hausdok

It rains some? Boy, is that an understatement. I see it all the time. I don't think there's a whole lot anyone can do about it. Think about it for a minute. We get our lumber here fresh from the yards, only days from the mill and little longer from the forests - unlike folks elsewhere in the country. Ever moisture checked new lumber on a building site here? Doesn't matter what they claim, the stuff is usually 13% or higher and hasn't even begun to dry and distort yet. They put it in when framing and by the time the last coat of paint goes on that wood has dried and begun to squirrel around, causing all of the buckling that we see so much. I hardly ever see a builder culling a pile of lumber here, but back East in my younger days we had to go through two piles to get one of straight lumber, because all of that wood from this neighborhood dries, warps, twists and cups on its way to the East coast, so we left a lot of it at the yard. I don't see that happening much here. What do you think? Is that a reasonable hypothesis or have I been into Aunt Sadie's brandy batch? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Steven, I'm on my way out the door, so I don't have time to elaborate. Do a google search for Louisiana-Pacific "Innerseal" siding and for Weyerhaeuser siding. Both have panel products like this. So didn't Omni-Wood, Semtex and others - just about all of which were involved in some type of class action. Did you happen to take a picture of it? If so, post it here and I'll try and get back to you tonight with an answer based on grain pattern. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Kurt, Try this one: http://www.flexibleduct.org/ADC_Inst.htm ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Sorry, I should have logged on earlier. The Bryant was manufactured the 9th week of 1981. The Reliance is made by State and was manufactured in October of 96. You can take that to the bank. Oh, by the way, the water heater was also part of the water heater diptube settlement. The time period for that settlement has already expired, but you might want to recommend the clients have the plumbing and the filter screens on the water heater and washing machine inlets flushed, just to make sure they aren't clogged with bits of polypropylene. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, I'll be going back to a job today at the request of a client to inspect a nearly 4 story high roof that was initially unreachable from the ground with my 22ft. LG clone. It's brand new construction. I did it with my binos as best I could and explained to the client that I walk 99% of them, but occasionally get one that is too high to reach. It looked pretty good from the ground with binos, but, those of you who walk most roofs, like I do, know that what looks good from the ground is often not actually the case. So, I disclaimed in writing any potential issues not viewable through the binos and told him to ensure that he's got a good roof warranty, just in case. Yesterday he called me back and asked if I would return to reinspect the roof. I said sure, but the rental cost for a 40ft. ladder, and for delivery to and from the site, was his to bear and my minimum charge for a reinspection is a two hour minimum. Plus, he was going to have to be there to help me manhandle that monster into place and to brace the bottom of it for me. He agreed. So, I'm on the way this morning to look at that roof. Guess it had to happen sooner or later. I know most of you don't carry 40ft. ladders - except Rob Amaral or Jimmy Morrison perhaps - but I'm wondering if anyone else has ever had to do this before. What say you all? OT - OF!!! M.

Thanks Norm, I think Markus has probably been getting what he needs. I'm still waiting for my step-brother to call back. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Pete, Go over to my Building Science forum at the Journal of Light Construction Online and scoll the archives. You'll find plenty of information about these topics. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, My step-brother is a contractor in Florida and I think he recently moved to that area, so I put in a call to see if he could get me some answers for this fellow. He might be more help than we are, since my step-mother is Swiss and I think he speaks fluent German. (I know my step-sister does, but Tom might have forgotten. I used to, but I'm waaay out of practice.) By the way, didn't I just recently read somewhere that the electrical and building codes are posted someplace on the internet in Florida? Does anyone know about this? Mark perhaps? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Chris, Your post prompted me to check and I found out you were right. Marie from Los Angeles has the exact same IP address as [edited] from Canada. Hmmm, I wonder what the odds of that are? OT - OF!!! M.

That gave me a chuckle Chad. I remember the first time I saw one of those things. My first thought was, "Man, the engine in that thing must be a bitch to work on." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! M.

Sure Chad, Go to the Stucco Manufacturers Association site, click on 'About Stucco', then on 'The Stucco Resource Guide' and you can order your own copy. While you're there, peruse the technical bulletins and stuff. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Rob, I've got the same manual, but it must be earlier or later. Your T4 is my T5 and your T2 is my T7. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Danny, It's close to right. It needs a head flashing, a slight taper on top of that trimmer and a little bit of clearance (about 3/8 inch) from the bottom of the casing bead to the head flashing. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi David, I dunno, I've often thought, when straddling joists while belly-crawling the length of attics in our ubiquitous "airplane" ramblers with their 1-1/2:12 pitch roofs that I could do it better if I had a couple of stiff boards to leapfrog through the space ahead of me. It would make it especially helpful when one reaches the far and and needs to turn around without going through the ceiling joists in a space barely high enough for my...um,..."stocky" body. Sometimes I find that a homeowner has nailed a string of 1 by 6's the length of these animals and I get in and out in about 1/5 the time it takes to do it without something to slide along the top of. A couple of nice stiff boards would be helpful in these. However, in our higher attics with their 16 inches of blown-in fiberglass or rockwool I think that compressing all of that insulation beneath a board would make it a whole lot tougher to re-loft the insulation as one comes back out of the attic, and it could damage the drywalled ceilings by bowing the drywall downward and causing the fasteners to pull through. The damage might not be spotted right after the inspection, but it would eventually appear when the mud and tape over the fasteners began to crack and come loose. I do most stand-up attics with deep blown-in insulation in my stocking feet and use my feet to feel beneath the insulation and ensure I'm resting my foot on a solid member and not on pipes, wires and whatever. You have to be real careful not to step on a truss gusset and cut your foot and to make sure you don't step on a nail sticking up through a framing member, but you get a whole lot better feel for what you're standing on than when wearing shoes. Works for me. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Dave, Cantilivered walls are supposed to have a casing bead with weep holes. The wall sheathing should extend a minimum of 3/4 inch below the framing, your water resistant barrier (2 layers grade D paper)extends the full length of the sheathing and is behind your casing bead, sefl-furring lath is applied and overlaps the casing bead and then stucco is applied. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Kurt is right, Without specifics, it's difficult to say. If the roof is under-ventilated and exhaust devices are venting into the attic, the inspector should have pointed these out in his report. However, even if the roofer screwed up, if you contact him, attempt to get him to rectify it and he refuses, it'll probably cost a whole lot more than $1600 to take it to court and get a judgment. If you report it to your insurance company, you'll probably generate a CLUE report that will follow you later on and could end up costing you a whole lot more than $1600 over the ensuing years. If it were me, I'd eat the $1600 and call it the cost of an education. However, it's your call, nobody can make it for you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It might not be "mold" at all. When people think of "mold" they are usually thinking of stachy or one of the alleged "toxic" varieties, when that might not even be the case. In most cases that I see, this is caused by exhaust fans that are allowed to vent into the attic. Lots of roofers don't like to install small outlets, known as rain caps, through the surface of their shake roofs, because of the difficulty flashing them so they won't leak. So, unless you specified they be installed when the shake roof was replaced, this might not have been done during the reroof and your fans continued to vent into the attic. That excess moisture is what might have caused your discolored sheathing. Shake roofs breath really well. Because of this characteristic, I find them performing fine all the time when under-ventilated - even with exhaust fans venting into the attic. I also find discolored decking all the time, where the shakes have been torn off, solid decking has been added and the roofers didn't increase the amount of ventilation or install rain caps for the exhaust fans. Most of the time, the discoloration ranges from light to dark gray, depending on the length of time that the attic has been under-ventilated. In the majority of these, the deck is still solid with no sign of delamination or bloom. In these cases, I recommend that they correct the ventilation and treat the underside of the roof with BoraCare - a glycerin-borate mixture. BoraCare is toxic to all forms of fungal growth and soaks into wood up to 1-1/2 inches. In an attic, it effectively arrests any fungal growth in the wood and prevents it from spreading. This usually does the trick. Even if it isn't "toxic mold" in the classic sense, once the ventilation issues are corrected, the discoloration needs to be arrested and treated so that it doesn't develop into something else and spread to your framing and the house. Around here, the outfit that specializes in treating attics and crawls with BoraCare gets a little over a dollar a square foot and insists on doing all exposed wood in the space infested, or they won't do the job at all. Given the stigma that attaches to the word "mold" these days, Chad is right, $1600 is cheap. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Paul, I have an ST-1D. No lights at all is supposed to indicate no juice on the hot conductor. With an open neutral or with a reversed hot and ground you'll have a left and a center light lit and the right light will be out. However, the SureTest will not identify "multiple" deficiencies, reversal of ground and neutral conductors nor detect two hot wires on a circuit, so maybe there is more going on there than just an open neutral. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Keep it adult and keep the unprofessional conduct off the board or see it edited out. OT - OF!!! M.

Yeah, I was thinking it was 8ft, but I didn't bother to chime in 'cuz I have no idea what goes on down there in SBCC country. Last year I did the last house in a new development for a lady. Found the vent 4ft. from a side wall and called it. The builder had a fit. I showed him my Code Check West (Thanks Douglas, Mike and Redwood) and he insisted all was fine anyway. He called the AHJ out, showed the guy the reference and the AHJ went, "Oops! Guess I screwed up, 'cuz the inspector's right," said the AHJ. They ended up moving a total of about ten vents in that development and the builder was a whole lot friendlier to me and a whole lot upset with the muni guy. I don't have any code "books". I have all of the CodeChecks and I think those are about all I need. They are reasonably accurate, easy to use, don't require a huge investment and they boil the codes down to short concise statements instead of all of the booorrrrring technical jargon that is hard enough for me to read, let alone my clients. Glad you were able to get the right answer for your area Danny. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ummm, Then you're back to what the local municipality allows versus what the code says. A few years ago I found six layers of asphalt roofing on a 100 year old tudor in downtown Seattle. I called the code guys downtown and asked them how this could occur when everyone knows that more than two layers is not allowed. "Easy," the guys said, "We never adopted that provision of the code. If a homeowner wants to put ten or even twenty layers on we don't care. He's doing it at his own risk." I was flabbergasted, but there it was. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

very carefully?[] OT - OF!!! M.

Hi Terry, I'm not sure what you mean by "cultured" brick. Do you mean that the bricks are all concrete bricks of different colors made to look like clay brick? Was it a full-concrete veneer that has had a brick coursing pattern cut into. Or, was it a faux brick facing adhered to a bed or Portland cement over extruded wire lath and then struck to look like full-depth brick? If it is a full brick veneer it needs weeps and through-wall flashings. If a concrete face over lath or faux bricks set into a bed over lath, it should be done like veneer and be clear of the soil and any flatwork so it can drain from behind. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nope, It's Silvawool. I see the stuff 6 or 7 times a month. It's shredded wood that's been borate treated. OT - OF!!! M.

Hi, It was sold out here under the brand name Silvawool. It's essentially shredded wood fiber. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! M.