comes to flat roofs, this is the guy who knows more about them than anyone else in the P.S. area. I'm not kidding! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I wish there was pressure like that around here. Some of the checklist reports I've seen here are so light on information that it's hard to believe that someone actually pays someone else money to produce them, instead of just downloading a checklist off the internet and walking through the house and inspecting it themselves. The zoids love those types of reports, but not the buyers. Just had a call from a realtor from a job I did last week. The couple walked based on my report. According to the realtor, whose been going around with them looking at houses this week, they were blown away by the scope of the inspection and the amount of information that they'd gotten out of the process. She said that they told her that they've bought and sold two houses before and the difference this time around is like night and day. When you think about it, if most folks in this profession were really doing consistent inspections, providing buyers with everything they needed in the way of information, and producing really informative reports, there'd be a whole lot less negative things said about this business and we could all charge more money for what we do, instead of letting the low-ballers, bucketheads and 'zoids determine what the average fees should be in our respective areas. I've stopped worrying about what I charge. So far this year, I've grossed nearly twice what I did last year with only about a 15% increase in the number of inspections. I charge what I think I should be getting paid - not what a realtor thinks I should be getting paid or what those looking for the cheapest inspector think they're willing to pay. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I'm the same as Randy. I've got an established routine. It helps me spot things that are amiss. When I do things out of sequence, I feel stressed and I'm always double-checking and backtracking to make sure I didn't miss something, whereas when I stick to the routine the inspection process, my recall and my report writing process flows much better. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Walt, I have this theory that way back in the day, when this business was in its infancy, one or more builders turned home inspector went to their local library and borrowed some books on technical report writing, and that's where it comes from. They didn't know any better. I think they probably figured that what they were doing was something akin to an engineering report, so that's probably what they copied and that's what's been passed down. If you do a google search on "Technical Report Writing Style" you'll get more than 2,000,000 returns. Go through 3 or 4 pages of the technical report writing guides you find there and most will advise against active voice and recommend passive voice; most of the older texts, that is. Some of the more recent texts are recommending active voice, but not many. I think that these men, not knowing any better, thought that the engineers who wrote those books knew better, so they copied their lead and have passed that down for the past 30 to 50 years. Here are a few examples. The first and second coach passive writing. The third actually coaches active voice and using plainspeak and is really quite good. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I'd describe it as a "post-on-pier" foundation - not post and pillar. They're not hard to describe. They're essentially the same as a conventional crawlspace foundation, except that instead of a concrete stemwall at the perimeter you have a series of posts that rest on piers to support the platform framing above, which have a skirt nailed to them. Before concrete became relatively cheap, they were the most common type of foundation there was out here. Hell, about 90% of the "temporary" buildings erected on military bases during WWII while the military was ramping up are post on pier and most of those still exist today. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Robert, I'm having trouble understanding what it is that you want. Canned report wording to describe what exactly? It's a 90 year old home in Washington State and you say that there weren't any issues? Forgive my skepticism, but I'm having a hard time believing that a 90 year old home hasn't got anything to report. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Dunno, Level sections of yard are used for the "landing" all the time around here. If the stairs are consistent in height, I only call them if they haven't placed something beneath the stringers to prevent earth-to-wood contact. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The saw had just returned after attending a local showing of Annie Get Your Gun? [:-jump]

Well, just when some of us have weaned ourselves off of dial-up and are testing the waters with DSL and wondering whether to take a timid peek at cable broadband, along comes Verizon with their new fiber-optic internet service (FiOS) and 15 Mbs speeds. [:-banghea Here's an article from ZD Net about the next 'big" thing in internet: http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=39249808-c ... f&s=5&fs=0 ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike