hausdok

Hi, Was it in a basement? If so, did you look for a Watts 210 valve someplace? OT - OF!!! M.

Scott, I've read that and re-read it and, for the life of me, I can't understand what "plastic drain material" Steven is supposed to see by removing a receptacle cover and peaking through that tiny gap between the box and the drywall. Steven, Your original assumptions are correct. Unless you have a preformed plastic termination bead with weepholes at the bottom of those walls, I don't see any way that, without destructive testing, speaking to the contractor who applied it, examining the original drawings, or finding any of the EIFS materials stored in the garage, you'll be able to determine whether its barrier or drainage plane type EIFS. If it's done correctly, it will be either backwrapped or edgewrapped and the only way you'd be able to actually examine what's in the lamina is by cutting into the wall, or by removing something that's penetrating the wall plane, in order to see whats behind the lamina. For an experienced EIFS inspector who does a lot of them, using a hole saw to cut out a plug, examining it and then repairing the plug is routine, but for a home inspector that doesn't do it all the time? You'd need permission from the homeowner to cut out a plug and you'd then need the proper repair materials, plus training, to be able to repair the lamina properly, so that the plug you cut out doesn't capture water and cause problems in the future. Cross your fingers and hope that there is a termination bead viewable, or that the lamina has been done wrong and wasn't backwrapped or edgewrapped, so you'll know definitively that it is a drainage type system, or can write it up as being totally screwed up. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It brings to mind an old 3-slot clothes dryer plug where they've joined the neutral and grounding conductors on one terminal. A 3-wire cable to a separate building is allowed, using the neutral as the grounding conductor, only when there is only one circuit and when there are no other continuous metal pathways between the buildings such as water piping, a concrete sidewalk, metal fence, telephone line, etc. Any other metal pathways and it should have had it's own grounding electrode and one of those other paths may be used as such. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Done! I've also added the elusive American Association of Certified Home Inspectors. OT - OF!!! M.

http://www.acca.org/ http://www.flexibleduct.org/ http://www.ashrae.org/ http://www.aabchq.com/ http://www.hrai.ca/ http://www.hvi.org/ http://www.iaqa.com/

Wow, Don't know how I missed this. I've added FAPHI to the list. OT - OF!!! M.

The owner likely had no knowledge that someone had wired that receptacle with with 240 volts. It's the cost of doing business. Your boss should have insurance covering the loss of your equipment. Now, if you could prove that the "little old lady" had known that the receptacle was wired wrong and neglected to label it properly, you might have a case to take her to small claims court and recover the cost of your receptacle, but the damage it will do to your reputation is worth a whole lot more than that. Just suck it up. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'm not afraid of snakes and have handled my share of poisonous ones but you won't find me trying to remove a den. I just point bees nests out as a potential safety hazard and recommend that they have them removed by an "exterminator." If somone is allergic to bee stings and still dumb enough to screw around by trying to remove a bees nest, he or she deserves the consequences. OT - OF!!! M. P.S. Why a "potential" safety hazard? You can walk by a bees nest for years and never get stung, as long as you leave them alone and they aren't those danged bald-faced hornets. If you're the type who never works on your own home, the likelihood (and thus the potential) that you'll ever get close enough to get stung is practically nil. However, if you're the type who wants to be hands-on, the likelihood of getting stung, and thus its presence as a potential safety hazard, is increased. (Well, it seemed to make sense when I started typing it.)

OK, thanks. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, Yeah, I got that the first time, but are you talking about installing blocking from wall-to-wall, with the first two blocked full depth and then blocks installed "flat" against the floor between? I still don't get it. Is there a diagram anywhere on the net that I could look at what it is your trying to drive into my dense skull? OT - OF!!! M.

Jim, Could you elaborate on that a little more. I'm having trouble understanding what you mean by "flat blocking beyond that." OT - OF!!! Mike

Hi Caoimhin, There was a fellow in that lead inspectors class that I took who did XRF surveys. Don't know what ever happened to the guy. Tried to look him up a few years ago and couldn't locate him. He'd bought into one of those large lead testing franchises and had purchased the device as part of the package. As I recall, part of the difficulty with the XRF dealt with renewing the isotope occasionally and transporting the thing across state lines was problematic because the laws pertaining to handling of radioactive materials can differ widely from state-to-state. Anyhoo, I was pretty interested in the device at that time and thought that it would be the perfect add-on to my business, until that is, I learned during that class that the XRF testing was only presumptive and, to do it right and for the results to be legally valid, I'd have to do destructive sampling and send the samples to a lab for confirmation anyway. At that point, I just couldn't see where it could be a profitable add-on. Still don't. I could be wrong - usually am when it comes to money - but I just don't understand how the added expense and liability taken on by doing lead exposure surveys can be justified, given the limitations on the use of the results without destructive sampling and what consumers are willing to pay for the added on expense. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Bob, I hear ya, except that it's pretty rare that I can't get on a roof using my 22ft. L-G knockoff combined with my 13ft. L-G knockoff. This is the typical roof around here. They're pretty easy to get up onto and walk:

Good, I'm glad to hear that. Ouch! Passive voice, inspectorspeak! Somebody,...please, save poor Darren, he's killing himself with gobbledygook! [:-shake] How about: The truss system isn't meant to carry any loads on the bottom cord - the part that the ceilings are attached to - so don't store any property in the attic or you're liable to damage your framing. Write like you're talking to the guy. Would you look a guy in the face and say, "It is recommended that...?" Nah, you'd say something like I wrote above, so write that way. [End of brain implosion. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread already in progress.] [] OT - OF!!! M.

Yeah, I don't trust the adhesive on the back of bituthene - especially when it's bonded to OSB. Hell, you've gotta understand that I was brought up learning to spline (flash) windows with 60# felt and a piece of hand-bent sheetmetal for a head flashing. There weren't any self-adhering so-called "flashings" and goop (caulk) wasn't used around the perimeter of windows or at siding or trim because these areas were all splined properly with 60# felt and won't leak. Caulk should never be a substitute for good workmanship. Period. I want to see splines in drainage plane from top to bottom of the window against the sheathing with the head flashing under/behind the top spline and extending well above the window behind the paper. Done right, ain't no way it'll leak short of picking the home up and immersing it in a lake. But that's just me, I suppose. Change doesn't come easy to some old farts. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Lots of contractors here thought that too....until their walls began leaking. Now, some of the larger and more reputable builders are at least using head flashings on the south and west sides of homes where the weather comes from here. The Northwest Wall & Ceiling Bureau says that they've got documented proof that wind will push water 4 inches up behind claps and copings and into a wall, therefore it's smart to use head flashings and z-flashings over every horizontal detail. Still, there's lots of guys who don't and the only thing keeping water out is caulk and the paper. Had a couple yesterday that just moved up here from Portland. They'd bought a house in Portland a few years ago. It had no head flashings and the windows were caulked around their perimeter, as so many vinyl windows are nowadays. Their inspector remarked that he had no way to know whether the window was properly flashed behind the siding. They found out within months. When the rainy season came, they had water coming in at the heads of the windows. They spent a pretty penny on having the issue fixed and were pretty nervous about yesterday's home, which had no head flashings at all - only the ubiquitous caulked perimeters. The plus side is that whatever's been done behind the siding seems to be working, 'cuz the home is 3-years old, we've just gone through the absolute wettest winter on record, and the walls were dry as a bone. Still, after more than a decade in this business, and knowing that the number of homes with problems without them is comparatively few, I continue to write up the lack of head flashings. It just seems, to me at least, like using caulk and paper, instead of spending $.80 on a piece of sheetmetal and a dollar on an extra 3ft. of bituthene per window, is a foolish toss of the dice. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hmmm, Okay, maybe I'm just cornfoozed then. I based the above on what I'd read in Hansen's book. Guess I need to go back and re-read it again, and again, and again. Don't know why, but even after 11 years I still struggle with understanding electrical systems and grounding and bonding paths. It still confuses the hell out of me. Sigh. OT - OF!!! M.

Wow, You have got good eyes Jim. I had to open that thing is PhotoShop, blow it up and tweak the contrast to see that aluminum conductor against that shiny galvanized background. Sorry, I stand corrected. Still, if you've got the 4th conductor, why would you even want that grounding conductor, which is connected to the water piping, when you've got the grounding conductor as your path? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, When you see those, are they placed out over the center of rooms or are they typically over hallways with interior walls relatively close together supporting that lower chord? I'm not saying homeowners "can't" turn trusses into attic space, because 'can't' denotes the physical act of actually doing it. I'm saying they mustn't turn trusses into storage space, because they invariably place their "platforms" over the center of rooms and compress the insulation beneath. Some of those have so much stuff in them that you can walk into the room, glance up at the ceiling and see the drywall bowing under the pressure of the compressed insulation and the 2 by 4 truss chords sagging under the weight. That's why you won't find a truss manufacturer that approves it, unless the truss has been designed for it. That said, I think the point load by a furnace placed on top of a plywood deck is going to help distribute the load better, but I wouldn't want to see it placed out over the center of a bedroom ceiling where the only thing supporting that platform is the bottom truss chord. I'd want to see it over a central hallway or I'd want to see some type of reinforcement on those lower truss chords or a document from an engineer specifying the location of the furnace and what needed to be done to reinforce the trusses. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Bob, I know very little about conduit because I hardly see it. If that cable were fed with a 3-wire feed through conduit I suppose you could use the conduit itself as the grounding conductor back to the main panel but it would be almost impossible, wouldn't it, to push a fishtape back through a conduit past 3 wires, in order to pull a 4th conductor - saying that's what you wanted to do instead of using the conduit itself as the grounding path? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, No, it connects those two buses, which are themselves isolated from the panel by resin mounting blocks. The installation would have been fine if a 4-wire cable had been used and the equipment grounding conductor was connected to the mounting lug at the top of that equipment grounding bus that's almost concealed by the left bank and that heavy grounding conductor were eliminated. That looks like a newer panel, which means that the electrician screwed up. It's not unusual to see that on old panels but on a newer one? Uh uh. The NEC does not recognize running a separate equipment grounding conductor outside the feeder or in a separate path to that sub-panel, so that heavy bare grounding conductor has to go. It's gonna be costly to pull a new 4-wire feed to that panel. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Around here, that would cause more problems than it would solve. People would probably read that as tacit approval to put a floor on the bottom chord of manufactured trusses and to use them for storage, when that's absolutely forbidden unless they are specifically designed for storage. I can tell you that I've written up many dozens of houses where that's been done and the gusset plates and lower chords of trusses were damaged. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, I generally state in plain language, something like: "This is something that any reasonably competent handyperson can do." "This is something that I recommend you get fixed only by a licensed electrician." "This is something that I recommend you get fixed only by a licensed plumber." "This is something that any reputable competent contractor can handle." "This is something that any competent foundation contractor, working under the guidance of an engineer, can handle." "This is not something that a do-it-yourselfer should do, so have it fixed by a professional." etc.. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hmmm, Obviously, there's in inside joke there, but, not being Jewish and somewhat of a dullard, I'm not sure what it is. [:-boggled Oh well, OT - OF!!! M.

Exactly! OT - OF!!! M.