hausdok

Was there an exterior basement stairwell below that thing? Could it be a painted metal flange where some kind of railing was made using thin galvanized pipe anchored to the wall at a pipe flange above the inside end of the stairwell wall?

Sounds like you have a foundation where they didn't compact the backfill around the foundation. Once they dig that hole, place the foundation, strip the forms and get their drainage media and piping in, they have to backfill around the foundation. The smart contractor does it in "lifts" - 6 to 12 inches at a time - using a compacting machine. Then, when he reaches grade level, which should be no less than about four to six inches below the bottom of the exterior cladding, he adds another inch or so, just in the backfilled area and out to a distance of about six feet from the foundation, 'cuz he know there might still be a little bit of settlement over the next couple of years that will eventually flatten out that area next to the foundation. At that point, depending on where one is in the country the grading around that house needs to slope away from the foundation for at least 1/2-inch (around here) to up to an inch per foot (where I used to live in NY state) away from the foundation for at least the first six feet from the foundation walls. Some builders don't pay much attention to this detail, or homeowners decide they want to plant around the foundation and they start digging up the ground close to the foundation and putting in shrubs. Sometimes those homeowners, not knowing any better, end up taking a perfectly graded yard and causing it to drain the wrong way. Sometimes they leave the ground around the foundation with a negative grade that drains toward the foundation or flat with no ground sloping away and essentially flat. With those, within a few years the ground near the foundation ends up compacting naturally and they end up low spot right next to the foundation that captures and holds water. If water is gathered next to the foundation wall it'll often find a way into a crawlspace or basement. It sounds like that's what you've got going on there. It could be something else though. If you have in-ground downspout receivers the pipe connecting those receivers could be a perf pipe versus a non-perf pipe (Don't laugh, it's done more often than you'd think), there might be downspouts emptying directly onto ground adjacent to the basement wall, there might be a gutter over the squishy area that's got a clogged downspout and is full of water and sagging in the center; and every time it rains it dumps hundreds of gallons of water right next to the house. It could be a footing drain below grade that was never protected against becoming clogged with fine particles and it's causing the ground around the foundation to become waterlogged. You need to walk around that house, imagine you were water and figure out how you'd end up staying next to that foundation. Check the basement, if you have one, for signs of water intrusion. If you've got a crawlspace, get down there and check the perimeter to see if any water is surfacing under the home. If things are dry, you probably only need to adjust your grading. Scrape away any mulch out to a distance of about ten feet from the foundation to look at how the hardpan under the mulch is graded. If the ground slopes consistently away for at least six feet; and the only place water is accumulating is immediately next to the foundation, you might have to bring in some cleaned fill mixed with topsoil - distribute it uniformly around the foundation, flatten it out, grade it properly and then use a drum roller to compact it. Aerate the soil and then hydro-seed it and wait for next spring to see what it looks like. Note: You'll probably have to raise that AC compressor and add another inch or two over what I've already described so that can settle naturally, 'cuz you won't be able to get a roller or compactor beneath the compressor. Well, disregard that, you can if you want to pay an HVAC tech to drain the system and disconnect it, so you can temporarily move it, work the grading, and then, once the grading it fixed, pay him to come back, reconnect everything and charge the system. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! P.S. Hey! Yahoos! I'm bAAAAaaaack!

This is one we can all relate to. A home doesn't sell and the agent blames the inspector. Except.................this time the home didn't sell because a lit cigarette that the agent tossed away, burnt the house down. So, what was the natural response of the agent to his own stupidity? Why, what else, the nimrod blames the home inspector because the inspector's slowness caused him - the agent - to be so stressed that he had to go outside for a cigarette. Yeah, that's right, it's all the inspector's fault. To read more, click here. Thanks to Chris Prickett for this one.

The Daily Mail/July 26, 2016 A 30-year-old married mother-of-one is dead and two others are injured after a house explosion in Benson, Nebraska on Monday. The blast happened shortly after 12:20pm, as home inspector Clara Bender was inspecting the home on the 3800 block of North 65th Street. The blast was so intense that it left only a pile of rubble where the former house used to be, and shook the surrounding homes off their foundations - including one that caught on fire. Good Samaritans and first responders pulled Bender and another woman out of the rubble surrounding the blast site, but Bender later died from her injuries at the hospital. To read more, Click Here

Interested in chapter and verse re. mandatory clearance of the bottom edge of a stucco exterior cladding from grade and from flatwork. Some numbskull built a house with an inner courtyard with in-ground pool surrounded by the house on one side, a high concrete wall on the other, a cabana on the other and an open patio on the fourth. The pool is surrounded by a huge expanse of stamped concrete that goes right up to the structure on all sides and is placed with the top surface about two inches higher than the bottom edge of the stucco cladding,'' Know what to write, just looking for the citation to back me up. It's R703.6.2.1 in the 2003 IRC but I want to go back to the 97 UBC which is what was in place around here until about 1993. If you have it, please shoot the verbiage to hausdok@msn.com Many thinks in advance.

I'm going to build a shed using the latest thing - wattle.

Agree with Bill, Pocket rot is a fungus. It's present in a lot of milled wood and is benign in nature. Any rot occurring to the ends of a log or beam set in concrete could be any of hundreds of forms of wood rot but it is only wood rot occurring where those members rest in pockets in the foundation - it is not "pocket rot"

Yeah, Thanks guys. That's my earliest edition too. I think this guy figures nobody is willing to call his bluff. I'll call JH in the morning. I know one of their techs from lots of prior discussions. If they had a 2005 version he can probably get it to me. If they didn't I'm gonna rain some not-to-pleasant adjectives upon said inspector. It's not so much what he said but the way he said it. I tell folks all the time that the HardiPlank on their homes isn't done the way it would be done today but then I check to determine if it was right at the time it was installed before I start tossing my opinion around like it's gold or something. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, I'm currently fielding a complaint from a former client relative to JH siding wherein the customer is complaining about the fact that another inspector called out the lack of blocking, head flashings and drainage gaps around/above window and door openings on the client's home that is for sale. The home was built in 2006. At the time I did the inspection and wrote that report, I essentially deplored the use of caulk and the lack of head flashings over/around all weather exposed windows and doors. The builder's site super had pushed back, saying that the siding manufacturer did not require head flashings over windows and doors and had pointed out that nothing in the JH installation instructions specifically required them. When the builder's rep pushed back, the client had called me and I'd looked at the then most current installation instructions - published December 2005 - and had to acknowledge to the client that nothing in the instructions specifically required head flashings. in fact all the instructions stated was: "A water-resistive barrier is required in accordance with local building code requirements. The water-resistive barrier must be appropriately installed with penetration and junction flashing in accordance with local building code requirements.". I'd pointed out to the client that I was correct, because of the words, "The water-resistive barrier must be appropriately installed with penetration and junction flashing in according with the local building code requirements." The customer asked me to check with the local code guy. Thinking the code guy would back me up when faced with those instructions, I'd called the code guy; who, to my surprise, did not back me up. He said that in the absence of anything from the manufacturer, specifically requiring head flashings above windows and doors, the flexible self-adhering flashings used behind the siding around the windows and doors, that the builder was claiming were installed, were sufficient to meet their local code requirements. I was irked but I called the client back and had to apologize to him for putting him into an embarrassing position with the builder's rep, who was by then not really very enthusiastic about addressing all of the little cosmetic issues they wanted corrected throughout the house, because he wasn't happy about having them push the nit-picky inspector's report on him. In the end, the builder refused to install any head flashings over any of those weather-exposed windows and doors. OK, now fast forward nearly a decade, the home is up for sale and a buyer's inspector finds water infiltration around some weather-exposed windows and subsequently writes a report wherein he says that blocking, head flashings and drainage gaps are required around all weather exposed windows and doors and the buyer comes back at my client demanding some cost concession because he (the buyer) is going to have to repair some infiltration issues. The buyer pushed back and told them what happened back in 2006 with the builder. The buyer isn't impressed; especially when his inspector tells him that if anyone - the inspector, builder or the local code guy - had bothered to review the JH Best Practices - Installation Guide back then they would have seen the illustrations in the guide that clearly showed how windows had to have blocking, head flashings and drainage gaps installed; and, if that had been shown to the local code guy the local code guy probably would have forced the issue with the builder. My former customer then called the AHJ and whoever he talked to there acknowledged that if they had been shown a copy of the guide clearly requiring the installation head blocking, head flashings and drainage gaps, they would have indeed pushed the issue with the builder; however, since they hadn't ever been shown such a guide, blah, blah, blah............ Can you guess who he called next? Yep, moi. Now, I don't remember exactly when I first became aware of the JH Best Practices - Installation Guide; and I don't remember the first time I'd downloaded and saved a copy to my hard drive. I do know that the guide has swollen from about fifty pages initially to nearly 300 today; but, since I don't have a copy of that initial publication (In fact the earliest one I'd downloaded was in 2010), I can't definitively say that this other inspector is full of shit. Hell, maybe he isn't! So, before I go out there to take a look at that home and discuss this with the unhappy customer, who thinks I wasn't forceful enough in helping him deal with this issue back in 2006, I'd kind of like to know whether anyone has downloaded and saved a copy of the December 2005 James Hardie Best Practices-Installation Guide for the JH fiber-cement products. If so, I'd be ever-so-grateful if said person would be a saint and forward same to me as a zipped file so that I may know before I go out there to talk to this guy whether it should be hat-in-hand with bowed head or wearing brass knuckles ready to do battle with a horse's ass with teeth inspector that has his head tucked so far up his ass that he needs a proctologist to help him floss his teeth. Appreciate any help any of the brethren can provide. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

This site has been up for almost 14 years and that question has been asked her dozens of times and been answered. You want to know anything about this business, just go to each forum and scroll back through the posts and you'll not only learn about the business; you'll learn how to do the business. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) participates in the public process that produces the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). As a participant, the Department develops proposals to be considered as part of the ICC code development process. The links below are to DOE's finalized proposals being submitted to the ICC for inclusion in the 2018 IECC. Anyone wishing to submit comments to ICC on DOE's proposals should do so before the January 11th cutoff for comments. To download a complete (zipped) file of DOE's final draft proposal for the 2018 IECC, Click Here.

bhis (Peter) Welcome to TIJ. I understand you guys are in the middle of spring right now. A friend in Brisbane told me yesterday it was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. Made me jealous as hell. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

RV plug-in or auxiliary generator plug in. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

As I understand it, cotton insulation is expensive and has a decent R value. If it were me, I'd pull it down, lightly mist everything in sight with BoraCare and MoldCare, allow it a day or two to ensure full saturation and then I'd put the insulation back up again. Marc, It's really not that hard to inspect floors joist bays filled with insulation. It's not necessary to see every square inch. After you've done it for a while you learn to spot subtle clues to things going on above the insulation so you can spot check conditions as you move through the crawlspace and only need to zero in, and spend a lot of time on, those areas where your experience tells you there's a need to look deeper. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Just because you don't see all discussions isn't any reason to fret. All of TIJ has always only been visible to moderators and admin folks. Besides the area used by moderators and admin, there are some forums here that can't be seen by non-members and lurkers; that are only visible to those who join the TIJ community. Membership has its privileges. Additionally, I teach a class in the fall semester at North Seattle College and there' a password-protected forum here that's only used by my students. At one time we had a private password-protected area here for a home inspection association; the idea being they could pay TIJ for a forum and have access to what TIJ has to offer in lieu of paying someone to develop a forum for them. It didn't work. We had to terminate it when certain members couldn't resist coming onto the main boards and berating some inspectors that belonged to another association and proselytizing on behalf of their association. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Something is niggling at the back of my mind, I'm certain I've heard/read about this somewhere but right now it's like the Titanic - too deep to reach. Maybe it will come to me in the middle of the night when I'm sound asleep. It's amazing how many times I recall stuff that way. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Probably Silva Wool. See it all the time. Could easily be mistaken for sawdust by anyone that doesn't know any better. I should have taken a photo of the certificate stapled to the rafter in the house I did today. The certificate was from April 1959 and certified that the home had been insulated with the new efficient product, Silva Wool and guaranteed that it would last as long as the home lasted. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Auto-actuator for a hot water loop. Not sure what the purpose would be - perhaps to keep hot water in a line to avoid long waits. When it cools down it allows a valve to cycle hot water into a loop. As that hot water moves into the loop, the bellows heat up and expand and force the valve shut again. When the bellows cool down again they contract and open the valve again to allow hot water to cycle into the loop, and so on....... ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Nice old Italianate. I'm surprised Chad didn't buy it by now. []

Thought this was kind of interesting. http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/flir/ ... yString%7D 320 x 240 resolution. Seems like a couple of years ago you could only get near that on a high-end IR unit. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Fake stucco paint. The house I did today was covered with that crap. I was once told they freeze old tires using liquid oxygen or nitrogen or something like that and then pulverize the frozen tires to get the texture material for that stuff. It's then mixed with the equivalent of garage floor/porch paint and applied over the wood siding. It tends to peel off in large patches whenever the wood beneath it gets damp. Have no idea whether the frozen tire story is true. Back in 2001 during the one year non-compete I did rescuing bungalows in Seattle we stripped all of the T1-11 siding off a really ugly electric blue 1923 Bungalow that some Numbnuts had stripped the original claps off of, installed the T1-11 and then coated the T1-11 with that crap. Jacked the porch overhang up about 4-inches to get it level again, installed some full-span LVL beams under the second level to keep things straight and then replaced the posts at the front corners. Resurfaced the porch in period authentic douglas-fir T & G and re-clad the whole thing in Hardiplank and replicated all of the trim details found in an old 1933 tax assessor photograph. Went from the ugliest house within half a mile to the best looking house on the block. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jeez, I can only wish that I'd have foundation cracks and crawls like that. I think I need to move south. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Jenga !!!! I win!

Builders use pea gravel around here as a way to elevate the floor of the crawlspace above water infiltration. It provides a relatively stable, comfortable-to-crawl-over floor that allows the vapor barrier to lie flat and get good coverage. It doesn't eliminate the water infil but it's not intended to; this is a way of managing the infil. As long as crawl ventilation is working OK and the infil never comes above the height of the gravel those houses seem to do fine. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I really don't like to provide estimates for repairs. From my point of view, it's a can-o-worms waiting to be opened. If you're under, you get blamed; if you're over, you get blamed. It just ain't worth it. I try to make clients understand that if they bring out 30 contractors for an estimate they'll probably only get a few that are within a few thousand of each other and the rest will be all over the place. I tell 'em to concentrate on finding reputable contractors that have references from very satisfied customers and go from there. What got me started on this? The following came into my alerts box this evening and got me thinking about it. Maybe the inspector involved is completely incompetent; or maybe he's just an average inspector who is lousy at doing estimates. In any case, I bet he's regretting having given these folks a dollar figure right now. Read more here What do you think? Do you provide estimates with your inspections?