hausdok

Early central heating system. OT - OF!!! M.

Uh, 900 fps? Donald, a .45 only has a velocity of 800 fps. What kind of pellet gun shoots pellets that fast? OT - OF!!! M.

Okay, So I just checked the status of these. The auction was supposed to close on April 14th but the government apparently extended it because they didn't like the low bids (my assumption). The bid on the Sandy Shoales Lighthouse is up to $30,000 The bid on the Baltimore Harbor Lighthouse is up to $45,000 The bid on the Reserve center in Indiana (that's another thread) is up to $125,000 - Still a decent price, I think, for a facility of that quality and size.

Hi Jim, For future reference, when you copy a shortcut to a picture on IN into TIJ, you need to add quotation marks to the URL code. Place the first set after url= and the second set before the second bracket. That way, it will display just the words "click for photo" and not the entire code. I've fixed your links. There's an explanation of this in the FAQ section. Just go to the menu bar above wehre it says "Help FAQ" and select FAQ from the drop-down. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Not likely, There's typically something being used as an isolation membrane between the ballast and the pvc. They use that stuff on the roofs of the high rises in downtown Seattle and there's typically a layer of extruded polystyrene foam a couple of inches thick directly on top of the membrane. Sometimes there's even a drainage layer of pea gravel on top of the foam and finally the pavers. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!1 Mike

I was in HD today and saw an 11ft. version of the Gorilla ladder in fiberglass. Man! I hope they plan to follow up with longer versions in FG! OT - OF!!! M.

Rustig? Nein, ohne ubung geht's gut Scott. Prima!

Point of order, US Inspect is a single company, not a franchise. He's an employee - not a franchisee. It's a common mistake folks make. In fact,they make it in both directions. Folks were always assuming that I worked "for" the franchiser and didn't own my own company when I had the franchise. Hell, even the franchiser used to make that mistake. That's why I sold the franchise. There's actually quite a bit of difference though. Your in a town of less than 8,000 residents. Two inspectors in a town that small are going to constantly be battling one another, so you'd better get used to it and figure out how to distinguish your services and show why your inspections are worth the cost. If I were in your shoes (I might be - there are over 150 inspection companies in and around Seattle), I'd take advantage of this incident. Point out to the realtors involved that some inspectors do Lexus inspections and some do Yugo inspections. In other words, what the cheap guy might miss because he's moving so fast might result in the client receiving a Yugo quality inspection while the stuff that can be missed could potentially cost the realtor the equivalent of a Lexus. Looks like we're done here. If not, let's talk about different perceptions of inspection companies and their inspectors in another thread. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Pretty good Bill! You got everything Everything except the idiomatic phrase. The expression is "Er hat eine taube Nuss." Literally, he's got a pidgeon's head," or in English, "He's dead from the shoulder's up," or He's an idiot. "Ich habe wricklich eine taube Nuss," translates, "I'm such an idiot!" Nothing wrong with a little self deprecation of it'll liven things up a little bit around here. I learned German in 1983 at the Presidio of Monterey and then spent the next 3 years in Norddeutschland as a Juvenile Investigator and Krippo (Kriminal Politzei) liaison. Almost never get to use it though. Getting pretty rusty! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Mark, Glad I could make your day, but I don't own any stock in USInspect and they aren't one of our sponsors. I actually believe what I wrote. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Vielen Dank und Dir auch! EM - EK!!! M.

Hi Pete, I should think that in weather hot enough to require the AC that the pan will eventually reach the cutoff switch even if it takes several days. When that happens, the homeowner is going to be ticked that the A/C is out when it's needed and someone is bound to check it out. Don't feel bad. I just looked at a brand new house last week where there's an evaporator coil in an attic. No drain pan or secondary drain. Nothing but a little plastic condensate pump sitting on the drywall of the ceiling below with the clear plastic tubing threaded down through the outside walls to the outside. No 30-inch deep working space, no platform, no air gap before the trap on the condensate line to the pump, Sheesh, we see A/C so infrequently here that even the HVAC guys don't know what they're doing when they have to install one! ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Good job, Although, the fact that the guy is with USInspect really has nothing to do with it. It could have been anyone from any number of companies making the same mistake. That company has a 3-week training program. Most of the inspectors in this country undergo less than 10 days of training before they go out and begin learning on other folks' homes. I'd blame it on the inspector before I would the company. At least they put some effort into training them a little better before they turn them loose. People make the same generalizations about USInspect that they do about franchises - they're big, so they must be populated by the dark side. Hell, I used to have that attitude myself when I was still a rookie in this business. Now that I've been around a little while longer, I can see that the company has nothing to do with it. I used to have a franchise. We had a 140 hour training program. There were guys who came out of their training who hit the ground running and did great inspections. At the same time, there were those who became the 'zoid darlings, were done in about an hour on even big homes and had a tendency to be nearsighted. Some dentists can work on your teeth and there's no pain. Others make you beg for the gas. It's about the skills, knowledge and how you use them - not about the company. Anyway, this is a topic for another day on another thread. Glad it worked out. Continue to learn as much as you can because you never know when there might be someone following behind you on one of your inspections. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ach Ya! Jetzt verstehe Ich! Warum hat Ich nicht an Volkswagen gedenkt? Ich habe wricklich eine taube Nuss! Ein Mannschaft - Ein Kampf!!! Maek

I say that every time I roll out onto I-5. The traffic is usually heavy in both directions day and night 24/7/365. Hell, the population isn't that big in this state. They must be paying folks to drive up and down the highway because, as far as I can tell, there aren't that many destinations. Still $400,000+ for the median price? Aagh! The article in the Seattle paper talks about how there are people here involved in price wars that are coming to the table with all-cash offers for multi-million-dollar homes and that's what's pushing prices through the roof. Some of these darned tech millionaires need to pick up and move their soft bottoms to another part of the country so we blue collar types can get back to normal around here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Whoops, I stand corrected. After studying that photo for a while it looks like that rig is fully automated. It goes up, rotates to the applicable bay, sends a left extension out under the auto, picks it up and the retracts it onto the platform and the attendant - apparently down at the bottom, brings it down. OT - OF!!! M.

Wow, Can you imagine the consequences if the Car Hop isn't paying close attention when he goes to retrieve a vehicle? Download Attachment: MunichParkingGarage.jpg 52.44 KB Download Attachment: MunichParkingGarage2.jpg 87.92 KB

Well, It's finally gone from the absurd to the obscene. The median price of a single-family home in King County just hit $419,500 !!!. Hell, when I moved here 10 years ago it was only about $265,000 !!! At this rate, I'm going to have to start a new profession called Home & Apartment Inspector because only the well-heeled first-time home buyers will be able to purchase. Now, more than ever, I think I should be selling this stuff instead of inspecting it. Sheesh, ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Okay, now I understand. Any scorching on the cabinet of that furnace that the other guy should have seen or did it appear fine outwardly? MechAcc, CO detectors aside, if the unit was burning clean with a good 10:1 air/fuel ratio this probably would not have affected anyone anyway and the sickness might have been just that - sickness. I once found a furnace with a hole the size of a Kennedy half-dollar piece in the back of the heat exchanger. The hole was clearly visible by shining my light into the combustion chamber. The furnace was pretty old but looked like it had been burning pretty cleanly. I took out my Monoxir and used it to check for CO in the home. Nadda. Thinking it was the Monoxir, I went to my vehicle and got my backup Monoxir and re-tested the home. Nadda. While I was checking out the furnace, the client had gone off with the realtor and listing agent to another part of the finished basement to make some measurements. I called the client back into the utility room and informed him that there was a 50-cent piece sized hole in the heat exchanger. Well, this was one of those inspections where the listing agent just happened to show up and followed the client and his agent around chatting with the buyer's agent in the background, all the while keeping a careful eye on the inspection, and every once in a while one or the other of them would offer a comment or two of codespeak to try and get me to present things to the client the way that they wanted them presented. I'd been ignoring their signals for about an hour up to that point and was secretly enjoying the way they were squirming in the background. Anyway, when I informed the client of the hole, the listing agent went a little nuts. "A hole?!! What are you talking about? There can't be a hole in that heat exchanger! If there were, everyone in the house would have been dead from carbon-monoxide poisoning! This furnace was just serviced and the heating guy never said anything about a hole! Where the hell did you get your training, anyway? I'm an ex-cop. I just gave him my best perp stare and quietly asked, "Why do you want to know?" "Because any home inspector who knew what he was talking about would never make such a stupid observation. That's why," came the defiant reply and an equally flat stare. I never took my eyes off the listing agent. Just kept my eyes locked on his, and handed my Maglite to the client and said, "Look straight in past that flame to the back of the second chamber from the left and tell me what you see," and kept staring at the listing agent. By now the room had gotten realllly still, because he obviously didn't intend to be stared down by a mere home inspector and I never let a perp gain control of an interview so I wasn't about to drop mine. The client obediently took my Maglite, shone it into the furnace, caught his breath and then said, "Holy Sh*t! There's a hole in there big enough to put two fingers into!" The listing agent's gaze began to waver and I could see the first little bit of self-doubt creeping into his eyes. "You should probably know," I said, "That when the air-flow mixture on a furnace is adjusted perfectly, as this one is, that a gas flame doesn't produce any carbon-monoxide. It produces carbon-dioxide, water and nitrogen - just about the same thing that you're exhaling right now. Hole or not, if that furnace is burning clean, nobody's going to get sick from it. I'd say that you're the one who needs to get a little more training. What do you think?" That did it, he dropped his stare and then tried to stammer an apology. I came back with something Walt Jowers had once shared on the ASHI forum years ago, "There are only two people on this team right now. That's myself and my client. You, the both of you, are on the bench and for the past hour have been trying to get into the game. Why don't you both go have a seat now and let me finish this inspection for my client? When I'm done, (to the buyer's agent) you can have him back and he'll be your client again." Both of them turned beet red. The listing agent lifted his hand, pointed a finger at me and was about to say something and then stopped and said, "Ah, forget it," waved his hand dismissively, and they both walked off. There was this long pregnant pause and then the client started to giggle nervously. I just winked at him, went about jotting down my observations and then we continued with the remainder of the inspection undisturbed. That had been a referral from a previous client and was about 4 - 5 years ago. The client walked away from that house. I did another one for him about two weeks after that which he bought. The buyer's agent sat in the living room and read a newspaper during that inspection. Neither one of those agents has ever referred a client to me since and that's fine with me. When I've inspected homes they've listed, they've stayed away and have never tried to argue about anything written in my reports. So what's the point of my egregious attempt to create thread drift? I guess it would be to say that absent outward indicators on that cabinet, an odd reaction from the flame when the blower comes on, abnormal combustion reading registering on a test device or some type of other inspection more invasive than a look at the HX with a mirror oil sprayed into the HX or smoke candles - there's probably no way anyone would have spotted this anyway. It's one of those latent defects that can be there all the time and despite our best efforts and use of our technology it can easily be missed. These are excellent photos to use for that part of a training course where you bring the inspection student to the sobering realization that this is still a very seat-of-the-pants profession and absent experience they are really hanging themselves out there like a piñata. Thanks for sharing Neil. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Peter, Good to see you here. Someday, someone is going to have a question about hot water or steam heating systems and you're going to be right there to help them get smarter. That's why TIJ is here. Just a family of like-minded folks talking and helping each other work things out. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi newguy, Do you have a name? We prefer to address each other by first names here, so it would be great if you could give us something to call you besides a handle. I don't want to turn this thread into a debate about good inspectors vs. bad inspectors or SOP's vs. independents without SOP's, but I'd like to interject something here. This is foreign territory to me because I see about one, maybe two, air conditioners or heat pumps a year (Saw my first heat pump of 2006 the day before yesterday - No data plate on the evaporator cabinet by the way), so any discussion about A/C systems or heat pumps helps me to get smarter about these systems. This type of discussion about air conditioners - sizing, tonnage, condensate pans, air gaps, fan speed, and all manner of defects - is very common on the member sites of the major organizations. I've seen extremely experienced inspectors on those sites who've been in business 10+ years occasionally come on, explain that they've encountered the intransigent customer syndrome - where the customer never bothered to read the P.I.A. and then turned around and demanded payment from the inspector and sued regardless of the P.I.A.. In those circumstances, it's helpful for them to talk through the issues with the folks on the boards - sort of like meeting for lunch to talk with a bunch of like-minded folks, or milling around at a chapter meeting during the break. Can you think of a better sounding board for home inspectors than TIJ? Like Scott said, the standard is the minimum but you have to do what is the standard of care is for your area. In my area, with our limited exposure to AC systems, inspectors won't be considering half of the things that someone like, say, Norm Sage or Mark Cramer will be considering in Florida or Chris Prickett or Scott Warga will be considering in Phoenix or Anthem, AZ. Around here, and probably where you are too, fail to understand and report properly on crawlspace and ventilation issues will very quickly bite you in the assets. I should think that down in Florida where Mark is that paying attention to tonnage might be common. Kansas, being dead center in the middle of the country? Hell, I dunno, but I think one has to be careful not to judge others or their experience or customary practices too quickly on these forums or you end up wiping egg off your face. We like to keep things less judgmental around here and simply proffer the help when we can, because there's always going to be someone reading it that will be helped by it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Neal, You never explained your involvement with this or how the cracked HX was discovered. What's the story? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, It's a vent wye. That's about all you need to call it. It's getting 100% of the air to the outside, that's all you need to be concerned with. Look at the underside, look at the topside. If it looks like it's flashed normally and that's all you can see, you've done all you can do. You aren't expected to have X-ray vision or be a swammi and capable of predicting the future. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Well, The reason that they're 'busting a nut' is that the originator of the thread is in a pickle over a mismatched system and he asked whether it was normal to compare them or not. Most of us agree that it is not, but that's still not helping his case. In the meantime, it never hurts to discuss the technical aspects of this type of thing if it will help everyone understand these things better and become better at what they do. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Marilyn, I notice you are in New Orleans. Is this a condo that was damaged by Katrina. If so, you could be talking a whole different ball of wax than your normal condominium inspection. I've done whole condos too. I usually do what Jim and Kurt talk about and contract with the Condominium Association to do only the common use areas, exteriors, roofs and crawlspaces at an hourly rate and then each individual homeowner is free to hire me to do their unit at my normal condo fee. I've done apartment buildings too. Those are essentially the same concept, except the landlord usually is trying to figure out what condition each unit is in and spot those who're trashing his/her building so a letter can be prepared for eviction. When I do apartment buildings, it's roof and foundation, crawlspace if there is one, water heaters and furnaces in individual units or a boiler if it's a whole-building unit, and I use a simple checklist that I prepare for the building based on what they want to know about and the common characteristics of the building. From that, I prepare my final report. I'd use whatever software you're using now for each building in the complex and do a basic description of the electro-mechanicals common to each. I'd then create a checklist to attach to the regular report that I could use for individual units - if that was part of the deal. The checklist would be extremely basic and would list the building address or number, unit number, number of bedrooms and baths and have 4 areas to fill out - Electrical, Heating/AC, Plumbing, Interior for each unit. Something like this: XXXXX XXXX Avenue New Orleans, LA XXXXX Unit Number: _______________ Name of occupant: ____________________________ Tel. _________________ Email:_____________________ Number of bedrooms: _________ Number of bathrooms: _________ ELECTRICAL Sub-panel location: ________________________ Signs of immersion? Yes ______ No ______ Panel type/amperage rating: ______ /________ SEC feeder size: ________ Type of wiring used: ________ Aluminum wiring present?: Yes ________ No ________ GFCI's present where required/needed: Yes _______ No _______ (Where?) _______________________________ Panel Anomalies: _______________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________________________ WATER HEATER Type: Electric ______ Gas ______ Age _______ Signs of immersion?: Yes ______ No ______ Strapped?: Yes ______ No ______ Pan present?: Yes ______ No ______ TPR present and properly configured: Yes ______ No _______ Water heater anomalies seen: _______________________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________ HEAT/AC Type: Electric ______ Gas ______ Age _______ Signs of immersion?: Yes ______ No ______ Location of fuel shutoff or elec. disconnect: ______________________________________ Type of gas pipe used, if any: ________________________ Type of flue: ________________________ Brand: _________________________ Mod# ________________________ Serial# ________________________ Works?: Yes ______ No _______ Overall condition of unit: __________________________________________________________________________ Anomalies seen: _____________________________________________________________________________________ PLUMBING Location of main water shutoff: __________________________________ Location of fuel shutoff: _______________________________________ Type of supply pipe: ____________________________ Type of waste pipe: ___________________________ All fixtures operational?: Yes _______ No _______ If no, which ones: _________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ INTERIOR Signs of immersion/water damage present?: No ________ Yes (Describe)______________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Appliances present/operational? ____ Dishwasher: Yes ______ No ______ ____ Range/Oven: Yes ______ No ______ ____ Built-in Microwave: Yes ______ No ______ ____ Disposal: Yes ______ No ______ Condition of walls: Good _______ Fair _______ Poor ______ (Where?)___________________________________ Condition of ceilings: Good ______ Fair ______ Poor ______ (Where?)__________________________________ Condition of floors: Good ______ Fair ______ Poor ______ (Where?)____________________________________ Condition of stairs: Good ______ Fair ______ Poor ______ (Where?)____________________________________ Handrail(s) present: Yes ______ No ______ Type(s) of counters: Kitchen ___________________ Bath #1 ___________________ Bath #2 _________________ Condition of Counters: Good______ Fair _______ Poor _______ (Where?)_________________________________ Type of doors: _______________________________ All Present?: Yes ______ No______ (Where?)____________ Cabinet types: Kitchen __________________ Baths _________________ Cabinets Functional?: Yes ______ No ______ (Where?) _______________________________________________ Type of windows: _____________________ Serviceable? Yes ______ No ______ (Where?)_________________ ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Type of overhead door: ________________________________ Damaged?: Yes ______ No ______ (Explain) ____________________________________________________________ Auto-opener present?: Yes ______ No ______ Auto-opener operational?: Yes ______ No ______ (Explain) ______________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ OTHER COMMENTS: