hausdok

You know that's what I meant, right? You're a moderator, you could have corrected it. Just sayin' ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Light switches and receptacles should be CU/ALR. Those are designed for the thicker aluminum wiring. The breakers can be CU/AL.. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That little guy must get tired holding his gut in all day like that. I wonder if they outfitted him with a long-tailed tee or if the ubiquitous butt crack is there. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Cells is a very good vapor barrier in and of itself. It allows water vapor to diffuse slowly through it and evaporate on the cold side of the insulation, without allowing a lot of heat bypass leakage, and while doing a good job preventing wind infiltration. As long as you've got good attic ventilation on the cold side of the batting you'll be good. Using a vapor barrier on the ceiling plane would work but if it were on top of the insulation - say in a layer of kraft-paper-faced fiberglass batting - it might cause moisture issues within the insulation if the vapor trying to pass through that batting is being cooled to dewpoint. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, What kind of Celotex is used behind the siding - foil-faced foam or Blue Ridge fiberboard? The Blue Ridge fiberboard is made from post consumer waste and is bonded with a vegetable starch material. It sounds like extractive bleeding. Moisture-laden air from the interior is diffusing outward. It reaches the celotex and cools to dew point. When enough accumulates, it drips down the wall behind the siding and extracts color from the sheathing or any asphalt-based felt water resistant barrier between the sheathing and the siding. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Not sure what you're saying. Are you talking about regulated states coming up with one identical SOP? Care to expand/clarify your thoughts there a little bit? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I think he only paid him the royalties for a while. I seem to remember hearing on the History Channel program The Men Who Built America, or something like that, where Tesla was making money from royalties but then he signed everything over and didn't take any royalties after that. I can't recall what the reason was. I'm sure a Bing or Google search will reveal the skinny on that. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Can't remember where I saw it, but I have this memory of reading somewhere that after this spring the State of Washington won't allow sales of Category I furnaces anymore. Has anyone else seen/read that? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Just imagine how he'd have felt if that bike had bounced up, struck someone's windshield and hit them in the face sand killed or maimed that person. It's the law here. You don't lash down your load and it ends up on the highway and they'll nail you to the wall. They've gotten particularly strict about it since an object that wasn't lashed down fell off a truck, went through a lady's windshield and almost decapitated her. She used to be really beautiful, now she's only got one eye and her face and head are held together with metal plates and you'd have never known she was so beautiful before. A damned shame. There was a young fellow not long before that driving up I-5 on a motorcycle. A blue tarp blew out of the back of someone's truck, wrapped around him and he went right into a wall and was killed. Drive down the road here with an uncovered load and look around. You'll wonder who all of those folks on their cell phones are talking to and why they are glaring at you and some are giving you the one-fingered salute. Like Chad, I don't trust ropes or bungees. I've used ratchet straps for years and the only time I've had a problem with them is in the winter when they get wet and freeze and then I have to struggle to get them to release. I've never had one break - even the ones that are so old you can't tell what their original color was. You just have to remember not to over-tighten them and that they stretch when they are wet. If you strap the load on dry and then it begins to rain, you'll want to pull over and snug them up another notch or two so you won't have a loose load when they stretch. If you strap the load on wet, and you know that they'll dry out between jobs. you'll want to release the ratchet a tooth or two when you park so that as they dry out and begin putting more pressure on the ratchet mechanism the mechanism won't be damaged. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's not mold. It's dried mineral salts left behind from moisture evaporating off the earthen surface in the crawl. Ask yourself why you think you are reacting to mold when you have literally been breathing the same mold spore the media calls toxic every day you've lived on this planet. By the way. Those symptoms? I've had 'em for about two years now. I jus turned 61 and had to finally come to the realization that I'm not as young as I used to be. Go to a doctor and get a full physical. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, It's pretty bad; you don't have any accessory beads or expansion joints anywhere and you can see where the expanding stucco has pushed the trim. I've inspected plenty of houses with old type stucco applications that go all the way to the ground - down the framing and wall and over/onto the foundation. Lots have that horizontal crack like in photo #2 and when I get underneath in the crawlspace I find where water backed up behind the stucco because there's no drainage plane at the stucco-to-foundation transition has overflowed the foundation beneath the sill into the interior of the foundation - usually causing substantial rot. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Last night at about 1:30 am I locked out two different fellows that had come on here days, even weeks, registered and then left without posting. They came back, tried to post a couple of really stupid comments that made no sense whatsoever and then disappeared. At that point, I deleted their posts and locked their profile. I'm sure they'll be back but with your help we can prevent them from posting here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ditto the cargo straps and ratchet. Harbor Freight is selling a 2-pack of 20ft. ratchet tie-downs for $6.49; a 4-pack of 1" by 15' ratcheting tie-downs for $12.99 plus 20% off with a coupon I can email to you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'd also blame the CCA. It leaches out of the lumber. It's a heavy metal. It will sit in the bottom of the gutter and react with the aluminum. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's double-wythe construction, no? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, Yes, I think they have. I remember reading an article in one of my journals about a very large green/cool roof. I'll see if I can find that article. If I do, I'll PM you with a link to it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Just use the mode button to switch it to manual mode (It displays a hand with a pointed finger) and run it up 7 degrees over room temperature to get it to come on. Make a mental note of the temperature and then dome back in a little while and feel the tile to see if it is getting warm and check the stat to see if it's going up. Let it go up a couple of more degrees just to confirm and then switch it back to program mode and it will return to the owner's settings and the heat will shut off. Come back a little later to confirm that the temp is dropping. Pretty simple really. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

OK, So, it's a Heatilator brand 48" direct vent pipe. It has a 4" inner opening and the pipe is 6-5/8" in. outer diameter. The bottom of the opening is 5.1 times its diameter above the roof which makes it 34.22 inches to the opening. It looks like about a 9:12 or a 10:12 pitch which requires a 30inch height. As I said, it's fine. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's fine. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Not sure I agree with that. Some years ago I got a call from my mother who lives in Florida. She'd moved down there and had bought a manufactured home in one of those retirement communities. She said that her roof was leaking. I arranged for my younger brother and I to converge on her home and flew down there. The roof was metal and had some kind of silver elastomeric coating on it and bituthine seam sealant that was failing everywhere. It was hotter than hell at midday in that home, even with the AC on. We stripped all of the sealant tape off, used an aircraft paint stripper to remove every bit of decades of paints and such from that roof and then we rolled down new vinyl-faced bituthene seam sealer and then coated the entire roof with a fresh white coat of acrylic sealant. The day after we finished, the inside of that home was cool and comfortable with the AC on at midday because most of that heat was being reflected. She saw a significant drop in her electric bill after that because her AC wasn't running continuously. Total cost of materials was about $300. We put about 10 hours labor into it. It's paid for itself ten times over in the past five years. Obviously, reflecting sunlight to reduce solar gain has certain advantages in some climates. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Or, it's old natural gas piping for an old gas lighting system. I've found a dozen or so of those in the city in homes of that age. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

There's an underground storage tank outside somewhere. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, even if you can get him to flash it with step flashings, can you trust him to flash it correctly? Seriously, if he's so incompetent that this is the best he can do, I don't know that I'd trust him to install step flashings. He's liable to lap them the wrong direction or place them on the wrong side of the WRB or any number of other things that will cause a leak. If you can get him to redo those with step flashings, send those photos to the shingle manufacturer's technical assistance department and ask if they have a local rep available who can go out there and give this guy an on-site tutorial. Alternatively, there are dozens, if not hundreds of sites on the net that he can go to in order to learn how to install step flashings correctly. He has plenty available to him. If he's unwilling or too incompetent to figure out how to do it right, hire a different roofer - one that knows how to do step flashings - to correct it for you. Then take him to small claims court to recover the cost of hiring the second roofer. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Torque screwdriver, Jeez, now I gotta get one for my toolbox. Wish you hadn't mentioned that, Douglas. Nope, won't be using it on the job. I'm just a little bit OCD. I've got a three different size torque wrenches - I only use one - now I can feel the pressure building up inside to find one of these. Thnk I need to join a twelve step program for OCD types. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, I arrived at a house the other day where as soon as I walked in the door my senses were assaulted by the stink from a bunch of those plug in the wall oil air freshners. I ordered the agent and client to help me open every window and we propped open every door and then we pulled every one of those things and took them out back and put them on the patio. Then while I was going over the contract and preparing to start I left everything open to air out. By the time I'd finished the contract and gotten all of my gear in the house, the smell began to return - they'd been extremely heavy smokers and all of the fresh paint had failed to cover it up because nobody bothered to shampoo the wall-to-wall carpeting. Within an hour the place reeked of nicotine. It had been so bad that all of the aluminum window frames (60's house) were covered with nicotine and were a gold color instead of an aluminum color. The place reeked of it. Non-smoking couple. They didn't buy the house. Don't know if the odor had anything to do with it or not; there were plenty of other things going on there that might have discouraged them. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike