hausdok

Been wearing ordinary made in China Rockport lace-up shoes forever. Don't know the model. They look like an ankle boot without the boot part. Great traction on roofs, Look OK. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, That's a wood rot fungi. Contact Fred Lugano at Lake Construction in Charlotte, VT. Lugano is a weatherization expert who used to write a lot of stuff for Fine Homebuilding. He specializes in dense-packed cellulose and air sealing issues. I heard he'd stepped back from active construction but that he was still consulting. Give him a shot. I don't have his current phone number but Lake Construction is 802-425-3090. They probably know how to get in touch with him. I agree with the others, air movement from below appears to be severely impacted there; however, it looks to me like you might have a very tiny leak. Look very closely at the ridge vents. If moisture is finding it's way in around one or more of the fasteners holding the ridge vent in place and is then draining down along the rafters there might be more moisture there than normal ventilation can remove. Do something quickly before that fungi spreads and damages the roof deck and rafters. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Where/how is the duct being used? Are you talking about an exhaust vent or an actual heating duct? Exactly what is connected to either end of the duct? What type of "connector" is the source he's cited referring to? Does it pass through a floor, ceiling or wall plane? Photographs? What are the two codes that he's citing? Have you talked with his/her supervisor? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I think it's a best practices for most roofers. However, kickout flashings and a 1-inch gap between siding and the end-cap on a gutter are mandatory for James hardie Siding Products; so if you don't have 'em the siding isn't installed to code. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Click here. This chart talks about water heaters built prior to 2003 but that serial number sequence doesn't fit what you have. I think you have a much older version that lists the week first and the year second instead of those shown on the GSW site that list the year first and the week second. My guess is the J is the warranty code used in 1988 and that your water heater was made the 32nd week of 1988. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I understand, I grew up in a town of 1100 folks. Believe me, I get it. Where I come from, if you got up in someone's face most folks would consider you to be an a**hole for doing so; even if you were right - it's just not considered proper or polite. So, you have to do it in such a way that Mr. dipwad gets the message but can't go around telling folks you'd threatened him directly with loss of his license for suggesting or hinting you should have been nearsighted (If that's what you meant when you said he was not too happy with you). ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Sure, We see leaking seals all the time but we have no way to know what type of seal it is unless we bother to follow up later with whoever did the work to see what was there. I don't have time or the inclination to do that. I doubt many others do either. Personally, I like Sani Seal and that's what I replaced my own with when one leaked; but if you're a plumber trying to maximize your profits a $.59 cent wax ring is a whole lot more attractive than a fancy $10 rubber seal; so I assume that the overwhelming majority of those are wax seals. The plumber figures that if it's installed right, by the time the wax ring goes bad the house will probably be owned by someone else or be well out of the his warranty range. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That'd be the left hand. It's that way throughout the middle east. That's why it's an insult there to touch someone with your left hand. You also don't want to walk into a public crapper over there without bringing a roll of T.P. with you or you might find yourself learning the local custom the hard way. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

If it's 125 years old and hasn't had any issues and doesn't have any now, you don't have to do anything unless you are doing something that you think is going to cause an issue. What are you doing now that makes you think you need to change the ventilation scheme? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yeah, I got that, which is why I said, "The next time." Ferndale is a small place and the guy will probably hold a grudge. The agent is a little bit hamstrung on this one; after all, he hired Kirk in the first place seven months ago. If he starts braying to the buyer that he shouldn't listen to Kirk because he doesn't know what he's talking about, the buyer is going to know it's B.S. because the agent had hired Kirk to inspect the home when he bought it, so the agent is left fuming. The day will undoubtedly come when they meet on another job, where the agent isn't the owner of the home, at which point the agent is probably going to do whatever he can to bust Kirk's balls. There's no better way to shut that stuff down in my opinion than to drop the hint to the agent that if he crosses the line his real estate license could be in jeopardy. It's easy to just say, "Sorry, Bud, but I had to report that stuff, 'cuz my SOP says I have to." It's another thing to say it in such a way that reminds the agent, without bracing him, that he too has limitations on his own conduct and that the same very small group of persons that oversees Kirk's conduct and license is the same that oversees the agent's. Directly bracing the agent in a small town will have a ripple effect if the agent starts running his mouth. Kirk needs to subtly cause the agent to think about what the consequences could be of wanting Kirk to cross the line out of loyalty to him because he'd previously referred work to Kirk. Sorry if that was lost on folks. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Don't refer to it as a "Juliet" balcony; it's just a balcony. Oh, and if you get one of those that's primarily a railing, is maybe only large enough to hang a flower box on and you can't stand on, it's called a balconet, not a balconette. Using the second definition in a report is liable to have readers laughing so hard their sides ache and leave you pretty red faced. Don't ask me how I know that. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The next time the agent starts busting your balls about an inspection, remind the agent that you have a standard of practice that you must comply with. Tell him that the days of the good 'ol boy inspectors and agents winking at each other and scratching each others' backs in order to make sales work and to get referrals here in Washington state is supposed to be behind us; and that you now have a code of ethics you must follow or risk the loss of your license, just like he does. Point out that the division of DOL that administers your license in Olympia is the exact same group of folks that administers real estate licenses; and that he's free to call Rhonda Myers, the inspector program manager, at Real Estate Licensing Division (360-664-6524) and register a complaint with her if he thinks you didn't inspect the home in accordance with the SOP or violated the code of ethics. Rhonda is a former real estate agent but she likes us guys and wants us to do good inspections. She'll put him in his place real fast the first time he starts complaining that you queered the deal by doing a thorough SOP compliant inspection and following your code of ethics. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hey, I was responding to the only interesting thing in the post. I could have picked on other stuff, but that would have been boring, like pointing out the difference between "your" and "you're". Hah, Give it a few more years. When your own brain starts turning to pudding you'll start mixing them up yourself. Putting my diaper on now. Gonna go sit in the corner and suck my thumb. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Ouch, Your just mean, Jim. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

30 years in the stucco business? As what, a marketing guy? No expansion joints, no accessory joints under windows. Of course it cracked. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Marc, The type of escrow I'm talking about is sometimes called a Business Opportunity Escrow; and, yes, it's usually handled by an attorney. Those firms can work with you to arrange payment in a case like this. They set up an account and the client transfers the funds to the the BOE account set up for your transaction and only releases the funds when the work/product is delivered. If you contact a local real estate escrow company, they'll know which attorneys in your area handle BOE. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

High road or not, If he'd stiffed me, I'd expect full payment on the previous job before I ever went back there to repair that damage; and then I'd want the full cost of the new job, based on my estimate (plus 20% to cover unanticipateds) put in escrow to be released to me at the conclusion of the job, before I'd start. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, You're right. It does cause the ends of the rakes to rot. Most roofers here cut a couple really narrow strips of asphalt and install them shingle fashion on top of that. Some, not many, cover them with bits of metal. Lots of times, if they aren't tacked down or adhered with mastic, those pieces blow off like the strip shown in the photo below. As I said, it's a design choice. It hides those ugly gutter ends and folks seem to prefer that to what you've got in that photo. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Yep, I know all to well about the brown recluse. About ten years ago, maybe longer - can't remember the date that well, I did a crawlspace that had an over-population of those big gray wolf spiders. They and their webs don't really bother me; I just push past them and if they get squished they get squished - most of the time they take off as soon as they sense the vibrations. The wolf spiders should have been the tell, since they are the only natural predator of the brown recluse here, according to Prof. Antonelli at Wa State Dept of Agri, but I didn't give them much thought. After I collected my check and was driving down the road, I suddenly felt a burning hot sting in the center of my back. I pulled over, jumped out of the truck, pulled out my shirt tail and started shaking out what I thought was a wasp trapped under my shirt. Didn't see anything, so I got back in the truck. A couple of miles later my vision started to blur and I started seeing double. I went to the nearest emergency room. By then I had a splitting headache and felt like I was going to pass out. The doctors compared what they were looking at to some kind of photographic flip book and concluded that I'd been bitten by a brown recluse. They gave me a shot of something and put me on a drip thingy and a while later I was back to normal with a hangover and a nasty itchy spot on my back that never really healed. For weeks I had the sensation 24/7 of someone raking dry fingernails across my back. After about a month the spot on my back still hadn't healed and they were talking about cutting it out. They gave it some more time though and it eventually healed on its own. Now that spot doesn't have any feeling. Not a nice experience. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Why would anyone have an irrigation system in Seattle? [] I ask myself that question all the time; but, believe it or not, we have relatively dry summers here. In fact, I once saw somewhere where they'd documented that more rain falls in Phoenix between May and September than falls in Seattle. We have extremely long 70deg F days most of the summer, it rarely hits 90deg and when it does that's usually for only an hour or two, and there's a ton of stuff to do a stone's throw from one's house. You don't want to move here though, unless you're prepared to deal with six or seven months of gray days with not a whole lot of sunlight; rain, rain and more rain and the feeling that it's always either nighttime or dusk. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, In answer to Robert, yeah, report the missing gutter on the shed dormer. In answer to Joe and Ben, they've been doing that here for a hundred years. We have very deep overhanging eaves here that help to shield the walls from the weather. In fact, the eave of that dormer is short compared to the others on that house, and the rake boards on the lower roof are even a little short because they don't completely conceal the ends of the gutters, which is the way they are usually cut here. The Klondike gold strike occurred in the late 1890's which was smack dab in the middle of the craftsman era, and it was during that time that this region had one of its biggest population/construction explosions. During that era, it was all about exposed woodwork and brackets and rake board design is an important aspect of that design esthetic. It's carried over to this day. Check out the rake boards on this 4-year old townhome which tries to emulate that bracketed style (These eaves are a little shorter than the typical overhang here. Getting up on that roof was....interesting.) Click here Tom, It rains a little bit here and that rain doesn't just last for a little while like the typical eastern gully washer - it continues for days. Algae and moss will typically develop in the shaded area below/besides dormers. The black algae is more aggressive than the green algae but I have no idea why. That combination of algae and water cascading onto the surface can cause the the protective surface granules to slough off and you end up with heavy wear where the water strikes the surface. The typical solution here is a gutter with a downspout that empties onto the lower roof. It works fine except that if a homeowner here isn't careful to kill any algae that developes at the outflow of the downspout he ends up with a concentrated area of wear right there at the outflow. I see it all the time where there is algae growing at outflows while the roof is fine where there is no fungi. Had one recently where the house was oriented so that the front of the house was exposed to the southwest. The downspout of that dormer's gutter, being on the southwest side, was on the weather-exposed side of the house but the roof was in perfect shape there because that's also the sunny side here and the UV exposure had killed the algae. On the opposite (northeast) side, there was algae growing below an identically-configured downspout and on that non-weather/non-sunny side of the house therre was black algae all over the roof and the water from the gutter had caused an ugly christmas-tree-shaped swath of granules to slough off from the downspout outflow all the way to the gutter at the edge of the lower roof plane. So, a gutter narrows the area of damage but it doesn't eliminate it unless they add a butt-ugly downspout lying on the surface of the roof from the corner of the dormer to the gutter; or they are careful to ensure the fungi that develops is killed in a timely manner. Sorry, can't point to any "scientific" proof of this. All I can tell you is that after 16 years of making observations of roofs here, one kind of gets a handle on what works, what doesn't and why. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Uh, Nancy David, see that little box that says IP above the posts? That means we can look at your IP. If you're going to try and drop your spam links on this site, you could at least give us credit for having at least half a brain and use two different IP's to do so. Your user names have been locked, your post edited to remove the link and now this thread is locked. You just wasted your time.

Hi Mark When I said "swimming pool bleach" I was referring to sodium hypochlorite but the exact name slipped my mind at the time of typing - seems to happen a lot lately - so I substituted bleach. It's actually a lot more aggressive than ordinary Clorox. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Buy a gallon of liquid swimming pool cholorine, pour it into a pump sprayer, add a pint of dove liquid dishwashing detergent and fill the rest with warm water. Some evening when dry weather is predicted overnight, wet the mossy area down with the solution. In the morning, rinse it off with a garden hose. Don't get it on the shrubs or flower beds or you'll be replanting. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Steven, They work, but only for a short distance. Around here they seem to keep the algae and moss off the shingles for about four courses and after that it's game on. I suppose you could install them every four or five courses and have a tiger-striped roof, though. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike