hausdok

Hi, Intertherm is made by Rheem so it's definitely April of 1980. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Again, To see some details about how one firm approaches basement wall repairs and methods, go here: http://www.structuraldynamics.com OT - OF!!! M.

Definitely get an engineer involved. That's probably inadequate drainage and preparation around the outside of that foundation. The ground is freezing and expanding and has cracked that foundation. You can find the answer here at JLC: http://www.jlconline.com . When you arrive at the home page, put "block foundation failure" in the search box at the upper left-hand side and it will spit out a bunch of articles on this topic. If you aren't a JLCOnline subscriber, most will cost you, but there are a few that are free to non-subscribers. OT - OT!!! Mike

Hi Don, I haven't the feintist. In 10+ years, I've never inspected a sprinkler system. Is it part of that mandated Texas inspection protocol that you guys down there have to inspect them? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Jim, Like you, I'm tuning in late to it too. Yes, I agree. I think Jim's right on the money with the remarks about the roof wearing out before most of those issues become problems. Those sidewall flashings are a joke. The way those have been done tells me that whoever did the roof is an incompetent. The workmanship issues, short valley flashings, short at the drip (drips are never used here with shakes by the way) felts and the extra inch of reveal really won't make much difference in it's performance - it's the shake quality that will tell. I see gutters done like those all the time and usually tell folks to shorten them and cut an ellipse out of the bottom so that they won't clog. The two nails that you were wondering about a chalk line? Those probably held a roof jack onto the roof. The course offset isn't good, but as many times as I've see it and written it, I've never found them leaking under those areas. Unlike shingle roofs, these have the felts interlaced into the courses and that seems to handle the little bit of water that gets past the surface when they're lined up like that. It's easily corrected anyway. If those shakes aren't treated on both sides and all edges, they'll probably be all hooked and twisted in 5 or 6 years. I'd really be interested in seeing what's under those valleys. How wide were those flashings? Were you able to tell from the attic? If the guy doesn't know how to properly interlace step flashings at a sidewall, he probably used valley flashings that were too narrow. Did you happen to see how heavy those felts were? In your climate I should think that roofers are probably using solid decking with a layer of ice and water shield, battens on top of that and then applying the shakes. No? Since you're in PA, you might even consider attending the Cedar Shake and Shingle Bureau's Annual General Meeting, which is being held Sept 27 - 30 in Philadelphia. You can find out more about that at the link below. It looks like a pricey house. If you think you might end up in a serious run-in with the builder and roofer, you might consider contacting CSSB and see who their local representative is, contact him and ask him whether he'd be willing to stop by and look at the roof. I know that they've got a guy in New York - Tony Something - but I can't remember whether he covers just New York or the northeast. Their southeast guy is Peter Parmenter 912-898-8173. Go here for lots of free downloadable information about shake roofs - even an installation manual. It will help you explain the issues to the client and to the roofer if he cares to listen. http://www.cedarbureau.org ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Such a grand old dame! http://www.historicproperties.com/detai ... y=ncgol004

Hi, Seems to be. It's a 6 year old unit that's been repaired about 6 times now but it seems to provide pretty consistent results. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Kurt, You're right, icynene is vapor permeable, but it's not the vapor but the temperature drop that's causing this. I misunderstood you before and thought that the condensation was occurring on the inside surface of the plastic on the backside of the drywall. It's obvious now that what's occurring is just what happens in North Carolina or Virginia when a builder places the vapor barrier on the wrong side of the wall. It's air conditioned and you've got the vapor barrier where one would expect to find it in a northern climate, but you've got an unusually hot summer with the A/C running all the time, as you'd have it in Virginia, North or South Carolina this time of the year and with the high humidity, like the mid-Atlantic states, you've emulated a wrong-side vapor barrier situation. Vapor is trying to move from warmer/humid to cooler/less humid and is encountering that plastic behind the drywall - plastic that's been cooled by the AC to below dewpoint. If all you had was plain drywall, I bet that the vapor could have safely diffused to the interior where the A/C system would have removed it. I think you'll find that if you eliminated the plastic and used foam in that wall that diffusion to the interior will occur naturally without any condensation forming, because the cooling will be extremely gradual as that vapor moves through the insulation and, because it can't accumulate anywhere and will diffuse through the drywall to the interior, the wall will remain dry. However, if you leave the plastic on the backside of the drywall and shoot the wall, you may find that the icynene just behind the plastic will end up damp because diffusion can't take place. If memory serves, Icynene says that one should not use a vapor barrier at all in their wall systems. I suppose you could experiment with two different wall panels to find out though. Oh, the other question. Yes, Icynene does make a slow-cure formula that expands far slower than the regular formula. It is designed for use in retrofit situations where a hole is drilled in the wall and the foam is shot into the wall cavities. It generally takes overnight to fully expand and cure. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Kurt, My little reference book for these systems is Cottage Water Systems by Max Burns. Reading that was quite an education - and fun too. Anyway, from everything I read there, it sounds like you've got a crack in the intake line someplace. Pick it up. Even if it doesn't help in this case, you'll learn a lot about private water systems that were puzzling before. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Kurt, How much room between the framing and the masonry. Any chance that can become a plenum? OT - OF!!! M.

ANSWER: Concrete walls shall not be out of plumb greater than 1-1/2 inches in 8ft. when measured from the base to the top of the wall. OT - OF!!! M.

Sure, The humidity goes up but the temperature begins to drop. Somewhere between 2:00 amd and 5:00 am when the masonry starts to cool and bring down the temperature of those inside walls, that humidity starts condensing on the inside face of that plastic. They probably would have been better off to do away with the plastic and use foil-faced foam insulation. It would have functioned as a vapor barrier yet prevented the sudden change in surface temperature that caused the condensation. It's just a theory. It needs to be tested. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Ezra! It's been a while since we've heard from you Bro! Good to see you back in the crib! I could do mine on-site. Hell, I helped tailor the danged software for just that purpose. However, my inspections are generally 3 to 3-1/2 hours minimum. People start squirming when I sit there working on the report and printing, so I opt not to do it that way unless absolutely necessary. About 90 out of 100 are done by taking down notes, bringing them home and then putting all of it into the computer. I like the fact that I can sit at home, work on the report without anyone breathing down my neck and crank up the Irish folk music. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Sounds like they didn't use a vapor barrier beneath that slab. I'm not sure if there's anything can be done to correct that. OT - OF!!! M.

It happens. Probably the result of an accident during placement. I was once atop a form wall during a foundation pour when the boom operator swung the boom past me just as a strut gave out behind me. It was like a friggin domino game, except slower. The wall gave a big lurch, tossed me onto the ground and I ended up lying there looking up at the wall as it began slowly leaning over toward me. Got the hell out of there, the old man let out a bellow and we all just reacted. Somehow, using struts and a Bobcat, we stopped the roll before it had progressed more than 10ft linear or the wall was more than a couple of feet out of plumb and pushed it back to as close to upright as possible. The old man was swearing like a drunk sailor and had the boom operator swing it over to the other side. He sent a couple guys over there to continue placement, and then we pushed vertical dams into the the last plumb forms at either end of the buckle, nailed 'em in place, disassembled those panels, dumping all of that wet mud, probably a couple of tons worth, onto the ground, cleared off the footings, reassembled the forms and snap-ties, plumbed them up, nailed on whalers and put struts in place all in the space of about 8 minutes. You wouldn't believe the noise the old man was making! We got the forms braced again and had just finished prying out the last of the two dams when the operator yelled over that he needed to come our way again. The old man gave him a thumbs up and we placed the last of that load into those forms and worked those damned ends with a couple of 2 bys. We probably had more than a yard of concrete on the ground. The old man had figured it so close that we had to shovel some of that mud back into the forms in order to make the line. Pretty intensive 15 to 20 minutes and when it was all over I learned that I had a gash on the back of my head and had been bleeding all that time. I'd never even noticed it, because I'd been too damn busy to worry about it. In the end, the section that we'd disassembled, raked out and reassembled was plumb but the bottom of the wall at a section about 4ft. from the end of the area that buckled was an inch off the line. Nobody had noticed it with all of the activity and the mud everywhere. The top of the wall was right on the money though and the old man wasn't worried about it. Said he'd placed a few worse as a new fish 30 years before. Did you check the far wall of that foundation to see whether the entire thing had leaned a little bit toward Aunt Sadie's? OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, I'd interpreted that, like Jim, to mean a conventional stem wall type foundation. My question is the same as Jim's. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Kurt, Hi, what do you think is going on? Exterior walls cooling at night and causing all of that damp/warm air to migrate toward the cool exterior and then condense on the plastic when it can't pass through? In the south, because they've got AC running day and night, they generally put that barrier on the outside of the wall cavity, with the layer of insulation between the vapor barrier and the drywall, in order to keep that humid outer air from diffusing into that cooled wall cavity. What little gets by the barrier diffuses in such small amounts to the interior that condensation can't form in the wall. It leaves the back of the exterior sheathing damp but that dries to the outside as soon as it cools at night and the humidity drops. It sounds like they're accumulating moisture inside that building all day long and then, at night when the temperature in that outer wall drops, all that interior humidity is trying to migrate warm to cool, hits that barrier, cools to dewpoint, condenses and then ends up soaking into the drywall. Is there any insulation at all in that outer wall that will insulate the interior walls from that cool outer wall and keep things relatively balanced at night? Is the building air conditioned? If not, maybe it's time to consider renting a couple of those big honking dehumidifiers - at least to get through the hot/humid patch until a solution can be implemented. I saw one the other day. It took up the space of a copy machine and was sucking huge amounts of moisture out of a home. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Heard somewhere that he was talking about pulling the plug. Is that why he moved? OT - OF!!! M.

Mmmmm, Jerry Peck is down your way. It might be at his eye level. Seriously though, Jerry used to (probably still does) go on and on about how everything down Florida way has to be above flood stage. I suppose where you are they have a designated flood stage height and it's supposed to be above that. However, this particular house was placed well above any water high on a hillside. The only flood that will ever reach it will be a 2000 ft. high tidal wave caused by the planet killer that one day smacks this rock. OT - OF!!! M.

My my Al, You have been busy today. What's going on in the UK has some parallels to what goes on here, but one has to understand the basic differences. Right now, I'm told by some of my British colleagues that up until now only a very small number of homes are inspected during sales and that these "surveys" are varied. There are "valuation surveys" (appraisals) done for lenders, which are the only essential survey carried out on behalf of the lender but paid for by the borrower (like here). There are the "Homebuyer’s Reports" which are roughly equivalent to what the new "Home Condition Report" is supposed to be, but up until now have been done on relatively few homes because the public there really hasn't come to see the value in them. Then there are the "Full Structural Surveys," which are a full blown structural analysis and report. These too are only rarely done and usually then only for commercial or very unusual structures. The new home information packs (HIPS) will be required from June 2007 and are going to contain everything that most real estate agents here are responsible for producing, but up to this point have been optional in the UK, namely certain legal paperwork, ie office copies of title deeds, Sellers Information, Fixtures and Fittings List, Local Searches, etc.; the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)(Energy Audit here) which the government cannot postpone or cancel because it is an EU directive and, finally, the contentious item, the Home Condition Report(HCR's). Over there the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) have been king of the roost for so long that the public practically thinks of them as an arm of the government when considering a home purchase. However, RICS surveyors don't just look at homes, they look at commercial properties, do inspections for municipalities, do appraisals, manage construction projects, provide cost projections for renovations, do structural engineering analysis, soil analysis, records search and many other tasks. In short, Chartered Surveyors who inspect homes for sale over there are very much like licensed engineers are in the US. They can do the basic inspection for sellers or potential buyers, can do structural analysis and can provide estimates of what it's going to cost a home buyer to, say, add an addition onto a home or remodel a portion of it. What's added into the mix though, if I've understood it correctly, is that they also do the appraisal and perform records searches - things that we don't do here - and many work in specialty fields - some specifically in home inspection as some licensed engineers do here in the US. What the law for HIPS called for was the establishment of an entirely new profession - that of the Home "Inspector," which I gather the RICS guys resent, because they will take market share and because many don't think that the inspectors will be qualified to inspect structures. That in itself, to me, seems pretty short-sighted, since some of the home inspectors will naturally be referring work to the RICS guys when they encounter structural issues that they are not qualified to diagnose. Then too, the training that some of these people are going through will enable them to make structural calls - unlike inspectors here - and they'll essentially turn out being sort of "Surveyors Lite." What most inspectors here would find really strange is that surveyor firms over there are sub-contracted to real estate firms to do all of the surveys (inspections) for clients of those firms. There are very few independent home inspectors over there (Most work for the large surveying firms) and there aren't a whole lot of surveyors or new home "inspectors" that seem to want to be self-employed. What's ironic is that many of the large surveying firms there had already provisionally hired many of the new home inspector trainees, even before they'd graduated, to do HCR's for the HIPS that their firms would be producing. There are literally thousands of folks in the UK who'd quite their jobs and were attending school, full-time at their own expense to earn, the new government accredited home inspection diploma from a host of accredited training schools and courses that sprang up overnight. Many of these were funded with investments in the millions by those who saw the need to train people to qualify to do the mandatory HIPS and HCR's as a golden investment opportunity. Hell, even builders over there had pre-hired some of these folks! We'd look at it as the fox guarding the hen house, but they apparently don't see it that way at all. Cultural differences, I suppose. Back to the premise of your post - better education for home inspectors - obviously seen from an engineer's standpoint. I don't disagree with the idea of getting more education for home inspectors, but I do disagree with the lofty position that most engineers take that home inspectors are somehow lesser beings than they are, just because they don't have a degree and a bunch of letters after their name on their business cards. There are many engineers in this country in our field who don't have a clue about HVAC systems, plumbing or electrical systems, yet they received a "by" from states where licensing took hold for home inspectors, simply because they had an engineer's license. At least in the UK they understood that home inspections are a unique animal and they compelled Chartered Surveyors there, who wanted to work in the home inspection field, to at least undergo a form of abbreviated training, to fill in the blanks between surveying and home inspecting. That's something that you don't see done here with engineers - at least not in a formal education setting. Do you? There are a whole lot of homes built in this country every year where engineers have never even stepped onto site and many of our oldest, finest and best-built homes never benefited from "engineering". They were built by old-school builders who learned through trial and error what works and what doesn't. They figured out what they know just the same way that engineers figured out what they know. This still-young profession is still mostly populated with former trades from the construction industry and many of them, through experience, are every bit as capable as engineers to decide whether a particular beam is sized or placed correctly or whether a repair is adequate or not. We're becoming smarter and smarter about buildings every day and more and more inspectors understand building science in ways that they never did decades ago. Add to that computers, which are empowering inspectors with abilities they never had in days gone by, and I think it's time that the engineering profession stopped fighting home inspectors, recognized that they are here to stay, embraced them and worked with the home inspection profession to develop a US version of an Engineer-Lite with accredited training and certifications which home inspectors could shoot for without attending 4 years of school. The following was snipped from one article by a Chartered Surveyor in the UK who had to go through the abbreviated home inspection training there. This is text quoted from the summer 2006 issue of Home Truths, the quarterly newsletter of The Home Inspector's Directory a commercial inspector search engine and inspection information site in the UK. The fellow who wrote this is Stuart Parrett, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (FCIS), a Home Inspector, and the creator of a DIY Home Information Pack Provision facility, Home Inspector network and resource service. Parrett "gets" it. Here's what he said.

Nah, My wife wears that crown. We're here to help one another. That's what this place is all about. Sometimes, it just takes a while to get the message across - especially when one is as long-winded as I am. OT - OF!!! M.

Sigh, OK, I'm no longer sure what the dispute here is, but I'll try one last time and that's all I've got energy for. It's your prerogative to believe whatever you like and to write whatever you like. But if you're going to rely on boilerplate for the truth, when boilerplate is something that someone else believed when he or she wrote it for your software, you could one day find yourself wondering why you didn't go out, get the answers yourself and tweak your boilerplate to fit the reality of your own situation. The fact that you relied on the boilerplate to be 100% fact will never help you if you are ever faced with a dispute in court, and neither the guy who taught you that alleged fact in school or the author of the boilerplate will be there in court to defend you - for anything. I've written boilerplate for software, yet I've never stepped foot in the state of Florida. I have no doubt that some of what I wrote works as well in Florida as it does in Alaska, but I also know and understand that, even though I was helped by folks in Florida on some of that boilerplate, that there are probably portions that are not 100% accurate, because not all jurisdictions agree on what they'll use. In fact, I'll bet there's boilerplate that I wrote five years ago that used to be perfectly valid in some places which is no longer valid in those same places now, due to code changes and the changing dynamic of the construction world. That's just a fact of life and becoming married to your boilerplate can, in my opinion, be problematic. When you purchase a software package, you have to do a little bit of homework and tweak the boilerplate so that it, pretty much, fits the area where you live. Otherwise, you might be reporting things inaccurately day after day after day. The Copper Development Association explains it very plainly in my previous post. Copper pipe is accepted by the major codes they've cited and some jurisdictions still don't accept it. I thought we'd already agreed on that. So, as inspectors who are supposed to make our living reporting accurately, it's our responsibility to research our own areas and make sure that we're aware of the rules for our own areas, which is exactly what the CDA is saying. Is that simple? No, for example, the city of Seattle just accepted the 2003 IRC with modifications. In order for anyone to have an accurate copy of the Seattle residential code, they have to utilize both the 2003 IRC and the 2004 amendments adopted by the City. Yet, 5 years ago, they were using the UBC. Seattle is ringed by a lot of smaller communities and some of these are still using the 1997 version of the UBC, others are using the 1995 CABO, while others are using the 2000 version of the IRC. I can pull up the websites of any town around here and find various stuff that's accepted by the model codes and still isn't accepted by those municipalities. I can also find stuff that isn't accepted by the model codes that is accepted by some of those municipalities. Even small towns bordering each other accept different stuff and reject other stuff. What CDA is saying is that you must do your own research. So, what's my point? Just this, if the gas company and 100% of the code authorities in your area don't allow gas, then you are correct insofar as inspections done in your locale are concerned. However, if just one town in your area accepts the use of copper, and the gas company is allowing it, and you are writing it as a deficiency in that town, than you are essentially making stuff up based on erroneous information. Making a blanket statement on a national board that copper is unacceptable but may be accepted in some places is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to state, as the CDA has stated, that it's accepted by the model codes but some jurisdictions still don't accept it, as the CDA has stated. Can you see my point? As far as calling into question the credibility of what CDA has posted on their site, while implying that they'd knowingly falsify something in order to sell their product, I think that's just plain silly. Posting stuff on their site which can easily be shown to be blatantly false would do a lot to hurt their credibility, and, as far as I know, their credibility is pretty good. Is it Bill Loden who says, "Your mileage may vary?" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, Which I fully recognized when I referred you to the Copper Development Association's site and provided that snipette from their text that talked about the use of copper pipe for gas fireplaces. Just FYI, every single time someone mentions the use of copper for natural gas, this debate about the use of copper flares up again. I expect it always will. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, Well, Focal Point wrote: Well, I don't want to beat a dead horse either - and I think we've said essentially just that - but here're some FAQ's I snagged off the Copper Development Association's site. I'll assume that, for the sake of accuracy, they won't mind my doing so, since it's word-for-word what they're telling the public. TAKEN FROM THE COPPER DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION'S FUEL GAS FAQ's I think this should put this to bed once and for all. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Go here: http://www.smartvent.net/crawlspacevent.htm OT - OF!!! M.