Chris Bernhardt

Years ago I had a complaint that I missed a weak breaker in the electrical panel. When ever the client plugged their vacuum into one of the living room receptacles it would throw the breaker. After that I put together my own test equipment using a hand held hair dryer, ammeter and voltmeter to load test circuits and measure voltage drop. I used the equipment for a few weeks and then gave up on it. Every house I checked had voltage drops in the 10% area at the end of the longest circuit as has been pointed out already. Later I got a Suretest, used it a couple of times, shrugged my shoulders and went back to just using a three light tester. Every once in a while I will break out the Suretest to confirm something. In my opinion the Suretest, at least the one I have is a piss poor design of an electrical tester. The thing is unreliable, and reports conditions like ungrounded receptacles that are indeed grounded. Chris, Oregon

It's just missing insulation . The crawlspace hatch was on the other side of the wall. Chris, Oregon

Using the freeware Merge you can fusion up pics if you have a non-fusion type IR cam. Image Insert: 75.7 KB Image Insert: 32.32 KB Image Insert: 13.54 KB Chris, Oregon

The IR cam will not tell you if the area is damp, you'll need to hit it with a moisture meter. The IR cam is pretty good at telling you if things are wet, but I have run into instances where I knew things were wet, I could see that they are wet, but the IR cam indicates everything is fine. I couldn't live without my IR cam now, but its got its weaknesses. I absolutely can't live without a moisture meter. If it's a choice between moisture meters and IR cam, I'm going with the moisture meters. Chris, Oregon

How do you report on water stains and old moisture conditions that you encounter during the inspection; the stuff that looks to be old and inactive? Chris, Oregon

John are you saying that you want to include the type of contractor in all your recommendations or were you only asking for this specific case? I use to believe that I was doing a big favor for my clients by steering them toward the right type of contractor. I don't believe that anymore. Like Kurt pointed out some problems have multiple considerations and don't lend themselves to any one contractor referral. Les has schooled me several times on that point and if you look at one of Jim Katen's reports you'll be hard pressed to find contractor type recommendations. Thinking about the recommendation in terms of which contractor would do the repair is problematic. That being said for certain types of problems it's perfectly fine to make a recommendation to a specific type of contractor. Chris, Oregon

Never forget you can roll your own. I wrote my own report writer using the visual basic built into word. There is no report writer out there that does it in the manner I want. But I'll warn you that the cost of writing your own is many many times more than what you'll pay for IE, which is what I would use otherwise. Chris, Oregon

UPC 807 Appliances, devices, equipment, or other apparatus not regularly classed as plumbing fixtures, which are equipped with pumps, drips, or drainage outlets, may be drained by indirect waste pipes discharging into an approved type of open receptor. IOW, direct connection not allowed. 807.2 does allow direct connection for a/c condensate lines into a lavatory or tub tailpiece, but still that's into a trap and not directly connected into the drainage system. Chris, Oregon

That disclaimer is worthless. Even if you Katenized it, it would still be worthless. Rather than disclaim you're far better off to warn, adequately warn as WJ says or advise as Jim Katen says. For that you need a context, which is almost always going to be setup in your narrative. Boilerplated disclaimers like this one are useless, a waste of time, and will do nothing to save your butt anyway in my opinion. Now whose broilerplate is it before I get in trouble? Chris, Oregon

Looks like the stuff I was writing pre TIJ. Chris, Oregon

In my neck of the woods the seller, sellers agent and maybe even the buyers agent would automatically strike any item worded this way from any consideration. Jim Katen said it already. Word it in the form of good advice. I try hard to leave any indication to current code as any hint of justification as to why it's an issue, out of it. IOW, I don't phrase it, "it's code now and that's why you should do it, so it will be safer". That is likely to get shot down and misunderstood. IOW I would try and phrase it - "Your thingymajig is this way, which is not as safe as this other way, cause it avoids this problem. If you don't want to have that problem, change the way your thingymajig is to this other way." I have been amazed to see that work at helping clients get all kinds of so called grandfathered stuff negotiated. Yea they bitch (sellers, agents, tradesmen) but it's hard to argue with the common sense of it, and it holds up better to WJ's can't get misunderstood rule.id="blue"> Chris, Oregon

Like Jim I have been recommending Smiths products for years, particularly CPES Clear Penetrating Epoxy Sealer. I too have talked to Steve and he's pretty enthusiastic about his products. He asked me a while back if I would consider being a distributor. I'm still bouncing that around. Chris, Oregon

I think the teacher needs to go back to school. You can always write things like that up based on this model: ... locations include but are not limited to: location 1, 2, 3, 3, etc. Have an electrician make repairs.id="blue"> If there's more than say 3 locations then I might broaden it up and say: There's lots & lots of receptacles miss-wired. Have an electrician check all of them and make repairs.id="blue"> It's inspection forklore to be vague. Chris, Oregon

Bill, Would you call it that in your report? My clients like myself would have no idea what a "pent roof" is. Chris, Oregon

What's that?[] Chris, Oregon

At Walters suggestion I've been digesting Frank Luntz's book "Words that work". I wonder though about the variation in the vernaculars between our various locals. Since the first time Les scolded me on writing "hot water heater", I 've written "water heater", but on occasion when I have polled clients with such words they were more familiar with "hot water heater." I think the same is true here with our local use of words like "vegetation" and "maintain". Here if I say "plants", then people think I don't mean weeds, bushes and branchesid="blue">. On occasion in place of vegetation I'll say weeds, plants, bushes, branches, etc. Remember it rains here a lot and everything grows, thus we tend to use "vegetation". Perhaps in other parts of the country the only thing that pretty much grows is what you plant and therefore they tend to get called "plants". The same with "maintain" vrs "keep". People here seem to respond differently to those words. "keep" is something that is optional whereas with "maintain" they tend to perk up and say to themselves "Oh, this is one of those housey things I have to remember to do periodically." I lived on Long Island for a couple of years, and there was clearly a difference in vernacular. They were utterly confused when I told them I was going to get a "pop". Here in Oregon, the use of the word "soda" is a recent import. Chris, Oregon

Years ago I use to say "cut back X inches away from the house", but it's really kind of silly as there is nothing no where official that says this plant, that bush, that tree branch needs to be so many inches from the building. Today I just tell them "Cut back and maintainid="blue"> vegetation from contacting the building." I guess unless there's such a thing as a jumping carpenter ant. Chris, Oregon

I subscribe to Gary Orloves newsletter and this month he had a link to a youtube video of a blower door/infrared energy audit; there's actually a bunch of them on youtube. There were some other articles that I clicked on and they were talking about doing these blower door/infrared energy audits for $100. $100? What? The cheapest I can imagine doing one around here would be for at least $200 for it to mean anything. Chris, Oregon

If you notice, Walter took that part out of my version and it's why I posted in the first place because I suspected that was going to happen. There are a lot of things like this example where sometimes I end up making an "oscar speech". Also I cringe sometimes because I can imagine my version of why something is wrong is indeed the wrong reason something is wrong. In a recent thread on the subject the seller wanted justification as to why it was wrong to connect a door opener thru an extension cord. It's a reasonable question but how far do you need to go about explaining why something is wrong? Chris, Oregon

Would anyone care to Katenize this? Chris, Oregon

I was quoting Walter Jowers. If you cut me, I pretty much bleed Katen & Jowers. Chris, Oregon

Yea, but I can never get it to reloft back to the same level; it gets clumpy. Chris, Oregon

What say you about loose fill insulation turned into swiss cheese by burrowing rodents in the attic? I would imagine the burrowing has short circuited the value of the insulation to some degree; I've seen the evidence with my IR camera. Chris, Oregon

If Kurt is right, and I believe he is, we'll soon see significant changes in what society expects from realtors and what they expect from HI's. I think that HI's will be increasingly looked to for advice on everything "housey". In an alternate universe maybe realtors don't even exist. Chris, Oregon

Ok, but... How many of us mention the insurance issues with respect to K&T wiring? How is not commenting on the insurability different than not recommending a sewer scope arbitrariliy on older housing stock? Who of us would not bring it up if it was our own mother, daughter or son buying a house? I know it's not within the scope of a home inspection but in the interest of giving good advice and providing adequate warning and given that HI's are expected to know a lot about houses (including toxic issues in home ownership) it seems like the right thing to do.... but I could be wrong. I don't see this any different than advising someone to use the right gasoline in their car if they don't want to mess up the engine which you just inspected. If we don't warn people of things ("housey things") that they may not know, which we know, which could have a significant negative affect on them, then we are no different than those greedy bastards and idiot political leaders that have crashed wallstreet. Chris, Oregon