hausdok

Good job! Guess those houses will end up being an interesting experiment to see how long that stuff will function adequately as cripple wall bracing. Should be interesting the next time we have a significant quake. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

L-P allows their lap siding to be nailed directly to studs as long as there is a weather resistant barrier between the siding and the studs as you've described. As Jim has said, brace panels would still be required at a cripple wall even though most of it might be lap siding nailed directly to the studs with nothing but wrap between the studs and the siding. You did check to ensure there was a WRB between that old L-P and that vinyl siding and you did go inside and traverse that entire crawlspace to verify there weren't any brace panels in place, and to inspect all of the other things you can't see from the hatch, right? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

'58 Packard Hawk (Stude K chassis) with a Stude 289. OT - OF!!! M.

My paternal grandfather was a coal miner. He smoked. He died of emphyzema when I was about four or five. Miners die from a lot of different stuff. I think that trying to make a direct connection between radon and lung cancer in folks who've never entered a mine in their lives and lung cancer and other lung diseases in folks who go down into that environment every day is a real stretch. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It could end up being an issue. Vapor diffusion will push moisture-laden interior air toward cooler/drier air. If things get too cool in the crawlspace vapor could condense on that cold plastic and become trapped between the underside of the floor and the plastic and lead to wood rot. He'd need to insulate the rim joist above the foundation at the perimeter of the crawl as well as the foundation wall and the underside of the floor to ensure things never cool to dewpoint. He'd need to ensure there is zero air leakage behind that plastic at the perimeter of that room, so they don't have a situation where moist air is condensing there. Lots of little details needed to get it right. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

My LED Maglites are plenty satisfactory for what we do and they're made in Ontario, California. http://www.maglite.com/mag_commitment.asp ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

What kind of foundation are we talking about? Slab, crawlspace or basement?

Is that an electric heater? If so, it has to be opened up a couple of times a year to blow/vacuum out all of the dust, pet hair and lint that accumulate inside. If one goes all summer without cleaning them out, come winter when you start to use them the crud that builds up inside smoulders and the wall gets smoke stained and the home smells like a crematorium. I can walk through a house with those electric heaters, and, before I even open them up, identify which ones will be full of dust and hair and whatever just by all of the smoke stains. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Well, if an electrician is saying he has no way to confirm whether the Inspector III is right or not, isn't the electrician basically admitting he's more of a math moron than I am? Think about it, what's the voltage range that 120-volts stuff has to operate within? Isn't it 108 to 132 volts? That's 120-volts plus or minus 10% isn't it? OK, if the Inspector III says that voltage drop is 11%, doesn't every electrician have a multi-meter? If he checks voltage at that receptacle and the needle is hovering at just under 107-volts wouldn't that agree with the Inspector III since 120 - 11% is 106.8 volts? Wouldn't that voltage be unacceptable because now the voltage is below the required operating range for 120-volt devices? My guess is that the Inspector III measures existing voltage, determines if it's below 120-volts and then calculates what that voltage would be percentage-wise below the ideal of 120 volts. Seems like that would be fair. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I watched a couple of shows two nights ago. One was Holmes on Homes and the other was Holmes Inspections. To tell you the truth, I didn't see much difference in either show so I don't know why he calls it Holmes "Inspections." They went through a house that had been inspected. The inspector missed a couple of rinky dink things but the more serious stuff they eventuallyuncovered was completely concealed from view and couldn't have been discovered by any inspector, including Holmes, unless/until they started tearing into stuff. They had a house built in the 60's is my guess with a large Edison Fuse box. The Inspector had told the owner to upgrade but they didn't do it. When Holmes brought in his electrician to upgrade the panel, he declared that all of the wiring was screwed up and had to be replaced. His basis for that condemnation was a sloppy main panel. I didn't buy it. I've seen lots of sloppy main panels and found the rest of the wiring was OK. Anyway, that was Holmes' cue to tear out the walls and ceilings of that basement and redo it all. What does the viewer take away from that? Oh, look at that, Holmes found bad wiring and now because the other inspector screwed up they have to have a whole new basement built. What a crock! Anyway, I felt it was way over the top. The lady customer has noted a hollow sound at a concrete stoop covered with tile and the inspector had apparently told her it wasn't anything to worry about. Well, the tile was not a good choice for outside, I'll agree with that, but when told to look at what was under the tile on the stoop the guy went clear through the hollow concrete stoop with a bore hammer revealing the typical cavity beneath. Holmes declared it screwed up and they brought in a landscaper who demolished the front stoop, excavated down to the base of the foundation, put in Delta Drainj, backfilled and then the put another stoop in place, this one covered with field stone. So, inappropriate tile becomes a major demolition, excavation, rebuild with an upgrade and viewers are left thinking that the hapless inspector was a whole lot more negligent than simply not telling them they should use a different surface on the front porch - they're left thinking that he should have know, or been able to reveal, what was going on beneath the front porch. They later installed a new 200 amp panel and then placed it inside of a cabinet with wood doors (Hello, working space rule, Holmes, you big idiot.). Then they "fixed" the "backdrafting" flue on a water heater that was being vented into a masonry chimneystack but absolutely nothing was said about the fact that that gas water heater was confined in a small space without any outside air in the same room as a clothes dryer! How f*****g stupid are you, Holmes? As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon." ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike "You can't fix stupid." - Ron White

Maybe some kind of clear coat applied to the roof that's reacted with the shingles. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The stains are a form of algae. It will grow in shaded areas right on the roof surface. The shingles look like they're either really old or are reacting to some kind of chemical. Did you test a corner of a tab to see if they're crystalized all the way through? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, In new construction around here that would be a GFCI protected receptacle and the receptacles in the adjacent dinette/dining room (whatever you want to call it) are also GFCI protected. If there are receptacles on the countertop on the other side of that top (breakfast bar - whatever) I'm not going to call it. Common sense says if you're in the kitchen and need to plug something in on the countertop you aren't going to the next room searching. I say that because I have that exact setup; and, though I know there is a receptacle there, I've never tried to plug in a kitchen appliance there because I have plenty of countertop receptacles. If there were a row of chairs for a breakfast bar there only a horses ass with teeth would go to all the trouble of searching behind those chairs for a receptacle when there are receptacles on the other side of that top. You can what if this stuff and invent wild scenarios all day long. At some point you just have to stop trying to find reasons to criticize something and use your noggin. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Rocky, If you haven't figured it out yet, this is a home inspectors forum; not an interior decorators' forum. We don't generally give advice on interior drapes and carpeting 'cuz a lot of the time when we go into a home those are so nasty or hideous that we don't even want to touch them. If you're concerned about health aspects; find a forum frequented by industrial hygienists or allergists. Good luck. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Have them install a rain cap with a male extension through the roof and connect the bath fan to the rain cap with an insulated connector; not an uninsulated foil or plastic connector. Don't allow them to leave any dips in the connector that will collect water and eventually overflow and flow back. Make sure whoever does it knows how to keep the roof singles in proper drainage plane around the rain cap. If the word 'caulk' comes out of his mouth, get someone else - those can be installed completely caulk free and never leak. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

It's jackleg work. Where's the bond to the neutral bus? He didn't have enough room on that bus for all of the grounded conductors as well as the equipment grounding conductors and he was too lazy to install a bus to handle the excess equipment grounding conductors. Ask yourself if that's been done in a workmanlike manner and if not write it up and call it was it is - a rat's nest. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I get a lot of folks who want to dicker. I think it's a cultural thing because the overwhelming majority of my clients are from other countries where haggling over price is an ordinary part of doing business.

Bill is right, Rename those photos and eliminate spaces and symbols. Not picture of house&car use picture_of_house_and_car.

Don't evaluate washers and dryers. They are nice-to-have accessory options and aren't part of the house. Look at the plumbing connected to them, look at the receptacles, look at drains, but leave the danged machine alone. If the buyer or the spouse wants to test it they know just as much as you do about testing it. You can't teach 'em anything about it that they don't already know so let 'em go for it on their own. If they break it they buy it. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, You're off base because you kept talking about mold in your correspondence to the inspector, which tells me you have some kind of idea in your head that you're somehow going to be poisoned by "toxic" mold. Get that whole mold idea out of your mind; the concern is woodrot fungi, not mold. Toxic mold is a myth. The vent is leaking against the underside of the roof and is causing the OSB to rot. It's in first stage - incipient stage - and right now it's just starting to delaminate a little bit. Eventually, if it's not corrected, it will reach second - intermediate - stage and it will look like the OSB in the photo below. If it's not corrected at that point, it will progress to third - advanced - stage and the roof deck will become untenable. By then, incipient rot will have infestd the nearby framing and it will continue its progression until someone does something about it. The longer it's ignored, the more it costs to fix. Right now, it's cheap to fix. The fix is easy, replace the roof jack vent with a proper rain cap with a male extension that comes through the roof. Properly connect and seal the connector from the fan to that extension; so that 100% of all that air goes outside, and then treat the underside of the roof deck, and all visible wood around it, with BoraCare, Timbor, Concrobium or some other borate-based fungicide to kill the spore and make the surface toxic to fungi spore. If you really want to get fancy, have the roof around the vent soda or dry-ice blasted to remove all of the discoloration before you treat it with the fungicide - that way, it won't become an issue at future resale. All of that should cost a few hundred bucks at the most. You and your family are not at risk and your house isn't ready to fall down. He made a mistake because he doesn't have a good understanding of how the wood rot fungi mechanism works. Now he gets a chance to learn so that he won't make the same mistake again. You both win. Any attempt to go beyond that will just be a shameful attempt at a money grab. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hey "Brain" (Not!!!) Aspergillus, penicillium, stachybotrys and cladosporidium are all ubiquitous in the air we breath - everywhere all the time. So, you want to create a kit that will put money in your pocket to tell folks what they should be told for free - that they've been breathing these so-called "toxic" molds all their lives. Unless one has a compromised immune system or pre-existing sensitivity to molds and pollens, the molds that you and the other hucksters are calling "toxic" are no more toxic to them than common road dust? Creating something to "test" for that is like creating something to prove there's hydrogen in water - it's a scam and we don't want any part of telling you how to fleece people. Here's your feedback, Take your friggin' snake oil idea and shove it where the sun won't shine and don't come back here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

They're pretty amazing creatures; but they've never learned to read English, so I'm certain they've never read the literature that warns that exposure to creosote can lead to cancer. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Bill, That's because we have folks jumping into this business that are approaching it like selling fruit. On this company's website a house half that size - 8,500 sf - costs $899 with a pool and spa. I don't know how a company that plans to be as large as these guys say they are going to be expects to stay in business at those rates. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I've found about half a dozen done like that. They all had that same leakage and the OSB was delaminating around them exactly as it is in that photo. Instead of spending $20 on a decent rain cap with a male extension that goes completely through the roof and is seamless, they screwed a homemade flange beneath a hole on the underside of the roof and installed the connector between the fan and the roof. On the other side of the deck is a jack vent. The homemade flange isn't sealed to the underside of the roof and the mesh in the jack gets clogged with dust sent up there by the fan (A regular rain cap uses mesh with a larger grid that dust passes through). If the hole in the roof is smaller than the connector and causes a restriction or the dust accumulation becomes too great, air gets pushed out between the flange and the roof and that moisture condenses on the cold OSB at nights, in winter and on the shaded side of the roof. Fungi spore finds that moisture and starts to feed on the starches and sugars on the OSB. The deck eventually starts to rot.

In my area, the thing that gets granule-covered mod bit is decaying fir needles. If the thing stays clean, yes, 25 or 30 years shouldn't be a problem. But if it gets covered with a matt of decaying needles, the decay process seems to just eat up the bitumen as if someone poured acid on it.Hi, Yeah, it is acid - tannic acid to be exact. Wet tree debris is full of the stuff and it causes the bitumen to start hardening and makes the granules slough off - that's why I give 'em about fifteen years around here. Robert will probably go up there and get all of that crud off the roof on a regular basis but the average homeowner around here doesn't seem to go up on the roof to clear that stuff until the downspouts are so packed with needles that when they freeze they split the downspouts wide open or when the built-in gutters start overflowing onto the face of the fascia and cascading down on the main entry or deck. Then they suddenly get interested. Down in the city where there are very few trees tall enough to dump a ton of needles on top of those flat roofs, no problem, they seem to look new after ten to fifteen years. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike