Erby

Oh my God, George Bush is the president. The sky is falling. Oh my God, Bill Clinton is the president. The sky is falling. Oh my God, George Bush II is the president. The sky is falling. Oh my God, Barack Obama is the president. The sky is falling. This country is bigger than the president. They can change a few things this way and that but the pendelum keeps swinging.

I'm also over the top. Football crouch to get back on the ladder, one leg at a time.

The label I like is that customers love me! When this buyer was the seller, they negotiated repairs appropriately and got on with life. This time the seller and the agents couldn't get it negotiated.

A buyer's inspection for a guy whose house I inspected, for that buyer, when he sold it a few months ago. This was a 100 plus year old house with a stone foundation. Picture looks like it was taken with a fish eye lens. It wasn't. Click to Enlarge 50.65 KB Add to that a cast iron main sewer line to the street that stopped taking water and leaked back into the basement at the cast iron wye at the top of the picture. Client loves me: "Erby's inspection is the most thorough I have ever seen. He found several things, but in particular he had 2 major issues on the house he inspected for us . It resulted in us withdrawing our contract because the owner would not take care of them. His inspection was an investment that literally saved us thousands of dollars." The realtors, well [:-censore [:-censore [:-censore I don't know why they couldn't negotiate repairs. It's not like those problems are going away! It's a good thing I don't have to depend on realtor referrals!

Here's my venue. Click to Enlarge 66.19 KB

Does the 2014 NEC require kitchen refrigerator outlets to be GFCI protected? I've read different opinions and the local "big city" AHJ does require them to be GFCI protected while other smaller ones do not. Your thoughts?

FastStone Photo Resizer.

Ah, the dumb ass stuff we managed to survive!

The satisfying whump of the potato cannon!

Insurance companies are numbers guys. They don't understand crap like this just that it might fall and the safest thing for them to do is to cover their ass by refusing coverage if it isn't 100% OK.

Yeah, I read that last night too! However, Joe's solution includes rigid insulation or drywall on the bottom of the joists. That ain't going to happen in a crawl space here. They don't even fully insulate the ends of the joist bays. Click to Enlarge 49.38 KB Click to Enlarge 60.65 KB Nice crawl space though. I wish all of them were like this.

Click to Enlarge 31.58 KB My understanding is that insulation is supposed to be installed in contact with the sub floor. I commonly find it installed in I-Joist floors hanging on wires supported by the bottom flange of the I-Joist, leaving a gap (as seen in the picture above) between the insulation and the floor. What do y'all say about htis.

I wouldn't give it a second thought after seeing those pictures. Momma is just going to have to find a new house to love.

Is there really cold, or just the absence of heat? You're a funny guy with a good line, Jim.

Hah, which came first - the chicken or the egg? I don't really care as long as my clients aren't calling me back a few days after they start using the tub or shower whining about a leak I didn't find. Could I have found that without an IR Camera? Nope. No stains or wetness on the drywall. Would I have been liable for it? Shouldn't have been because it's something I couldn't readily see during a visual home inspection. They would still be whining about it. I'm happy with it and that, to me, is all that really counts!

So Marc, you're saying that there is no temperature change on the visible surface side of the drywall? The side both I and the camera can see.

You might want to rethink that Marc. The thermal camera only sees the surface of the drywall. If the cooling effect doesn't transmit through the drywall, how does the camera see the temperature differential it creates? Kind of like when you put a can of beer in a cooler of ice. The cooling effect transmits through the can AND the beer, cooling both. Of course, if you just want to argue semantics, we could do that too.

Yeah, showing the client and realtor the live image on the camera they were talking about seeing the wet spot through the drywall. I had to explain that all they were seeing was the drywall surface temperature differential caused by the evaporative cooling effect of the water on top of the drywall. A few minutes later, they were back to talking about the seeing the wet spot on the ceiling. Ah well, I'm a hero for finding it and it'll get fixed. I guess that's all that's important. It isn't the first time. Won't be the last time. What really surprised me in the training was how short of time it takes for that evaporative cooling effect to transmit through the drywall.

My FLIR C2 has gotten me some good results. Several times now, I've found leaky tile showers or bathtub traps where there was no visible signs of leakage. Click to Enlarge 44.44 KB Or missing insulation where I couldn't get to the edge of the ceiling in the attic to see it well for a regular photo. Click to Enlarge 16.31 KB I thought about the FLIR ONE back in March when I bought the C2 but it just seemed too flimsy at the connection to the IPhone. But then, I also had the Otterbox issue. The C2 resolution is plenty for what I'm doing with it.

Hey, I just realized got the chance to see a couillion's work today. Click to Enlarge 32.15 KB Just had to find a way to use it in a sentence! That dang Marc, always trying to educate us with new words.

Free? Yeah one or two but not any that are worth a crap. I wouldn't recommend.

Yeah, Les, sometimes it helps if you actually read the dates on the original post before responding. I've seen a few threads come back to life 8 - 10 years after the original post.

A better question. Where the hell are you that there's snow on the roof in August?

Not a friend of mine, a friend of the buyer. But I also "like" your authoritative response.

So, in conversation with a primarily commercial electrician friend of the buyer, he said that it is not allowed to reidentify ungrounded conductors smaller than #6 AWG. This was after I pointed out some white hots in the panel below. Haven't heard of that but have seen numerous reidentified whites in residentisal panels around here. Your thoughts? Click to Enlarge 55.69 KB