AHI in AR

No Autowrench for me. I like the feel of my vintage King Dick. Even if it is an Englander. Image Insert: 619.54 KB Image Insert: 449.65 KB

The human brain is an absolutely fascinating piece of equipment. Look at the phenomenon of autistic savants. (Commonly referred to as idiot savants.) A processing deficiency in one or more areas is far from a total inability to function. Similarly, but on a much simpler level, my eldest son (age 17) was deprived of oxygen at birth due to the umbilical cord being wrapped around his neck and a protracted birth procedure. Some damage to his brain resulted from this. He can read a simple sentence and yet not begin to explain what it means. But his memory of places visited is amazing, as is his ability to easily remember numbers such as won/loss records or football and basketball scores. It's not like he memorizes them after hours of work--he reads them once and they are locked in. As for me, it's a lost cause to expect me to remember names or faces -- even if I was just introduced to someone. Yet I can recall telephone numbers I haven't used in 10 years. And I can repeat conversations, almost verbatim, that happened years ago. Weird.

Al, that kind of comment makes you seem as if you're a bigoted, redneck dumbass. Not that you are, of course. Just thought you'd like to know. - Jim Katen, Oregon This is exactly why I was hesitant to even open this can of worms. I fully realize that all immigrant workers are neither incompetent nor illegal. Far from it. As I said earlier, many rise above the obstacles and do quite well. On the other hand, several native-born workers I have had the "privilege" of working with as a builder could barely read or write English. Which would I choose? Easy...the one with the right attitude...regardless of nationality.

With PC running rampant, I may be stepping into something that I later regret, but I feel compelled to. I've been on both sides of the new construction quality issue having dealt with it both as a builder and as an inspector. Nine years ago, after 16 years of building custom homes I started doing inspections. I had grown up in and around new homes; my dad and grandfather were builders. As my time as a builder went on, I became frustrated with both the decline in the work ethic I saw demonstrated daily and the constant battles required to get the guys working for me to really care about their craft. Could I get them to actually READ the product manuals for materials such as engineered joists? With rare exceptions, it just didn't happen. Even if they read the words, they largely did not understand the engineering principles. So I figured if I was fighting a seemingly single-handed battle for "the right way" and I was spending so much time telling people what they were doing wrong I might as well get paid for it. Then we began to see the influx of workers from way south...as in south of Texas. Before you go off on me thinking this is a racist issue, it's not. It's an educational one. To put it bluntly, most "native" workers are poorly educated. Those from other countries are even less educated. Some rise above it and really accomplish something. Some don't. But almost universally, they are hard workers seeking a better opportunity. By the standards of their countries, they are doing well here. The average pay in Mexico works out to less than $3/hr. The problem is they come here and no one gives them real educational training. The same mistakes are repeated from job to job. This applies even to simple things that you'd think were common sense...things like brick window sills without a slope to them. I've even seen them put lintels in consisting of two scrap pieces of angle iron. Even if they'd like to learn it's difficult to find a place to do so. As a practical matter, many crews don't even have ONE worker fluent in English on the site at all times. How would even a conscientious builder explain the complexities of home construction and such subtle details as those required to minimize water penetration? The builders don't know the terminology in Spanish (sometimes not in English either) and the workers don't know the terminology in either language. Mistakes and failures are guaranteed. So now we're seeing a flood of defects such as engineered products being installed incorrectly. Even conventional framing isn't immune. I can't count the number of laughably poor rafter-to-ridge joints I've seen lately. Lest you think I'm not going to get in a lick on the builders, read on. As I see it, they are responsible for what their name goes on and should be held to a higher standard than they are. The problem currently is that in all too many cases, THEY don't know what they are doing. How can they recognize defects perpetrated by others? Even more unfortunate is that many simply don't care. There are far too many that "build" by cell phone, rarely setting foot on a job. I would guess that most have never held an actual tool of any sort in their hands for more than 5 minutes. I could go on for hours about the boneheaded things I've heard from some of them. One last thought. If you think our educational system (and parents) are not to blame, here's a story from my first new home construction site. I was fresh out of college, watching everything going on and soaking it up. On the roof, there were two newly minted high school graduates installing felt paper on the roof deck. It was an election year, and they began a discussion about politics. The topic evolved into how long a term in office the new president would have. Simple enough for a HS grad, right? Not so fast. One was arguing for two years. The other said it was six. They eventually got around to asking me. I said "four years" and walked away since I was in danger of laughing. After the briefest of pauses to weigh what I'd said, I heard them pick right back up arguing their same previous respective positions.

They may be IN Alabama now, but my money says they CAME from somewhere else. The important thing is not where they came from, it's why they are turned loose to work without training. More importantly, it's why the "builders" who are supposedly overseeing the project don't catch these things. They are the same sorts of guys who think this kind of modification is a good idea: Image Insert: 240.9 KB

Just out of curiosity in trying to guess why that was done that way...is it possible that the drain just upstream of the trap is coming off a clothes washer? The photo doesn't show its full length. If that was a remodel, it may have seemed easier to the installer to put the trap there since he had to cut the drain anyway. After all, when you see the drains strapped up with rope slopped over the duct work you have to wonder...

On this home, I'd bet about anything that there would be some pretty good cracking in a couple of decades, if not less. A true half-round arch does a wonderful job of transferring the load to the vertical "legs" and down to the ground. Look at the Roman aqueducts. But the flatter the arch is, the more that thrust is exerted laterally, not downward. Hence Jim K's comment about having enough mass to the side walls to resist the lateral thrust. In Phillip's post, the design of the window above the arch will take a lot of the load off the center of the arch, so I suspect it will be OK. But when you have a double wide garage door and a shallow arch, AND a relatively large load across the center of the arch I don't feel as comfortable saying it won't crack. In fact, I'll bet it would. Of course, cracking is not synonymous with structural failure. I see lots of 70-90 year old homes with shallow arches over the front porch or porte-cocheres. There may be a 1" gap in the mortar, but eventually a point of equilibrium is reached, well prior to the point at which the veneer falls off or structural columns blow out. On a side note, but a related one, it cracks me up when I see so many new homes with a decorative keystone inserted uselessly ABOVE an arch as though it's some sort of silly architectural exclamation point. Worse yet are those in a horizontal soldier course above a window where the bricks aren't even skewed.

I've just been told that I get to pick a new IR thermometer as a Christmas gift. The budget is $150 or thereabouts. Normally I do a ton of research until I am sick of thinking about it and come up with what I think is the best unit. However, time does not allow me that luxury in this case. So I'm going to try to lean on you guys! I'm leery of the Chinese cheapo's. Any advice on good units or ones to avoid? Thanks in advance.

In all seriousness, I do think it's unfair to lump all agents together, just the same as it's not reasonable to lump all HI's together. Everyone is an individual, regardless of profession. Some agents ARE primarily concerned with their commission; some are genuinely concerned about their clients. Those in the latter group will be your target market...assuming you are a conscientious HI and not a toady. For the record, I see nothing in your posts indicating toady wanna-be status. Unfortunately, you can't really target only the good agents, you gotta wait for them to find you. After a short learning period, you'll be able to tell who they are. They will be the ones who don't fake a smile and ask for your card promising to "spread your name around the office" after you inspect a dump that should be firebombed. Over time, you will collect a select few "keeper" agents. The rest will just have to learn how to wince and perhaps bite their tongue when they hear that you are the inspector their client chose.

Damn. I've never been called "adorable." Not by anyone sober, anyway. Well, at least I know the real problem now. Anyone know where I can take lessons to become adorable?

As I see it, there's also a problem leaving the ultimate decision in the hands of the electricians. Simply put, a lot of them aren't aware of the issue. Even more frightening is that many don't wish to learn. I've been called by more than one to tell me that they've "never seen a bad one." One even told me his shop had Stab-Lok equipment in it which he saw no reason to change. But here's the best: I wrote up a Stab-Lok panel on a home built about 1964. The buyer backed out; the seller hired an electrician himself to try to salvage the deal. The electrician calls me and says, in so many words, that I'm full of **it and don't know what I'm looking at. I asked him if he'd ever heard of the FPE problems; he said yes. I asked if he'd done any research himself; he said no. I tried to give him Friedman's website address dealing with it and he refused to write it down. I recommended that he Google it if writing down a URL was too much work. Again, he had no interest in this suggestion. At this point he called HI's "hysterical." What he said after that was stunning in its stupidity. I had to pause briefly while I attempted to understand how this made even a minuscule amount of sense. Of course, I couldn't. I knew further attempts at educating him were futile but I couldn't help myself. So I asked him how that would simulate an overcurrent or short condition due to which the breaker should reasonably be expected to trip. Not surprisingly, there was no answer. He simply restated his plan to turn them off then on again. I wasn't about to get into all the other issues with the panels as it would have wasted even more of my time. Anyway, after that I revised my report language to (even) more strongly tell my clients that if they do even a little research they will most likely know more about FPE than any licensed electrician they contact.

As an inspector who works in an area where an "old" home is 100 years old or less, and even "really old" is almost never prior to 1870, I regret the loss of even a relatively modest home such as this. Hell, I inspected a 6000+ square foot home built in 1853 for free just to see it and the techniques used. I guess where they are more common the locals take them for granted. It's a shame. There was a lot of history there.

Personally, I think ridiculing Bubba for his repair efforts is the wrong approach. Through his efforts, Bubba gives us a laugh now and then. Perhaps more importantly, without the Bubba's of the world, we might well be out of a job. Since I (and my family) have kind of grown accustomed to eating somewhat regularly and other activities requiring the use of cash, I say that we should celebrate Bubba and his inventiveness. Find a Bubba today and give him a sincere thank you! Now here's a Bubba creation I found parked next to a mobile home. Note that is is parked out near the street to really show it off. (The '81 Camaro with the engine out of it was parked on the other side. Really.) I'm still trying to figure this out. It's a deck built on top of a utility trailer. It is outfitted with a BBQ grill and little hanging baskets for the plastic flowers thrown out at the cemetery which still have a little life left in them and are too good to really throw out. So...is it a parade float? Is it a mobile deck to go with the mobile home adjacent to it? Who knows? My guess: it's to take the young'uns to the livestock auction in style. Image Insert: 86.66 KB

The last thing I want to get saddled with is the responsibility of calculating costs of significant repairs. I give them for fairly cut and dried repairs, but even then there is room for a lot of error. Case in point: this summer I had to have my evap coil replaced. I got 3 bids from long-established, reputable firms. All were bid using the original mfr's replacement coil. As coil replacement goes, this one was simple. Tall attic, light and receptacle right there at the unit. Great working space and walkway to the unit itself. Not some lying-on-your-side low pitch attic. Even with these conditions, the highest bid was almost double the lowest one. Does anyone want an angry call from a client telling us we blew an estimate and they relied on our figures to finalize the deal? I'd much prefer to stick to the recommendation I give clients to get bids from reputable repair firms.

Would that be because you can stand on the step and lean your cheeks against these walls? - Jim in Oregon With the way this discussion is going, one might reasonably conclude that the term buttress is a corruption of butt rest.

I also call it the end wall of the porch step. Of course, I specify whether it is at the right or left side. (I'm not much for E S N W directions since I specify right or left as viewed from the front of the home.)

OK...I know that (probably) no one else feels the same way I do, but I just have to brag. My (unranked) boys just went into Death Valley against the #1 team in the country AND some 100,000 or so hostile fans and pulled off a victory. GO HOGS!!!!!

Just imagine...the new owners of the tub will be placing their, uhh, derrières where hundreds of other dirty people previously did.

Thanks, Jim. However, I can't get all tingly over the prospect of spending 12-14 hours tending my smoker full of Boston butts just to feed the stump-legged canine my wife calls a dog! I guess I'll try it on something less important, like chicken.

Question for you cherry users--- I do a fair amount of smoking. I've tried pecan, and find the flavor similar to hickory but milder. Being in Arkansas, the predominant wood used here is hickory. Personally, I love it, but I'd like to branch out. (Pardon the pun.) I have some wild cherry sections I split from a tree I had to remove. I have been afraid to try it for fear of ruining a perfectly innocent bunch of pork. The color of the wood itself is decidedly orange-y, at least the heartwood is. Anyone have any experience with it, or know how it differs from "real" cherry?

Yeah...and it kills off any parasites also. Nuthin' worse than a nice tender bite of asphalt-browned 'coon with worms in it. Kinda detracts from the perfect criss-cross tire marks we all work so hard to achieve.

I think Bill should get bonus points for using both of the oft neglected (but rich in heritage) words "strumpet" and "vixen" in such a short post.

It appears to me that it is Temporary Insanity II We are left to suppose that temporary insanity is also what he pleaded after the demise of the first boat...

I've seen it before also. If it was Photoshopped, it was well done. The angle of the light/shadows matches properly, as near as I can tell. Also, if you look at the exaggerated flare to the drive, it is plausible that someone actually poured a drive around the pole and built a home there...especially if real estate values are ridiculous in the area.

Phillip-- LSU is extremely talented and well coached. Being a realist, I fully expect to lose. However, I just as fully hope to win. After all, that's why they play the games, and this year has been a tough one for #1 and #2 teams. If we lose, my support is 100% behind LSU as the conference representative.