hausdok

I think I can see head flashings over those windows between the top of the window and the J-channel. If so, it's already better than about 90% of the vinyl installs I see around here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'm with Jim, It looks like old tech rockwool. See it all the time and every once in a while it's all churned up with other stuff that was blown in before or after. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, No doubt you're right. Absolutely no appeal whatsoever. Why would they bother to waste millions developing such a dog. And what's with those weirdos standing in line waiting to buy one, anyway, There's absolutely nothing appealing about them. Wasn't really looking for commentary about the car. Was putting it out there in case someone here, like me, thinks they're cool, would like to get one but doesn't want to wait two years. If there's anyone like that out there, PM me and I'll put you in touch with the salesman. Don't worry, I'm not trying to make anything on the deal. I will be jealous as hell though if you manage to get it and I have to continue to stable that damned beemer instead. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yo, yo, yo, For all of you that love driving, there will be a 2013 Subaru BRZ coming available. 6 speed manual, black on black. These are sold out a year in advance. The only way you can get one is to order it and wait a year or more or get one where someone has backed out of a deal. I had actually talked to the local dealer about trading my wife's BMW in on one. The guy at the dealership said, "Get in line. But since you've owned two Subaru's previously I'll call you first if we think we'll have a cancellation on a deal." Of course, when I tried to get the KK to go look at one and she realized that her Beemer would go bye-bye if she wanted one, that put the skids on that. Anyway, the guy just shot me an email to tell me one is coming available 'cuz someone's backing out. These are a joint venture between Toyota and Subaru (Toyota owns 16% of Subaru) and they are sold as Toyotas, Subarus and Scions. They are Toyotas replacement for the Celica and Supra and Subaru's first foray into building a true sports car. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I do it occasionally. Depends on the circumstances. This is a common sense business. Apply it, and you stay out of trouble. Ignore it at your own peril. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

My father put them in the last ten years of his construction career - age 70 to 80 - when he could no longer lift, tote and wrestle forms into place on his own anymore. He loved them. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The hard part is preparing the road bed for the pavers. The europeans spend a lot of time prepping road beds. By the time the road is ready for the surface layer of pavers it's been dug up and the entire bed is replaced with compactable fill followed by a mix of what looks like stone dust with just enough portland cement in the mix to make it coagulate. They dampen the fill base and then start laying down and compacting the dust above it. By the time they're ready for the bricks, the bed is as hard as pavement. They put down the pavers and then they sweep a course sand into the top layer to lock everything together. One night in Bremerhaven a water pipe burst underneath a main thoroughfare near my home. A crew came out, dug into the roadway and down to that pipe in about 15 minutes. They dropped a pump hose in there, sucked the hole dry and then a couple of guys jumped down in there with a section of pipe and some kind of heat-welding machine and climbed out thirty minutes later the pipe as good as new. Meanwhile, the crew around them had removed the soup caused by the busted main and had begun refilling. Once the pipe was fixed, some guys went to town with compactors. They'd dump in about six inches of fill, compact, dump, compact, dump, compact until they were about a foot below the surface of the street and then they switched from fill to the stone dust mix. A couple of guys worked a straight edge and another guy supervised how much base to toss into the low spots and another guy stood there dampening the whole thing with a hose. Finally the compactor guys backed away and a different bunch went to town tossing down pavers in the correct pattern while the guys with compactors came along over the top of their work and behind them a couple of guys with sand and coarse brooms. The entire repair start to finish was about two hours. I stood there and watched the whole thing. I was fascinated. Huge difference compared to dig hole, patch pipe, fill with five feet of earth, compact once and throw an asphalt patch on it like we see here. Learned to love those paver streets in Bremerhaven. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nah, Not unless there's a pair of vents in there someplace getting air from somewhere else or it's a direct vent type and it's definitely not a direct-vent type. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, Sorry, didn't click on the photo and couldn't see that photo in the thumnail. My statement is still true though. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, Not allowed in bedroom, bathrom, clothes closet or area open to same[/b]. You need a bedroom door. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Urban myth that I've never heard. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nope, Full payment. Don't know if it cost the client anything though. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You misunderstand. I was looking for a camera that an inspector could wear while doing an inspection. Maybe aon a head band or something. One where he could communicate with another inspector or even talk to the client as the client watched him do the inspection on a monitor somewhere else. That way, clients would get a better understanding of what's going on under the home and a senior inspector could guide a new inspector through the process. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

So, anyone done this before? I had a client who was out of town insist on paying me via Popmoney. I would have waited until he'd returned home and gotten his invoice, but he insisted. The process was a little confusing first time around but I guess that now anyone that wants to pay me through them can and I won't have the same difficulty as I did getting this first one to come through. I suppose this is where we're going. Someday we'll be in a world of "credits" like they have on Star Trek where nobody uses cash anymore and we all walk around with little gizmos to send and receive money. Crap, I hope I'm dead a long time before that happens. I have enough problems with gizmos as it is. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

By "live feed" do you mean that you are seeing stuff on your iphone at the same time the camera in the little gizmocopter sees it? Sorry, I'm not very well versed in gizmoeze. I've been trying to find a way of following an inspector and communicating with him while he's in crawlspaces and attics. I think it would be ideal for training someone to be able to see what they see, when they see it, and to be able to communicate with them real time. Last year when I was convelesciing I called at least a dozen companies and couldn't find anyone making anything like that. Maybe times have changed. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I didn' t think you were going to have much luck getting close to a roof with that. When I went through ground school years ago I learned that one doesn't fly close in on the leeward side of mountains because the air currents there are unpredictably dangerous. As the wind passes over the top of the mountain it tumbles and curles downward and inward. How much depends on the speed of the wind. Now put a tiny little craft on the leeward side of a roof, trying to get close enough to take a picture and what do you suppose is going to happen? People see a photo of a helicopter hovering off the side of a mountain, even picking folks up and they think it's easy for the experienced pilot. It's actually his worst nightmare, very very difficult and the most dangerous thing he can try to do. Was there a live video feed with that thing so you can line it up on a defect; or are you expected to start a video or something and then hope that you catch the thing you want to catch in frame? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, it only works if the aluminum is sparkling clean. Dust eliminates its ability to do what it's supposed to do. It is now forming a cold side vapor barrier over the insulation in a part of the country where it gets cold enough to condense water vapor in that attic. Now, as moisture from the air migrates upward through the insulation it's going to hit that cold vapor, cool to dewpoint, turn to water and accumulate. When enough has accumulated, it will drip down onto the ceiling below and soak the ceiling and then they'll have a really nice little biological experiment growing in a very large petrie dish. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Vapor diffusion condensing. Moisture migrates from the moist/warm interior through the insulation upward and outward toward cooler/drier air. As it hits the cold air just above the insulation some of it condenses on the cold surfaces that are touching the edge of the insulation. If the insulation were installed so that it were not touching those cold surfaces the moisture would have evaporated and there'd be no stains. The problem with that is you end up with a band at the perimeter of the room that's so poorly insulated that you get ghosting lines around the perimeter. The thing to focus on - is it enough to damage anything or is the amount of condensation being handled easily by the building products? Are they drying out sufficiently to provent long term accumulation of moisture that will support fungi? It looks like they are. I wouldn't sweat it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yes, September 2011. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Sometimes when I tell folks that their tnak is pretty old and it'd be a good idea to replace the tank before it fails when they need it the most, they don't get it and ask me just how serious it is. That's when I tell them to think of the tank as Granddad. "Now think of very old Granddad in the nursing home on hospice care, tubes coming out of every orifice and nurses standing by. We know he's going to die but we can't be exactly sure when. We think it will be any moment but he might hang on a little longer. Does that put it in perspective?" I ask them. They usually chuckle and get it then. One Chinese couple didn't so I mimicked feeble grandpa walking with a cane and pointed to the tank. Then they got it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Your thermostat is either broken or it isn't talking to the furnace. Did you check the batteries in the thermostat? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

If you are having trouble downloading the trial version of Inspect Express, just email Mike Brown, one of the developers, at DevWave for help. his email address is mike@devwave.com. Heck, they're right there in B.C. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, Trying to remember. I can't find the rule that says a water heater vent has to enter a shared vent higher than the furnace vent. Or was it the smaller has to enter the stack first? Fuzzy on the exact wording. Got a water heater and furnace sharing the same flue - a steel liner running up through the tile lining of a masonry stack. The water heater connector makes its connection to the flue above the furnace connector but the furnace connector joins the shared flue closer to the masonry stack with a Tee. In the photo below, the connector entering the B vent from the bottom is the furnace connector and the one entering at the upper right is the water heater vent connector. Click to Enlarge 49.51 KB I found evidence that spillage at the water heater draft hood is so heavy that the plastic insulators/grommets (whatever the hell you'd like to call them) around the hot and cold pipes, as well as the one around the top of the anode rod, are melted all to hell. There's plenty of combustion air to the room. and there aren't any fans or dryers or anything like that nearby....although, just around the corner from the louvered door in the room where the combustion air comes from is a fireplace fitted with a gas log set with the damper permanently clamped open. Here's the melted plastic doohickeys: Click to Enlarge 43.7 KB Click to Enlarge 48.19 KB Click to Enlarge 34.17 KB I'm thinking that if this water heater connection had been on the other side of this furnace connection closer to the stack, and the furnace connection had been made with a Wye and not a Tee, the spillage might not have been an issue. What say ye? Anyone remember that rule I'm trying to remember or is my brain playing tricks on me again? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

So, Thursday's inspection was kind of interesting. Found the messenger cable kind of fried. Click to Enlarge 44.19 KB And one of the hot legs from the pole with the insulation split. Click to Enlarge 34.48 KB Ten freet from the house the insulation on that leg was peeled back like an orange peel and that leg is within millimeters of shroting to the messenger. Click to Enlarge 42.71 KB Here's a closup view of the side of that hot leg Click to Enlarge 24.48 KB Another closeup Click to Enlarge 36.53 KB So, I'm in the attic and I find a wire hanging out in the open - some old rag wrap - and I wonder to myself, "Is it hot?" Didn't have my tracer with me so I decided to check it anyway. Held it at arms length and touched the ends together. Whoopey, it's still hot. Thought to myself, "That blew the breaker," so I did it again. Nope, breaker not blown. Click to Enlarge 51.65 KB Figured I knew why. Finished up the attic and then went to check the breaker panel. Yep, not a single tripped breaker. Now you know the rest of the story (At least insofar as why the breaker didn't trip.). Click to Enlarge 27.04 KB Click to Enlarge 38.3 KB Click to Enlarge 32.26 KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, They are there anyway; inside the water heaters. I can't see my kidneys either but I know they're there. I like Jim's comment. I tell 'em something similar. Usually something like, "This water heater is so old that I won't be surprised if it fails as I'm backing out of the driveway. It would be a good idea to replace it before it fails when you need it the most." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike