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Prima! Once again, the guys at TIJ come through for someone by finding another way to skin a cat. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You do realize that I'm in Seattle and that those of us living in what's known as "The Emerald City" tend to be kind of OZ-like, haven't you? Come-on, pull back my curtain, I dare you. I'm not wearing anything underneath. Bwahahaha! Seriously, want a trip to OZ? You've got to come to Seattle and poke around Freemont for a day. They take weird to a whole new level down there; they've even got a parade where the participants are nude. You'll swear you must have gone to OZ. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, There are only six water heater manufacturers in the U.S. and all-totaled they manufacture more than 100 brands of water heaters. Rheem makes the GE water heater as well as 18 other brands, so the idea that the tank is "thin" is kind of ludicrous. I'd be interested to see if any of the brands that were recommended in opposition to the GE were made by Rheem as well. If you are going to buy a conventional tank type electric type water heater they are all similar in design and most share parts provided through the same jobbers that are manufactured by the same manufacturing companies, so claims that some are superior to others are specious. You can take a very cheap electric tank type water heater, place it next to an expensive tank-type water heater, perform regular periodic maintenance on the cheap water heater and ignore maintenance on the expensive water heater and the cheap water heater will cost about the same to operate and will last as long, if not longer, than the expensive water heater. How long they last and how well they perform will depend entirely on the quality of water in your area, the way you use hot water and how much and what type of maintenance you perform on the water heater. You can be sure of one thing - your experience will differ from others'. I've read some of the water heater, furnace and other home electro-mechanical system reviews online and have learned one thing; don't believe a whole lot of quality reviews posted by anyone online because no two products produced by the same manufacturer, installed by different techs and owned and maintained by different consumers is going to perform the same way. Consumer expectations, maintenance and service life results will be all over the place. Want one that will last? Buy one made by AO Smith, Bradford-White, Rheem, State, American or Lochinvar, read the instruction/installation manual - you know, the one in the plastic pocket on the side of the tank that most people have never bothered to even look at let alone read - and then ensure that the tech that installs it has read that manual too and installs it to those specs, and then maintain it religiously in accordance with the instructions found in that manual. Do that and you'll be happy with your choice. Don't do that and you'll be one of those caterwauling on the net in a few years about the terrible product you'd purchased and the lousy customer service you'd received. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. I've removed your duplicate post. These are busy guys. They get a little irritated when they see multiple posts about the same topic here and never fail to let me know that it irritates them. Ed.

That right side bus is functioning as a service grounding bus. You can see the service grounding conductor attached at the upper right disappearing out through the upper right side of the enclosure. The green screws are not "grounding" screws, they are bonding screws. If that were a sub-panel, the bond screw would be left out of the left bus, to isolate the neutral bus from the enclosure, and all grounded (neutral) conductors would be on the left bus. The green bonding screw would still be installed in the right bus to ensure that the enclosure was grounded and all equipment grounding conductors would end on that right bus. When it's a service entrance panel, the the grounded conductors and the equipment grounding conductors don't need to be isolated and the two green bonding screws allow the enclosure the function the same way that a tie bar normally functions. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike (Dang, just posted and saw that Katen beat me to it with, of course, a far simple explanation than my rambling.)

Hi, As I was reading down I was thinking to myself, "Maybe it's none of those reasons and this has been installed because the owner or the installer knows someone that died from CO poisoning and is now a little bit paranoid about gas water heaters." Then I read Scott's post. Scott, Thank You for providing that service to our troops. Making ends meet as a soldier is bad enough; I can't imagine what it must be like for a soldier's widow, especially if the soldier didn't bother to purchase additional life insurance above and beyond what the military provides and if the soldier was in debt. If there is a heaven, they've probably already got your director's chair with your name on it in place and waiting for you. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike P.S. Sorry, Scott. I'd forgotten to answer your question about how often I see spill switches. The answer is rarely - probably less than half a dozen a year.

I'll second that. I took their two-day course back in 1998 and they gave me a handful of those NCR reports. Gawd, what a nightmare to work with. You've got my sympathy. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Scott, It's a flue gas sensor with a manual rest - commonly known as a spill switch. You've correctly identified its purpose. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I'd assumed it was a basement or crawlspace. To underpin a wall like that, you have to do a whole lot of excavation on the exterior but from the interior you might have to go down only a foot to 18 inches max. On the exterior you have to deal with landscaping and then backfilling in lifts and tamping every six inches or so; from the interior, you pretty much just need to backfill and tamp once. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's Peanut, my wifes Yorki-Poo. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike So, changing your avatar is supposed to make us think of you as a cute puppy and not a big ass? Thanks for posting the chart - it be handy. Nah, It'd take a whole lot more than a cute picture to make anyone think of me as anything other than an ass. He's full grown, more than two years old and 3-1/2 pounds soaking wet. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

That's Peanut, my wifes Yorki-Poo. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi All, My frustration pays dividends for TIJ Members. I got tired of always trying to figure out the date codes for the Bradford White water heaters. I knew how the system cycled and everything, but the water heater date chart we've got here on TIJ, which explains the system but leaves it up to the user to calculate, plus the old chart I'd downloaded from the B-W site, were still too brain straining to use (For me anyway - you all know how lousy I am with anything that requires calculating numbers). Consequently, I made a new chart and have uploaded it here in two versions - Word and Pdf. Hope you can all put it to good use. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike PDF Link Word Link

Have your contractor add a footer under the wall 4ft. at a time skipping every other 4ft. section. Make sure the contractor uses dobies and #4 rebar to reinforce the new footer and extends the rebar into the earth at either end of the footing excavations so that when the area between the first set of new footers is excavated there will be something to tie into. Use Form-a-Drain for the form on the inside. Wait a month for the first set of blocks to cure and then go back and excavate the earth between each of those 4ft. sections and repeat the process until you've filled in all area between blocks. Connect your drain tile to the Form-a-Drain. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Very Cool! Thanks for helping to raise cancer awareness. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Anyone used one of these yet? ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

What I discovered is that not all employees of very large firms are even aware they have these boards until I mention it to them. One guy sent me an email thanking me for getting him motivated to look into it and said that it was a treasure-trove of information that he intended to use in the future. He said he found plenty of positive comments about my company on the site and had added his own. Nothing ventured - nothing gained. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

You're not paying attention, Marc. You don't go on those sites, they do. If you go onto their sites blah-blah-ing it's seen as advertising. You need to get the client to do it. People come on here looking for recommendations for stuff from their peers, don't they? It's the same on those sites and folks are more willing to listen to a co-worker's recount of a good business experience than they are apt to bother to read anything they see from a vendor who they know is trying to sell them something. Get the client to advertise for you. Ask them up front during the inspection. I do it as part of the on-going small talk with the client during the inspection process. Now I no longer have to do it for certain firms because the clients tell me up front that's how they learned about me. With those, I just ask them to add their comments; if, after they get the report, they agree. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

I dunno; I think it depends a lot on climate. Around here, I seem to find more problems with roof decking fungi and such in houses where the homeowners thought adding a powered ventilation system would be an improvement. It wasn't. On the other hand, I grew up downstate from you in Dutchess County and I remember well the first time my father used gable end vents and eave vents to rid an attic of condensation. It was a schoolmate's home. It had been done for less than a month and my friend's father was complaining about condensation in the attic. I was over there to see my friend when my father and uncle rolled up. At first I thought I'd screwed up and was about to get my ass whupped, but then the architect pulled up and I breathed a sigh of relief. My son's father wanted a powered attic fan but my father thought that was just goofy given the fact that we would routinely have two or three storms where at least a foot of snow would end up on the roof each winter. Then the architect suggested cutting vents in the gable end walls of the attic. Jeez, you would have thought he'd suggested setting the house on fire. I remember my father and uncle standing there for most of an hour arguing with the architect about the architect's dumb idea of cutting vents in the perfectly good gable end walls of the attic. The old man was dead set against it. The architect was going on and on about the science of ventilation and how air moved and I could see that the old man was pretty skeptical. He listened though and he put the vents in. The attic dried out and my old man became a believer in passive ventilation after that. Today we know that gable end vents are damned near useless unless oriented on the same axis as the prevailing winds, but we didn't learn that overnight and some still haven't learned it - as the plethora of new homes going up with gable end vents will attest to. There are a lot of houses that lose their roofs in hurricanes but there are also a lot that don't lose their roofs that have ridge vents and soffit or eave vents. I think the building scientists and engineers spend a lot of time studying those houses to see what works and what failed and then they make their recommendations based on those best practices that work. If passive ventilation weren't working, I think we wouldn't see it advocated so much by the building scientists and engineers. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Tom, the list below is the ten largest employers in Western, NY. State of New York - 16,508 United States of America - 10,000 Kaleida Health - 9,500 City of Buffalo (includes schools) - 8,218 HSBC Bank USA N.A. - 5,867 Catholic Health Systems - 4,832 Employer Services Corp. - 4,650 County of Erie - 4,610 M & T Bank - 4,422 Catholic Diocese of Buffalo - 4,000 I'll bet you a case of Martinelli's apple cidar that every one of them has an intranet message board where their employees discuss everything - including where to buy the best car, who to buy life insurance from and who to hire for a home inspection, etc.. Ask every single client where they work and when you get one that works for one of these entities, propose a deal - a $25 rebate - if, when they get the report and like it, they'll take five minutes to make one glowing post about your services on their in-company message board. This doesn't happen overnight. You have to be persistent and you have to repeat it over and over when you find folks that work for those entities. Do it religiously and someday you're going to wake up and realize that the number of realtor referrals is tiny compared to those from former clients and that you're business is almost entirely customer referral driven. Fliers, yellow page ads, realtor presentations and all that other crap will be a thing of the past and you'll be able to concentrate on inspections instead of what the next marketing strategy is going to be. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Kurt said: I guess I'm just not in the mood for a debate today. "Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't" ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Kurt, Research? No research; just listening to what my clients have been asking for and delivering it to them. I didn't adopt this method overnight and software format has nothing to do with it. Though I know the software I use has a summary report feature, I never use it and don't know how to use it. It took me more than a decade of experimentation in this market to reach a balance that seems to work perfectly for me. I'm not going to mess with that. You seem to be trying to win an argument instead of simply putting forth an opinion. Like I said, it works for me, it might not work for you. You have your business, I have mine. There won't be a victor here. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi Rob, Yeah, I guess that would be a problem up in your neck of the woods where they have so many Cape Cods, salt boxes and other styles of home without any real overhang at the eaves and ice and snow is an issue. I think if I had to deal with that on a daily basis, I'd recommend this kind of vent if I were in snow country. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Tom said: My summary report isn't part of the full report. To create a summary report, I add the word summary to the cover of the main report, delete all of the fine print and descriptions from the report and then save it with (summary) added to the file name. Then two separate documents are attached to the email to the client. I takes about 3 minutes to create. I only provide a summary because it seems to be a custom around here that the agents use a summary report for further negotiations. When they don't get a summary, they invariably call me up to waste my time pleading for one. I have no desire to waste my time listening to their yammering, so I provide a summary. There is no bullet list or shortened/prioritized list of stuff to replace/repair. They get the whole thing in a shorter format which makes it a little easier (not much) to read through everything. I know that despite the copyright on the report that most agents around here will disrespect my copyright and share the report with the sellers. This way, the seller doesn't get the entire report; so, if the buyer walks and the seller later tries to share the report with a future potential buyer the only thing the potential buyer will see is those things which would be considered negatives - that kind of reduces the likelihood that the seller will want to share the report in order to avoid another inspection. When there is no agent involved, such as with brand new homes where the buyer is dealing directly with the builder, I don't provide a summary unless the client specifically requests one. Kurt said: The particular market segment which makes up 95% of my business is technology professionals born in other countries. They seem to attach an inordinate amount of attention to even the smallest most insignificant thing; and, once they learn what the home is built out of during the inspection, often go home and do more research after the inspection. I not only have to make sure that, despite language difficulties, they understand the technical issues with the home, why those are bad for the home and what to do about them, but I need to make sure that everything they've been taught about the house is carefully documented or I invariably end up wasting my time on the phone explaining to them why they didn't see mention of the whatsis in the report. Jerry, I'd never number a summary list for an attorney. I think clients and then realtors, and probably attorneys, would misconstrue the item listed as number 1 to be the highest priority and the last item to be the least priority. I don't prioritize issues. I tell them that, to me, everything is important or I wouldn't have bothered to mention it and I insist they use what they've learned during the inspection to decide what's important to them. Works for me, might not work for you. You have your business, I have mine. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Re. the credible source; it's been several years, but I believe that if you go back and peruse some of the old report writing threads you will find a thread where I'd posted some links to perhaps half a dozen credible sources. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Hi, Any cop would tell you that, as an investigator - and that's what we all are - investigators - you need to keep in mind that your report protects you just as much as it serves and protects the client. Including descriptions of the house and its components in your report can save your bacon years down the road by demonstrating to a judge or jury that you actually did examine places and components in the home that a complainant could allege you did not. Have you ever had a client complain to you that when he or she moved into the house something had been changed? I have; but in each case my report proved that someone had tried to pull a fast one and prevented me from being sued. In one instance a client called up ticked off because a furnace tech told him that the furnace which I'd said was two years old was actually nearly 19 years old; and, according to the tech, needed to be replaced. The furnace had been replaced with one that the owner had replaced two years earlier. I suspect the homeowner had kept the original furnace and had swapped it out between the time when the house was inspected and when the new owner (my client) took possession. I proved that with my notes. The manufacturing date on the furnace that I looked at when the client called me back corresponded with the year the house was built, while the serial number I'd recorded at the time of the original inspection indicated that the furnace had been installed two years prior to the inspection when the house was the age of the furnace I was called back to double-check. What clinched it was the fact that I'd also recorded the name of the company listed on the furnace maintenance tag. All it took was a phone call to confirm that a couple years before they'd installed a new furnace in the home. The seller apparently bought a home that needed a new furnace and thought he'd be slick by taking his two-year old furnace along with him to the new place. Guess nobody had ever explained to him about sizing a furnace to a home or maybe he didn't care. My client got a brand new high-efficiency furnace out of that deal. Guess the slicky-boy seller thought it prudent to pay for that rather than face a theft/fraud charge or lawsuit. In another case, the seller replaced a new metal overhead door with an older wood overhead door that had been nicely cleaned up and painted. The same seller replaced a very expensive solid wood raised panel main entry door with an insulated steel simulated raised panel door that was identical in appearance and had been all nicely sanded down and repainted to match the wood entry door. Unfortunately, when he'd installed the wood entry door he'd been sloppy about cutting the hole for the lockset and it had been loose and didn't hold the door in very tightly. I'd seen the daylight shining in around the entry door, had examined the door to see why it wasn't shutting tightly and then I'd shown the poorly cut lockset recess to the client during the inspection. I never did followup on that situation to see how it had been resolved. In one house, the buyer called up all upset and was talking about suing the seller 'cuz he said the seller had agreed to replace some hardwood flooring but had replaced it with a laminate. He was upset and wanted me to back him up. I couldn't because my report indicated that, though the floor looked like hardwood it was actually a man-made product with a thin hardwood veneer bonded to its face. If the buyer had bothered to read the report more carefully instead of going right to the summary report, he would have seen that. The information required by your standards, as pointless as it may seem, could one day save your ass. ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!! Mike

Here's a new post from Jerry. He started another thread but I've moved the edited version here in order to maintain the discussion here. See post #1 above for the report to be critiqued that has now been edited. OT - OF!!! M. Here's Jerry's repost: By the by, the boilerplate Mr. K picked up on about the lead paint...it is verbatim from the software developed and written by Mark Cramer. 'Course, it's pretty old software, and I think we've both learned about passive voice since back then. I just ain't had time to re-write all of it yet. Love all of ya for taking the time to critique! Jerry Simon