kurt

No, absolutely not. I've found your input to be fairly elevated and without prejudice. Same thing with Mustola. I've never heard either of you ever say anything stupid, silly, or out of whack. I was going to stay out of it, but felt Leighton deserved a response. Now that I'm talking, you know I'm not going to shut up, so.....Regarding the rest of it, a few final points..... 1) It's real easy. You do the job and if the realtor that referred you now hates you, it's part of the gig. At last count, I've been blackballed by somewhere between 11-15 offices. In a big urban market, that can be overcome. In a smaller market, it's usually an extinction event. One reason I moved to a big city was because the small market I had started in (SW Michigan in about 1978) completely blackballed me out of existence. I would not recommend the tactic of eschewing realtors to anyone in a small market. It's small minded and a decidedly silly business practice. Go ahead and try if it makes you feel special and you have to feel special. 2) It's none of my ****ing business how anyone chooses to run their business. If someone wants to suck up to realtors and do lousy inspections, my laissez faire beliefs prevent me from judging. I really don't care. I only hope they'd try to form their report systems in line with modern journalism and presentation formats. If you're going to do something, at least make your tangible product of it's time, not a historic relic no one understands anymore. 3) Characterizing this place as anything other than a good place to learn is self referential. Intoning the memory of the guy that started this place and stating that the reason he left has anything to do with a (false) characterization is really sticking it out there. The guy that started this place and me were the only two voices in here for close to a month before anyone else even showed up. The guy that started this place been my friend for nearly 30 years, we still exchange emails and pleasantries occasionally, and if the reason the guy that started this place split was for the reasons the other guy is saying, OK, fine. The guy that started this place has reasons that are his own, not mine. Making these statements and "supporting" them with unsupported reference to 3rd parties is sort of like an Appeal to Authority in debate, which gets judges snickering and usually eliminates contestants. IOW, it's bullshit. 4) Les, Jim, and Marc are stand up guys. Conciliators. I got no problem with going to the mats and then making up. I live and work in the City of Big Shoulders and Very Sharp Elbows. I plow in straight lines. I occasionally get slapped and I occasionally deliver the slap. It's part of my day. I don't carry any baggage with it. 5) The other guy gets his wish. I spend too much time in here, partly due to habit, partly due to a sense of duty, partly because I imagined my time in the gig would be worth something to someone, and partly because this is the thing I've done for a long time. I'm checking out, and pursuing other things. I hope everyone finds their way in this business.

Pretty sure it's the latter.

Go ahead and post it. I want to know what it is. You don't have to ask to reprint anything I have to say related to home inspection, or really, anything. I write a lot of stuff in a lot of different venues. I've lost track of most of it. Astray? It was a 3 ring circus of nauseating implications. It carried the essential elements of great literature and onanistic fulmination. In short, a mudbath. Way better than Facebook.

That's about right. It's gotten a little goofy. The "standard" is now so minutely proscribed, one could argue that even a brand new tile lined installation is dangerous.

And back to the OP.... Don't let the noobs tell you how to market your business. If you wanna push to realtors, go ahead. It's not about who you market to, it's how you do the job.

That's how it's worked with me, mostly. I'm an equal opportunity business person. I don't really care where the referral comes from and I don't care if they refer me again. Everyone gets the opportunity to refer me. I don't turn anyone away.

12% isn't bad for the lumber. Around here, bone dry dimensional in the lumber yard, covered, in the middle of winter is about 7-8%. In humid summer weather, I get about 12%. 51% is kinda high if it was the house, but it's not crazy for a crawlspace. Encapsulated crawls that I've been in read about 45%-50% RH.

I don't solicit agents; haven't for >30 years. That said, it's different now. Imagining one is going to get started dismissing realtors is not realistic. I agree with Marc completely and I also believe in compromise. So, 1) don't waste time putting brochures in realtor offices. Actually, don't waste time with brochures. 2) figure out a presentation about something that's actually interesting and pitch it to office managers for their Tuesday morning sales meetings. After that, I don't know. I don't talk to realtors if I can avoid it.

What Chad said. With a bunch of hook blades.

Yeah, Busman's Holiday.

Some of them feel like suicide showers. I pay very close attention to what I'm touching. I'm always working to avoid any action that might provide a current path. This is standard issue in rural China. My bro in law grew up without electricity.....that's in the 70's and 80's. Not long ago.

Surprisingly few bikes out here. Once the only form of transport not so long ago, they're now d?class?, only peasants have them and they're the most mangled rusted out re welded bollixed up messes you can imagine. You see youngsters in the city on bikes, fixed gear, mountain bikes, etc., just like here. The main form of transport for most is electric scooters or public transit. Car ownership is growing though. Everyone wants a car.

Not that I can see. Appliances either two burner range tops, on demand water heaters, or space heaters. No central beat around here. Just heaters under a table in the main room. I have no idea what the pressure is. I can't find a regulator

No need to hold the heat.... What are you talking about? You clearly live someplace where heat isn't something folks think about much. Maybe go R60+ ceiling and R40 walls and make it airtight with paneling (or drywall), and you got something, but I'm suspecting the gentleman is talking about a "normal" wood frame assembly, not a super insulated airtight box or mass wall.

Read the Electric Service response. I was making a joke. They're running natural gas with no apparent pressure regulators with CPVC fittings and some kind of yellow stuff that I'd normally associate with buried service wrapped and snaked through solid masonry and stubbed out into rooms where the appliance connectors are makeshift hydraulic hose and radiator clamps. Protective bollard is the least of my concerns. Even the gas meters are plastic. I spent a lot of time sniffing for gas leaks, and then I discovered they they barely put mercaptan in the gas...it barely smells. You can blast the gas and sort of smell it. A little bit. This is standard issue for rural China. Of course, this is the building I'm staying in.

I was making a joke. There's so much wrong here and such grotesque electrocution and shock hazards, I was going tongue in cheek. This mess is typical of rural China. No ground electrode, there's not even ground wires in circuits, open knife switches, no gfci, outlets in showers, and everything is conductive because construction here is solid concrete. Everything.

It's a no cut zone in my 'hood too. City people don't understand woodlot management. They think it's bad to cut down trees, so we end up with a bunch of overgrown weed trees.

That's right. There's air wash and convection loss which would be huge, and there's also thermal barrier issues. Insulation, lacking substantial thermal mass isolated inside of it, is pretty much worthless. There's nothing to hold the heat. A layer of drywall inside a layer of (fiberglass) insulation makes for a pretty good air seal and thermal mass barrier.

Does this service need a separate or additional grounding electrode? Click to Enlarge 212.78?KB Or this..... Click to Enlarge 192.81 KB

Do you think there should be a protective bollard by the main service pipe? Click to Enlarge 56.87 KB

You have to understand that a huge percentage of what gets written into manufacturers warnings is corporate legal looking to avoid class action. You should also understand that home inspectors walk around imagining that the entire world is going to spontaneously combust. There are probably a few dozen million homes with exposed kraft paper backing that are not....at least of this writing....going up in flames. Your house is full of stuff that burns readily, and it doesn't seem to be burning, does it? So, if we're talking reasonableness and probabilities, it's not a problem. If we're talking about the inane realities of life, such as insurance companies looking to avoid payment on house fires, or extremely unlikely chains of events that could, in fact, ignite the paper facing, then covering the paper with drywall is prudent. No on in here, including me, is going to tell you it's OK. Hardly anyone in here, including me, actually lives their life according to most of what we daily recommend to people.

I know...I saw in your profile you're in Itasca. I used to work out there a fair amount; now I'm more downtown and NW side in the hipster 'hoods. No way are you getting into a generator arrangement all set to go for $2K; not a chance. You could go manual generator for about $800, but you'd have to be home to crank it up. Sumpro is not technically a battery back up. It's an uninterrupted power supply (UPS). It's a marine grade deep cranking amp battery array with an inverter so it'll run your primary pump. If you don't have one already, get a good pump. I like Zoeller.

That gas tap is for your barbecue. Pretty common in Chicago. A good Sumpro is about $1800. A General survival system (frig, HVAC, sump, a few lights) running on natural gas is around $10k in your neighborhood. You might get in a tad cheaper depending on a lot of stuff. Installation includes transfer switch and controls. Mark's stone and retention pond thing isn't a Chicago solution. Maybe somewhere else, but when it dumps here, it isn't gonna work. Good pump and Generac system is your best option if you can swing the dough. Lots of them nowadays in your area, so finding installers and service is relatively easy.

I agree. Except when you aren't home.

Sumpro. It's the only thing I recommend if one is going battery backup; the 12v jobs are garbage. Installation is plugging it in, then plugging the pump in the battery back. You'll get about 15 hours of continuous duty, which translates into a lot of pumping because they don't run continuously. Get a Zoeller pump to go with it. The water power jobs are kinda cool, but they don't keep up when it's flood stage.