resqman

See that condition every day in Ga. Usually just replace the trim and life is good. Threshold might find some water intrusion in crawl and sill rot.

Decade as volunteer firefighter & technical rescue. Three rungs above the roof plane. Side step.

Disagree with Scott. He said someone would... I insulated half the crawlspace of a 1200 sq ft ranch in Atlanta Ga around 1986. Just never got around to insulating the other half. I could physically feel a temperature difference when walking between rooms. Don't recall energy savings but sure did make a big difference in comfort while living in the house.

No, there is no disconnect to service the circuit.

Fix the water leak in the upstairs bathroom before you play with remediation.

Disagree. Spent some time working with a home inspector licensing board regarding report format & structure. The real estate board lobbyist was pushing for a more consistent report format. Home inspectors were resisting more control by outsiders. Standardization is simplification.

Not sure I want a licensing body to be too specific about format & structure. Most SOPs specify what must be in a report but not how to report. As you move to a more specific format and structure, the report becomes more cookie cutter. Filling in blanks, checking boxes. The profession gets reduced to the lowest denominator. Forms do not handle variety well. Houses are diverse. Reporting needs to be flexible to accommodate all the stupid stuff people do to them. I agree that most HI don't really understand communication and transfer of information. Sharing technical information between a competent inspector and a novice homeowner is a challenge to dumb it down enough anyone can understand but technical enough that the point comes across. Oral conversations have give and take. Written words do not. Converting oral conversation into written word that has multiple audiences is an imperfect task. The listing agent, buyers agent, buyer, tradespeople and home inspector all have different knowledge bases and to write a single document that all can understand and effectively communicate the problem is a challenging task. The different audiences have different needs and put importance on different parts of the report. Each feels their demands are the most important. Determining what is important and what is fluff often depends on which player you are.

Prescriptive Residential Wood Deck Construction Guide is a free online document that tells all regarding deck construction. Google is your friend.

I report improper screws. I carry replacements and will replace one or two in a panel if missing or wrong. I am not replacing all of them. Gotta draw the line somewhere. $3 for 6 screws at the big box store gets expensive. I carry both the coarse and fine thread screws. Will pickup loose extra screws in the bottom of panels to share at the next inspection.

Where do you find that CODE requires a heat source? Your right. Circular thinking. My fault. Habitable space must be able to be heated to 68 degrees, 3 feet above the floor, 2 feet from the wall. Since sleeping rooms are habitable space, must be heated. Does not say a dedicated heating supply, just able to achieve temperature.

To broaden the comment there is no such thing as a bedroom in the code... It is a sleeping room. CODE only requires a heat source, emergency egress, 8% natural light, 4% natural ventilation, and smoke alarm. Closets are not required. That is a agent thing. Code does not require any closets anywhere anytime. If there is a closet, then there are a variety of things that can and cannot happen in closets. For example the spacing of light fixtures to storage, housing an electrical panel if designed for clothes storage, etc.

You can have a single gas furnace heat an entire home. The heat is distributed via a duct system. Usually there is a supply duct to the sleeping room to ensure it is heated.

10 year old SurveyMaster is flaky. Goes into error code and "hangs" Cant turn it off or on, just hung in an useable state. I have it set to auto turnoff after a couple of minutes. Leave it alone, it turns off, power it back on and mostly works. Probably time for a new one. Boss has decided I am going to start doing stucco/efis/manufactured stone inspections so will need one with exterior probes. Wondering if people still like the GE SurveyMaster or is there some new or better player in the market?

Have a bunch of photos on Advocate Inspections facebook album page. Take any you want.

Was a member of a rescue squad. During our training we started out easy and increased the stress level over the day until people were doing things they thought were not possible. I held national certifications in confined space, trench and building collapse rescue and trained other rescue squads and fire departments. There were training days I was overjoyed to be looking down from the 1000 ft platform of a TV broadcast tower and days I had to sit, close my eyes and talk to myself at only 150 feet. Saw some of the biggest burly guys totally freak out. Some it was heights, some it was the dark, some if was the tight space. We wanted to find out who would crack during training so when it came to an actual rescue we knew who needed to be support and who should be going into the hot zone. Sounds like you were able to manage your fears. You will be better next time. It is mostly a mental game. If you let your fears run too long, you freeze up. Congratulations on coming out the other side.

Fuel only ignites in the presence of the proper concentration of oxygen. Too much or too little and it will not ignite. A sealed gas pipe should have no oxygen. Regardless of how hot it gets, it should not combust... unless oxygen at the proper concentration is available inside the pipe.

Got a call last week about mold I missed. Client sent email with a snarky comment that had I bothered to look up I would have seen it. Picture of the mold in the report. My reply suggested he look at specific section # in the summary at the beginning of the report and on page N of the body for a pictures and written defect description. His reply was that he did not read that far into the report...

Not asked about but have concerns about combustion air supply. Three devices all needing combustion air. Is the room size adequate to provide sufficient air or does additional combustion air need to be supplied.

In my previous life, I was a data center manager for Fortune 500 companies, military and Fed Govt. Daily backups, weekly backups, and image backups monthly. Fault tolerant systems setup in tandem to provide guareented 100% uptime. UPS, on-site standby generators, complete duplicate systems in special shipping containers to be flown to one of 85 sites nationwide to completely replace, restore and resume complete operation in 48 hrs or less. Financial systems that $1mil passed thru per hr. 1 hr of scheduled downtime required 30 days notice and only granted during evening/night hours on weekends. Out of the industry for a decade and I back up my systems with Carbonite and standalone drives. I have my data but it would be chore to get it all back up and running. Keep meaning to build a duplicate system but seems lots of other things are more fun.

Last I checked there should be at least 5 feet to combustibles on the exterior of a home. Seems the building and roof have crossed the boundary.

Traded my smaller 2000 Dodge Dakota in for a full size Ram 1500 Crew Cab 2 months ago. I get 3-4 miles more per gallon in the super sized full size truck then I did in the Dakota. The new truck is unnecessarily large. Just what Detroit is putting out now. The only small trucks are the Nissan Frontier and Toyota Tacoma. I get the same gas milage in my full size Ram as the Frontier but I got a lot more truck. Same price. I did not fit in the Nissan or Toyota. Things have changed in the last 14 years since I bought a vehicle. Lots of electronic gadgetry. It took a week or so to get used to the immense size of the Ram but it sure drives nice. Easy to steer, smooth ride. At 6'1" still had to have running boards installed to get in and out. I got the fancy AMP Research power running boards that hide themselves. Pretty sexy. Added a cap to keep my equipment dry and protected from theft. Truck tailgate locks when I look the passenger doors. Cap has a seperate lock. Bed cap side windows open for easier access to front of bed. Added Bedrug and cap liner and I got me an SUV for less money. Click to Enlarge 74.9 KB Click to Enlarge 48.77 KB Trade In vs. New Ride Click to Enlarge 55.75 KB Yes, I like Red.

Must meet all 4 conditions to require safety glass. IRC 308.3 & .4 Greater than 9 sq feet Lower edge less than 18 to the floor, Upper edge greater than 36 inches above the walking surface & within 36 inches horizontal of walking surface. If only meets three conditions, not required. Probably still a good idea but not required.

I call it out if the stairs would likely have to be used as an emergency esacpe. So spaces under stairs from second story bedrooms to ground floor exits gets mention in my reports. Stairs from walk out basements up to main story, not so much. During a fire on the "main floor" people are unlikley to run down stairs into the basement when they could walk out to grade. People in a walkout basement would just walk out and would be unlikely to go upstairs to exit. If clients are present, I discuss why they may consider drywalling the underside of the stairs in basements. Drywall is going to provide a 20 minute fire resistance so the stairs would not burn through when needed as an emergency exit.

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Well think of it as having your resume available to anyone and everyone 24x7. As a home inspector, you are looking for a new job everyday. I would guess very few buyers go looking for a home inspector by rumaging thru LinkedIn...as their inital search. Once they have googled "home inspection city/state" and narrowed the list down to 2 or 3, they may go looking for more information regarding those specific inspectors. Many home inspector webpages give little information about the inspector. LinkedIn and a BUSINESS Facebook page can provide additional information to help them see you as a full person. Maybe you have listed community service projects, charities, interests, or hobbies you are involved in that helps then to decide to choose you. Maybe you list you are a member of XYZ board of directors in LinkedIn. XYZ has nothing to do with home inspections but it shows you have are connected to the community, you take on leadership roles, etc. Kinda like being a member of BBB. Totally useless way of selecting a vendor. To become a BBB member, you pay BBB to be listed. No vetting or selection process other than a good check once a year. But BBB has built a business model that members are better than non-members. Buyers select BBB members because they feel better about selecting a BBB member. If they actually took a minute to find out that BBB is a pay to play organization with little or no requirements to join, they may not rely on it. But people still do. Having a LinkedIn entry is just one more place for prospective buyers to vet you. Social media is about having a wide and diverse presence online so anyone with the slightest interest can find you. Just make sure that everything is positive and consistent.