SonOfSwamp

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Sure. I'd strongly support your leading the way with helpfulness, gentle words for a gentle readership. Everybody likes gentle. Ironically, you're accusing me -- in a sort of backhanded passive-agressive ad-hominem and ungentlemanly kind of way -- of the polar opposite of smarminess. Smarmy is the Eddie Haskell thing. (Gee, your frock is most becoming, Mrs. Cleaver.) In the context of an HI web board, I'm curmugdeonly, a crosspatch. Since I was about 12, I've followed a creed of eliminating the screwups first, then shining up the things that need polishing. In my bandleader role, my rule was, "First, we take out all the parts that suck." It's not that I'm aiming to be right all the time. (Well, actually, I am aiming for that. Who isn't?) Anyhow, being right or wrong takes care of itself. When I'm right, I'm right. Clearly, I'm not right for this room. Please have one of the non-smarmy brethren (they know who they are) let me know when the HI community is perfect, and comprises only sweet and gentle folk who tread gently on the good earth. WJ

Not that I'd even bring it up, but hidden cameras and microphones come to mind... WJ

I think I created the Madison, WI mistake. I went to the paper's website, and thought I was looking at a Madison, WI paper. Anyhow, looks like Holleran is in the muckraking (and I mean that in a good way) business. WJ

The same IR cameras HIs use are used to scan horses. Looky here: http://equineir.com/ WJ

Seems the reporter, Kelly Holleran, is an investigative reporter for a Madison, WI newspaper. Like so many "journalists" these days, Ms. Holleran seems to be working at Blogger Level. Hard to find a competent editor these days... Of course, I could be wrong, WJ

Looks like whimsy to me. Somebody took a little piece of trim off a wood piece, then turned it into a mini-mantel. Of course, I could be wrong, WJ

If you don't mind me asking, what's a leader in this context? WJ

Those are June Bugs. I've seen those bugs ever since I was a kid, from South Carolina to Tennessee. Best I know, they eat no wood. The feed on leaves, at night. They will fly into a house if a window or door is left open. The grubs live underground for 2 - 3 years. They do some harm to trees and shrubs. I say don't call 'em wood destroying insects, because you'd likely be dead wrong. But don't go by me. I'm not a bug man. WJ

I surely haven't studied PV panels, but it seems to me that it would be lest costly, and more practical, to put such panels not on roofs, but on standalone decks that don't have plumbing vents, attic vents and chimneys, etc. sticking up through them. WJ

My humble experience is that nasty smells in a house either go away eventually, or they get so bad that anybody can find the source. WJ

Maybe it's just me, but I've always taken the term "visual inspection" to be pretty dang vague and nebulous. Does it mean, "pertaining to anything a baby could see with one rheumy eye half open?" Does it mean, "look but don't touch?" If one wants to rely on the term "visual inspection" to keep himself out of trouble, I think he'd do well to go into detail about what it means in the context of an agreement. WJ

Two things come to mind: 1. In my humble experience, every engineer who hired me to do his home inspection disclosed on the front end that he knew nothing about doing a home inspection. 2. I'd be willing to bet, well, fifty cents, that all written communication in this deal was somewhere close to nonsensical. Show me an engineering firm that can create a semi-understandable document, let alone a bulletproof contract. WJ

Ditto Richard. My co-inspector and I were always hired before anybody called to book an inspection. Best I could tell, the folks who wanted us to do their inspection had just one criterion: I want those guys. FWIW, we bypassed RE referrals by running a perpetual ad in the local alternative newsweekly; and, 50,000 papers were printed each week with the ad and my little column. WJ