hausdok

How is he accommodating the expansion/contraction of that PEX. Looks like it's gonna be straining at the bit. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

If you meet him in person, you'll find that Rob always comes across well. Rob, did you apply for a vacant seat on the board? You should have, you attended more meetings than most board members, I think. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi George, Is that going to be the 13footer or a 21footer? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I actually attended one of those a week or so ago. He invited me to tell folks about TIJ. Never one to miss a chance to tell folks about TIJ, I accepted. There was a software vendor giving a class on report writing while naturally pointing out all the things about his software that made it easier to write reports with than others. Nick talked about a bunch of marketing gimmicks he's used over the years. Another guy who's written a book and apparently started one of those fee-paid peer support groups that is similar to The Service Roundtable that Matt Michel started for HVAC contractors began his own talk about marketing methods. I didn't stay for the entire thing. I had Peanut with me 'cuz the wife had something she had to do wtih her church folks. When he got bored and started yapping at one of the attendees who was wearing a hat indoors - something that freaks him out - I knew it was time to leave. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, He made a whole lot of posts without the link. Then after days of doing that, he finally put a link in his signature for that waterproofing company. That made the link show up in every post he'd made over the past week or so. I removed the link from his profile and locked it. If he had told the truth about where he was and posted a link to a firm in India; or if he were actually a contractor in New York, I would have let it go; but he is, as Jim pointed out, simply a poser. Pssst, Tony; go away. There are thousands of other places you can sow your customer's link; you're just wasting your time here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's what I'd thought too but where are the links? He hasn't posted any yet that I can tell. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Talked to one of these guys this morning. Whuff!!! They get an awful lot of moolah per month to get you up there in the mobile search page rankings. Right now I seem to be turning away as much, if not more, work than I can take in - so I'm not really looking for anything, but if things slack off I might be interested. Even if things do slow down I'm not sure I'm interested in spending nearly $800 a month on mobile web placement if it's just going to mean that the number of folks I turn away every month remains about what it is now. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Tony, I'm going to say this as diplomatically as I know how and I hope you don't take offense, but I hope to hell you aren't performing inspections yet. You are not ready. Based on some of your commentary here over the past week it's pretty clear that you really need to do an immitation of a remora and attach yourself to an experienced inspector for the next couple of years; before you go out there and start performing inspections on your own. You are not ready. If you are inspecting right now I'm afraid it's only a matter of time before you get yourself into a situation that you're not going to be able to get yourself out of without losing your shirt. You are not ready. Please continue to visit and read all that your can about inspections and the causes and effects of stuff but, please, don't go out on your own yet. Find an experienced inspector who is looking for an assistant and stick to him like glue for a year or two. Do that, and I know that in a couple of years you, and your customers, will thank me for these few harsh words. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi David, Don't know about John's client; mine walked. He's an old client; I'd done inspections for him previously back in 2009. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I was going up a very steep roof last week and had to negotiate my way around a satellite dish hanging off the side of a dormer. I put my hand on the dish base to pull myself up and found it occupied by a bunch of wasps. They kind of tensed up but none came after me. If they had, I would have just had to endure it 'cuz I didn't have the option of running. If they'd been those blue/gray bald-faced hornets I would never have been able to get close and they'd have attacked and I would have been sliding down that sucker like a kind on a playground slide. When I see those bastards I give 'em real wide berth. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nah, that's just some surface fungi of some sort. The incipient rot is in the wood. Take an ice pick, insert it perpedicular to the grain and snap it sideways. If the wood breaks out as a long sliver it's OK if it breaks off clean across the grain there's rot there. John, that house was built in 1963. Guess trusses debuted a little earlier around here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, Hauled my butt through one of those the other day. The roof had a 10-degree pitch (2.18:12 slope) - trusses. 10 year old deck. It was about 18-inches from the ceiling joists to the underside of the top chord at the apex. Ridge vent and eave vents and two gable end vents. Bath fans venting into the attic space. Pieces of fungi-covered delaminated plywood everywhere that had been left over from the previous roof deck. Every single gusset plate I saw was separated from it's truss. Someone had made a feeble attempt to nail the gusset plates back and they apparently didn't know how to swing a hammer 'cuz the nails weren't even driven in all the way. I could actually jiggle the diagonal webs with my hand. Incipient rot in the truss chords. They look fine but the cell structure was no longer capable of gripping those pressed-in gusset plates. The roofer who put the new deck on a decade ago thought he had the solution by putting a ridge vent on but he was too dim-witted to figure out that if the plywood deck was completely rotted that the rot had probably travelled into the trusses; and he obviously had no idea that venting fans into an attic and leaving gable end vents open when there are ridge vents was about as dumb as he was. They'd remodeled the home and converted one of four upstairs bedrooms into the large bath for the master bedroom suite. Guess where the attic hatch is? It used to be in a closet in that fourth bedroom - now it's in the ceiling of the, wait for it......shower. Entered 8ft. from the north gable end wall and hauled my ample butt over twenty of those bottom chords on my stomach to get all the way to the other end. Couldn't roll completely over to take these photos. Had a little board, 6-inches wide by about 26 inches long that I hauled along with me and would rest on top of it before moving on to the next truss. Like a chubby inch worm - took probably 20 to 30 minutes in oppressive heat. I (we) don't get paid enough for this s***. Click to Enlarge 36.36?KB Click to Enlarge 37.75?KB Click to Enlarge 32.03?KB Click to Enlarge 31.58?KB Click to Enlarge 37.82 KB Click to Enlarge 39.56?KB Click to Enlarge 40.96?KB ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Gotta wonder how drunk that guy was when he came back from lunch to run that cover. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I agree 100% with everything that Bill says. Nothing wrong with the height of that gas vent. A couple of question - is that furnace located in conditioned space or is it in a cold area? What's the volume of the space where that furnace and water heater are located? Are there any exhaust fans or a clothes dryer nearby? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

There's a problem with just letting it go. When they go to sell the house years from now, some smarty pants home inspector is liable to come out of there and point out to the buyer that the insulation is installed upside down, at which point the buyer may demand that the seller, your former client, pay to have that stuff flipped. Now, up to that point Roy might have been considered a good inspector by his former client; but once he causes that client to get burnt because he "just let it go" that client is going to be pissed. They might not come after Roy directly due to the amount of time that's elapsed but they can hurt him in other ways by telling everyone they know how he cost them money. If it's wrong, it's wrong. Tell 'em it's wrong. Tell 'em what could happen if it's not corrected - even if you think the likelihood of that happening is slim - and then tell 'em what the fix is and let them work it out. If they choose not to push the issue it's on them, and if it bites them 7, 8, 10 years from now they can't put it on you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Yeah, it's double-faced and the side you are looking at is the vapor barrier side. See the asphalt emulsion bleeding through the paper. If you'd reached up to the other side and examined the facing, you would have discovered that the facing on the other side of the batt doesn't have an asphalt emulsion covering it. It still needs to be flipped. I'd go back, take ten minutes to confirm what I just told you, explain it to the buyer and seller and then hold out my hand and say, "That'll be $150 - who's paying me for this trip?" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Agree 100%, Old Friend. My office looks like the back room of a library/bookstore - reading material piled everywhere - the unused shower in the nearby bath is the same. If I stop moving for a second I'm reading something about this gig or construction subjects while trying to keep current. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I don't know why a crack would have an impact on value unless the buyer can prove that the crack is an ongoing issue that will continually need to be addressed. Think of the house the way that you think about your car. If you crack a cylinder head and have it replaced and your engine is running fine and as good as new (better in some cases), would a dealer be right to offer you less than the fair trade-in price against a new car, just because you once had to do a repair? The answer - only if the issue isn't fixed and the dealer knows he's going to have to sink more money into the car to get it up to market value. I've seen a lot of pinned foundations, underpinned foundations and lots of mud-jacked foundations. Each needs to be looked at in terms of the seriousness of the crack, degree of damage done to the house (if it's evident) and whether or not the repair looks like it's been done professionally and adequately. Sometimes I can know at a glance; sometimes I have to punt it to an engineer to bless or diss as the engineer sees fit. If an engineer disses the repair, the buyer's focus usually turns to getting the work done again or reinforced in such a way that value is maintained and will still be there when he/she goes to sell years from now. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That might not be the case with this one. The moisture discoloration begins low and gets worse as one gets closer to the apex. Some of that wood higher up looks like it might already be in early second stage rot. Under the old wood shingle deck it would probably have breathed pretty well and been able to stay ahead of the moisture. Under the OSB covering, it might develop issues. I think Mr. Roofer was foolish if he didn't include a means to keep that deck dry. To be on the safe side, I think I'd have recommended a means to ventilate the turret. He might have placed some cedar breather membrane or something like it under the crest cap. In the photo you can just make out a dark line where the bottom lip of the crest cover meets the roof slope. There might be a narrow gap there filled with mesh. ONE TEAM - ON FIGHT!!! Mike

More likely than not, it was cedar shingles, not shakes. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I disagree. There is code and then there is what you can see, smell and feel. I've seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of crawlspaces where the venting met code and there were moisture issues and I've seen just as many that met code and didn't have any issues. The physical condition of a house doesn't care what's written in a code book. The house will do what it's going to do; it's our job to spot those issues, make the client aware of the implications and give them a sensible recommendation. I'm in Robert's region. I know that a lot of builders around here will use pea gravel to raise the level of the crawlspace floor above water intrusion so that it appears like there is a very nice dry crawlpace. When I see a crawl full of pea gravel, I dig down as deep as I can to see how far below the surface I'll find the water and I'll always recommend a barrier - even if the ventilation is well above the code minimimum required to justify ditching the barrier. Consider it a belt and suspenders approach. Most builders don't argue about it; a barrier is cheap and they, like us, know that they only see a crawl in a snapshot of time - there's no telling what might happen six months down the road - so why not put a barrier in to be on the safe side? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You're probably picking up the rebar that's in the floor slab and which extends up into the wall from the footings. Basement walls in finished basements almost always have a higher ambient moisture than walls elsewhere in a house. I don't even bother using a moisture meter on concrete - my eyes and hands should tell me what I need to know where concrete is concerned. If you're going to be in this gig, in order to survive, maintain your credibility and keep yourself out of the kind of trouble that attracts lawyers like stink on shit, you must learn to develop your inspector vision and inspector senses; and only use gizmos as a way to verify what you can see, smell and touch. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Robert, It's technically not required if the minimum net-free area of ventilation openings is not less than 1 square foot for every 300 square feet of under-floor area. One ventilation opening needs to be withing 3ft. of each corner of the building, except one side is permitted to have no openings. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Chad, I'm thinking waste oil storage but your guess is as good as mine. The last time I worked for a dealership in NYS, waste oil was dumped into a tank similar to that and anti-freeze was dumped onto the bank behind the building. The dealership had been built on top of a filled in swamp; and the antifreeze drained into the marsh where I'm sure it poisoned plenty of the local flora and fauna and probably contaminated every well within half a mile by 1990. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's a test, When he finds the guy that can answer that question correctly, he's going to fly him to Fiji to inspect his tiki hut and then let him stay there for a week sampling the local, uh...nightlife (Yeah...that's it!), before flying him home again. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike