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--- Exposed nails, visible at ridge ends, are not covered with asphalt plastic cement. Generally accepted building practices and most shingle manufacturer's instructions call for exposed nails (and the ridge end location is inevitably exposed) to be covered with an asphalt plastic cement to prevent water leakage. Shingle manufacturer's void their warranties when the shingles are not installed in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions. If conflict over these issues arises, consult the shingle manufacturer directly to ask if they will warranty the roof without the shingles being installed in accordance with their instructions. ---

Sometimes, Caoimhín, reading your commentary just makes my brain hurt. Thanks for sharing.

But isn't there a minimum distance from the house for those things?

Scott, Can I use your coke bottle here. http://b4uclose.tripod.com/cockamamiephotos/

Ah, ya gotta love this place when you need information to back up your report comments. Image Insert: 71.76 KB Image Insert: 65.6 KB Image Insert: 51.2 KB Image Insert: 55.16 KB Image Insert: 64.32 KB ============= While the cement asbestos tile roof on the main house is old and needs a few tiles repaired I don't recommend replacing it. A roofing contractor, familiar with working with cement asbestos shingles, should be able to repair it and make it last a good long time. Whoever conducts the necessary repairs needs to be familiar with these shingles as they can be easily damaged if the repair person doesn't know exactly how to work with these shingles. For more information on cement asbestos tile roofs read this article from The Old House Journal website: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/stories/Detailed/15063.shtml Also see the comments in section 2.1 regarding old, historic properties and section 2.3 regarding asbestos. These shingles likely pose less of a threat than the millions of tons of asbestos dust spread out along the sides of every single roadway, sidewalk and alley in this country, or the miles and miles of asbestos containing tape that's lining the interior connections of duct-to-boot connections behind registers in older forced air systems and which an awful lot of folks have been exposed to for years. Only you can chose what level of risk to live with. =============== Sometimes it's hard to concentrate on what yer inspecting. (That's the termite guy in the background, not hubby.)

http://www.radalink.com/

Ya get 144 cubic inches of water down a 12" square chimney for every inch of rain. That's slightly over 1/2 gallon (0.62 gallons). If the chimney is hot, some of that will evaporate. I primarily recommend rain cap / spark arrestors for the wildlife and sparks, but who wants a 1/2 gallon of water down their chimney every time it rains an inch.

Kids, fathers & father-in-laws are easily distracted with a simple three light tester. Keeps 'em out of the way.

Thanks, Mike. chose or choose. Anything else?

With forewarning that I am NOT very cryptic and with gratitude to those of the many who may recognize some of these clauses as their own though I no longer remember! GRANDFATHERED: When it comes to home repairs, "Grandfathered" is a term often tossed out by people who care more about their wallet than about your safety: as in "That 8 inch gap in the balcony railing doesn't need to be fixed because it's grandfathered. It was okay to do it that way when this house was built." Is it going to comfort you, when your child falls through that gap and is badly injured, that the size of the gap was "Grandfathered"? All "Grandfathered" really means is that no one can "force" you to change it, repair it, or replace it. Only you can choose what level of risk you want to live with. People with young children who could fall thru that 8 inch gap “shouldâ€

Love these battery operated gadgets, but ya gotta charge them now and then. Thankfully, some kind soul invented power inveters so you can plug in on the move. HomeGauge's PPC version supposedly allows recording directly to the particular item you're inspecting at the time so that when you are writing the report, you can listen directly to the recordings pertaining to that item without having to skip backward and forward like I did when I was using a straight voice recorder. (reason I quit the voice recorder, I got tired of skipping back and forth trying to find what I was writing about and it was an equal pain to listen to it straight thru. Guess I needed one of those foot pedal dictaphone playback machines). Haven't quite made the decision to jump to this but it sure sounds handy. Do any of the other programs with PPC capability offer this? Is it worthwhile? (to those who use this type of PPC recording)

I'm also a proponent of taking lots of pictures and few notes, then finishing later. Nobody is waiting around for me to finish up, picture review is easy in HomeGauge (they're right there in a film strip on the right side of the sreen). A simple pen drag brings them up to add arrows, etc. Windows Explorer enlarges those I need really large. Damn there goes my battery.

Is that because I stole it from you, you stole it from me, or we both stole it from someone else. It's been in there so dang long I don't remember where I got it from. A lot of my commentary is like that. One of the joys in participating in the internet message boards. See something you can use. modify it to sound like you, send it out.

I tell em this: ========= B4U Close Home Inspections does not research product recalls or notices of any kind. A basic home inspection does not include the identification of, or research for, appliances and other items installed in the home that may be recalled or have a consumer safety alert issued about it. Any comments made in the report are regarding well known notices and are provided as a courtesy only. Product recalls and consumer product safety alerts are added almost daily. We recommend visiting the following internet site if recalls are a concern to you. www.cpsc.gov ============== But nothing says you can't offer a level of service that includes product recalls for the stuff in the home. If you want to do it, do it and charge accordingly.

I did the paper reports when I had time. Then switched to e-mail pdf's but it clogged up some e-mail systems. So switched to uploading PDF's to my website. Bit of a pain but it worked. Now I upload to HomeGauge and send them a e-mail with the link. No glitches no more. I now have a tablet PC with my Inspection Agreement in Word. I have them sign it right on the screen and print to pdf and attach it to the HomeGauge report upload. Of course, I still occassionally get the older couple who don't even want to touch a computer. Hey, boy. Don't you have a piece of paper I can sign. E-mail the report? Why in tarnation can't you just bring it to me. I don't fool with them dang computer thangs. Give me some paper, boy. Ya hear me? Give me some paper! Anyway, sure cut down on my overhead for ink and paper and binder.

Draw inspections are just a numbers game, not rocket science. Here's the sample of the Excel worksheet I use. One page, over & done. Download Attachment: B4U Close Construction Draw Form.pdf 34.21 KB

Didn't Jim provide a guide and cite for the one neutral per termination issue a while back. Something about the NEC Code Log on the discussion to bring the requirement directly into the code from UL Standard 67 for Panelboards.

I used Palm-Tech for three or four years. Switched to HomeGauge because I like putting in photos and it's only a couple of seconds per photo in HomeGuage and it puts the photo right next to the commentary in the report. Point & drag with my tablet PC. Photo editing (light/darken - contrast - arrows circles, whatever) are right there. Photo sizer also right there - small, medium, large, extra large, take your choice on each photo. Mine defaults to medium but occassionally I change it for a specific purpose. Was a bit of a learning curve switching from one to the other but it was well worth it. Many different templates easily customizable to my needs. Check boxes - check boxes with narriative - full narrative. The more I use it the more I find it can do. I really like the upload report delivery feature also. Again a learning curve, but well worth it. Get as many trials as you can. Complete three or four mock inspections with them. Pick the one that works best for you.

You sir, as the buyer, need to decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing! I don't know your mother-in-law and am unable to make that decision for you!

Started with Palm-Tech and it was OK but didn't do photos well. (Though I understand this has been improved) Switched to Home Guage and love it. Easily editable and added comments. Lots of different formats available. Upload to their site and send notification e-mails with the link. Takes credit card hassle away for me. Think I'll be sticking with it for a long while. Best advice I have is get a demo disk from all of them. Complete at least five inspections on your own home or friends with each of them. Choose the one that works best for you AFTER that. Switching later is a real big pain in the ass.

Gotta change the first bracket, Mike. Dang shift key must have gotten in the way!

Above and beyond all else. REGISTER YOUR OWN DOMAIN thru someone like www.namesecure.com or www.godaddy.com Some companies will offer to register it for you, but they put it in THEIR name. Makes it hard to get control back. ainspect comes to mind as the worst at it. To register your name you don't need any programming, just search for what you want and buy it. THEN you can transfer it to whatever server you site is on.

I plug this somewhere in the introduction to the report: "As I don't know the qualifications of the seller or the buyer to conduct repairs, I always recommend that you use a qualified licensed professional in the appropriate trade for all repairs. You need to decide for yourself if you or the seller's qualifications, experience and knowledge would allow the repair to be made without using a qualified licensed trade professional. Note that if the "qualified licensed trade professional" has to ask how to fix it, they shouldn't be the one fixing it."

That was my thought exactly. Walt talking about how bad things are in Nashville when others talk about moving there. But yet, Scott P packed his bags and went. Wonder if he's still got eyelids or if the gnats have ate them all away. He's been there about seven months now! I keep telling people that I charge a million dollars per inspection so I can live on the beach, hold one of them fancy umbrella drinks and watch the girls in thongs (or less) walk by. Just haven't found my benefactor yet.

I've paid for a couple of the cheap versions only to have them fail on me. For the last couple of years, I've used the free PDF Machine from Broadgun Software. http://www.pdfmachine.com/genp/download.shtml Hasn't failed me yet. The only trick was deciding the order I wanted to print things in. I would print the cover page and save the file but leaving it open. Then open and print the next file. It appends to the end of the open cover page. Open the nexst file and print it. It appends to the end of the open cover page with the first file added. Continue until the file size is out of hand. Just ran a test by printing this topic, a one page Excel spreadhseet, a single JPG, a 7 page word document, another PDF File 18 pages of text & illustrations)open in Adobe Reader, an e-mail (two pages) from microsoft outlook, and a map file from Streets & trips Total file size for the finished PDF was 831 KB. Of course now I use the Homegauge software and upload it to the site instead of sending PDF's by e-mail. Works much slicker for me (after I spent some time customizing the software, report layout, and boiler plate to suit me.)