hausdok

Yep, Full disclosure and then charge full price. It is not an ethical issue to inspect the same home again some someone else; just let them know that you'd been there previously. I have a little bit of an advantage here. It's against state law for me to resell a report unless I get permission from the former client. Given the liability associated with these reports why in the heck would I want to do that? Do a complete new inspection, write a new complete report - don't copy the old -'cuz you might find something new, and get paid full price for your time and labor. Recently have an agent call me up, "Hey Mike, I heard you inspected such-and-such house; is that true." "Yep, It's true, I answered." "My clients are interested in buying that house and have made an offer. Would you be interested in selling them a copy of the report? They could pay you, say, 75% of the fee and you wouldn't even have to go out there." I said something like, "There's a little bit of a problem with that scenario. 1.) If they want a report from me on that house there has to be an agreed-to contract signed between them and me. 2.) There is no way I'd discount the price of one of my inspections just because I'd inspected the house before. Do you get a reduced commission if you resell one of your old listings for prior clients you sold the house to? 3.) State law says I can't reveal the information in a report to anyone without the permission of the client that I did the report for. I'm not about to call a former client and ask that client for permission to sell his report to someone else after I'm sure he and his wife already feel badly enough about backing out of that house over some stuff I did find. If your clients wants my written opinion of that house, they can hire me, make an appointment, enter into a contract with me and then I'll do a complete new inspection for which they'll pay me my standard fee. Otherwise, no soap. So, what's the inspection contingency deadline? I have time available on..........." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. Guess who the nasty old bastard was on the state licensing board that insisted on putting that clause in our SOP?

Hi, I don't think it will be an issue as long as the joist bays are kept dry. The drywall is permeable and moisture is going to migrate outward from the house to the exterior, attic and crawl through vapor diffusion. Unless there's a layer of plastic under those joists behind the drywall I think vapor will move harmlessley into the crawl and be dissipated by what sounds like pretty good ventilation. Now, get a washing machine, dishwasher, sink, toilet leak and you'll be talking a whole different story. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'd bet it's original too. Just about anyting you find with "o-matic" in the name is going to be late 40's and 50's when folks were fascinated with convenience and automatic stuff. Come to think of it, the Borg-Warner automatic transmission in my '58 Packard was called a Flight-o-Matic by Studebaker-Packard. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Not necessarily true. Out here, lots of builders use the bituthene around three sides and then use metal head flashings along the top of the window. If they're installing Hardiplank they are required to do so by the manufacturer. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

According to a Washington Post article, a contractor in Washington D.C. is suing a customer for $750,000 and claiming defamation; after she posted an online review in Yelp that not only claimed he did shoddy work but implied that he'd had something to do with the disappearance of her jewelry. To read more, click here.

Actually it has. The "thing" is the engine in my P.H. It's now five miles from there on an engine stand and the chassis is in a kajillion pieces a few feet away getting sand blasted and rebuilt. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

To know for certain you need to refer to the vent-sizing lookup tables. You'll find them in the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) National Fuel Gas Code (www.nfpa.org), in building codes, and in manufacturer handbooks and instructions. The tables are published to ensure flues draw properly and stay as dry inside as possible. The Journal of Light Construction had an article about ten years ago entitled Venting Gas Appliances written by Bob Dwyer. It's a free article; download it from this link, read it, memorize it, print a couple of extra copies and keep them in your vehicle so you can use the article to back you up when you run into stuff like this. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Richard, When the hell did Dudley start moving? That just freaked me the hell out. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I've seen them bring those into panels many times, make a 360 degree turn on either side of the breaker banks and then connect them to the main lugs. I'd measure them and ensure the radius was not less than 5 times the diameter of the conductor and if it wasn't I wouldn' give it another thought unless there was limited space or the connections weren't made neatly, etc.. I think if there's room there to do it that it's making a mountain out of a mole hill. Then again, what do I know. I used to think that bonding a panel was paying a guy to get it out of jail. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Why would a 360 degree loop be an issue if the bend radius is not less than 5 times the diameter of the SEC? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Many are done that way. I see 1-1/4 inch stepped to 1-inch and then to 3/4 and 1/2 inch distribution in PEX all the time. The manibloc system in the photo is not the default around here; it's actually pretty rarely seen in comparison to the majority of PEX systems. PEX is overwhelmingly the most common product used in new construction here now. I rarely see all-copper or all-CPVC systems any more in new construction. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's no difference with electric or gas or oil heat. What if you have to leave the house for a day or two and you forget to set the thermostat or you turn it off? It doesn't matter what the heat source is if you don't use it correctly. I inspected two homes last year for folks who had to have their homes completely rebuilt after they walked off and left them with the water heater and furnace turned off to go on vacation and the temperature around here dropped. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, In about half an hour he dropped five posts packed with enough links to keep half the sneaker manufacturers in Asia busy for a year. Jeez, I wish someone would market a program that would identify link sowers and attach a virus to the computers of every company they drop a link for. Now THAT's a service I'd happily pay for. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, Since you're dropping links, not so much. Sorry, but you're outta here. Editor

Hi, Yeah, the first thing I thought when I saw the photo - not enough space. We're inspectors. We don't see those taken apart. One of might swag a guess about the placement of that O-ring and screw it up. You're on the net. You can find the installation instructions on the net as quickly as one of us can. Go for it! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, It's just a deep crawlspace with a utility area on a wood platform in one corner. The bowing two feet from the top with a horizontal crack is expansion caused by freezing and expansion of the soil next to the foundation which probably has frost line somewhere around 4ft. The fix is excavate all of that soil, install proper drainage, repair the wall and backfill it....properly this time. Cost will start around $5K and could be three times that depending on where you live and what the market bears for that kind of work in your region. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's a 90 year old house. I don't think any code applies. I've seen a few old houses like that with central heaters - a bunch of them were built post-WWII in Mountlake Terrace. I guess the question is whether the gas space heater can heat the entire house. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

We once lived in a place with one of those when I was about 7 or 8. My brother and I used to get a kick out of the sizzle that heat exchanger would make when we dropped a little spit on it and the smell would gross out our sisters. Dropped a rabbit's foot down there once and man that was one nasty smelling thing when all that hair burned off. We once reenacted a human volcano sacrifice on the edge of the grate using a toy soldier. Man, did that plastic smell up the place until it was completely baked off that exchanger. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Thanks Douglas, That is some good information to back up our reporting requirements here in Washington State. Unlike Kentucky, our board wanted things like this mentioned. Unfortunately, the AG wouldn't allow us to use specific brand names when we wrote the SOP so the SOP simply says that inspectors must report equipment known within the home inspection profession to have safey concerns. We've had a few inspectors who've taken the attitude that these panels and another brand were never recalled so they must be perfectly OK and there is no need to report them. This is a document every inspector here needs to have tucked in the bottom of his clipboard. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Wow, Now that has potential for the fellow with a mother-in-law that's a royal pain in the butt; man in the iron mask potential. Bwahahahahahahahaha! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Douglas, If the gas pipe is already bonded to the house' system inside somewhere, and they then run a bond cable from the lightning arrestor system to the house side of the meter outside, won't that be correct? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, Had one of those water trap lint catchers in my apartment in Colorado Springs when I was stationed there. Catches lint pretty good but the whole apartment was damp every time we used the dryer and in the winter you culdn't see out of the windows 'cuz they'd get all iced up. ONE TEAM -ONE FIGHT!!!

There is in fact a CPSC paper. I've seen it but I don't think I ever downloaded it. If I did, it's on one of the four hard drives taken out of old computers I've discarded, that are sitting on a shelf five feet from me, where I have no idea how to get it. It's a study done over a four year period that showed that there were over 15,000 fires a year in the US caused by clothes dryer ducts and lint. The last time I found it was years ago. I probably googled CPSC dryer duct lint fires. I remember that the document was buried way way down the list because Uncle Sam doesn't really care about search engine placement and I'd spent an hour or two weeding through crap to find it. Also search for "Gas Appliance Manufacturers Dispute CPSC Dryer Duct Findings" I remember a paper put out by the manufacturers where they tried to pick apart the CPSC paper. Alternatively, you could just pick up the phone and call CPSC and ask for someone there to help you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

If it's got aluminum wiring it was probably built mid-60's to mid-70's. I thought a lot of homes back then had the EGC connected to to metal boxes when they were used. I remember helping my father rewire one of the old homes he bought to flip back in the '60's. A local electrician, a friend of my father's, came over and taught him how to do it. I was sitting there watching. He taught him to put a loop in the EGC and loop it around a little screw at the back corner of the box, tighten the screw and then pull the end out of the box where it could be connected to the receptacle. Whenever I've wired a receptacle with a metal box since, I've done it exactly that way. I'd always thought it had something to do with ensuring any fault current that energizes the metal box finds its way back to earth. It never occurred to me that it might not be right and proper. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Good advice, Here's some for you. Spell check. It's a wonderful thing. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike