kurt

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

I got this email from Nicky today requesting that I remove my website reference of "ASHI being the largest and oldest professional home inspection society". He did say thanks. He's such a polite man. Are there verifiable membership #'s for each society? I know we have real numbers, but what's the #'s for Nicky's business? Does it matter? I thought it was kind of cute. I'm expecting him to file suit alleging harm to consumers, and I suppose I'll have to respond. But, until then, it would be good to get some numbers, if they're actually available.

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.

Yeah. Ma La. *La* is hot like red pepper hot. Ma is the numbing electric tingle. Ma La is that hot pot tingle thing. There's a lot of hua jiao...at least 4-5 types, or so it seems. Maybe sand ginger. I just made friends with Peng Jie, whose husband is from Chongqing and is claimed to be an expert hot pot chef. Ms. Jie, miracle of miracles, teaches English at a small university in the mountains, and speaks perfect English. . I may have found the Rosetta Stone.

I like it. Old decrepit buildings surrounded by turbines. Composition seems not quite right but interesting juxtaposition.

Well, FTR, folks over here think America is the greatest, they're all adamant that the last thing they want is any kind of tussle, most would love to come to America and make lots of money (they think we're all rich, and compared to China, we are), and their greatest wish is that China and the US can work together peacefully to the benefit of both of our countries. I've had total strangers warmly and emphatically tell me they really hope our countries don't get involved in conflict. Also for the record, the idea that China is stealing manufacturing jobs is fatuous. They're disappearing over here (at what looks like) a faster clip than in the US. It's about the robots, folks. China pretty much owns robot manufacturing, even though we invented it. That said, on the military power front, everyone is pretty much dumbfounded that the US thinks they have anything at all to say about what happens in the South China Sea. This isn't political; it's just reporting from the front line. On the hot pot front....making serious headway. Bay leaf figures hugely, more than I thought. The mixes I've seen seem to be about 1/4-1/3 bay leaf. There's this other stuff I can't figure out; it looks like deer antler, but it's got this strange gingery taste with a little galangal root thrown in. And, dried orange and star anise. Cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, and this other stuff that's all over Hubei. I don't know what it is, but it's kinda floral and cumin-y. Oh, and peppers. 3-4 kinds of red hot peppers, and the Sichuan flower pods...hua jiao...the red one's and the red with little green flowery sheath ones. Not the black or green ones.

Mingtian = tomorrow. Mingtian and Jintian (today...actually zuotian, yesterday), I did some traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture in a mountain hospital for stiff neck and hand. I'm telling you, this guy is a carpenter's best friend. Two treatments, it definitely feels better. Click to Enlarge 102.02 KB

When I travel home, I will arrive a few hours before I departed.

Historically, zoning had a single purpose; keeping out The Other. It's been modified over the years so that now it's largely economic with just plain small minded stupidity close behind. Portland's ordinance is unique in several regards, one being the environmental component. That really pissed off a lot of the old guard. If one's been keeping up on modern zoning, it's pretty much recognized by those paying attention that most zoning ordinances are destroying cities; they don't allow for the density and diversity that makes cities live. Things like in-law apartments, coach house apartments, variations of multiple family themes, lot sizes, small home based businesses, and pretty much everything that makes cities interesting...isn't allowed.

That's right. The zoning ordinance is unlike any other I've studied. It's rigid. The underlying governance structure is radically un-American. This topic is hotly debated in urban planning circles. Large metro areas composed of central cities and multiple rings of suburbs all with independent city councils and governing structures isn't just bad for planning; it makes planning nearly impossible and it destroys the core city.

He has a writing style that's sorta masturbatory; he likes to hear himself talk. It's kind of entertaining in a bloviating sense. He's got a lot of it right, but I'm not much into the apocalyptic overtone he brings to it. He completely discounts human ability to figure stuff out and deal with it. Right now, I'm in a part of China (Enshi Prefecture) that's an interface between the new and modern and the old and village peasant scenario. I'm living in Old Town portion of Enshi...a lot of it dates back to 19th century hovels that have new stuff tacked and patched onto in a manner that only a home inspector could fully appreciate. In short, this is the cluster****, not America. What I learn is folks dig themselves out of holes they put themselves in. This area is Exhibit A for what happened during the Cultural Revolution when complete lunacy overtook an otherwise intelligent society and reduced it to a pile of rubble, emphasis on rubble, and now it's about how to dig out of the rubble. Our current political situation has to run it's course. Nobody believes anyone else about anything, so it's not worth trying to convince them. We've changed course, due to frustration, not intelligent planning, and now we get to see where that takes us. Meanwhile, on this side of the globe, I'm seeing what planning and adept execution gets you. What it gets you is pretty amazing. I was hanging out in Portland OR back in the early 80's to 90's (I was in the first wave of windsurfers discovering the Gorge) when they first adopted their completely radical urban planning model. The oldster biz modelers, mineral extraction types, and libertarian's were all screaming it was a complete and total disaster and commerce and industry would grind to a complete halt. Not. If anyone's been to Portland recently, they'll see what intelligent community planning and execution gets you. It gets you a pretty nice city. The necessary ingredient for all this is a sense of community, not a one of which any of the pop movements (Dems, Pubs, Libs) have a clue about how to model. Until this descends into partisan bickering, I don't consider it political discussion. It's more of a philosophical considering of how to do the things we need to do.

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.

Right question, but lacking context, no answer is possible. We're the transitional generations; we're old enough to remember what it was like, and young enough to see the first glimmers of where we're going. This goes rather quickly to the internal contradictions in our democratic system where we're supposed to be united but where every individual is also crowned King. It's where Originalism runs headlong into reality. Which takes us from philosophical underpinnings to the discussion to full on politics, which ain't happening. While I'm no Commie, it's interesting to be in a culture where village communitarian-ism is part of the mental make up. One thing you find here is responsibility. In America, everyone is obsessed with their "Rights", where over here, there is much greater emphasis placed on responsibility to community and family. Which breaks down in all sorts of interesting ways, both tragic and humorous, but it's something folks recognize. It's not all about individual rights. There's a community out there.

There's too much to cover here by thumbing typing on a phone from China. The crux of the ideas are well covered in past and current urbanist tomes. While I can't stand and disagree with Jacob's NY false colloquial liberalism on several fronts, she does lay out some solid basics in her landmark "The Death and Life of Great American Cities". There can't even begin to be an intelligent discussion of the topic until folks have some grounding in fundamentals. You have to read Jacobs if you want to swim in the deep end. Countering Jacobs and most modern urbanists, I'd also recommend Kotkin, who comes at it from another front. Try "The Human City; Urbanism for the Rest of Us". Kotkin is despised by most urban planners of the Academy (as in elite university dweebs). That's why it's important to read him. Somewhere in the middle...maybe both sides.... is Gravel with "Where We Want to Live: Reclaiming Infrastructure for a New Generation of Cities". He's kind of dismissed by the tenured academics as a gomer simpleton, a good reason to read him. "Urban Planning for Dummies" is also available; it's perfunctory, but it lays some basic premise for those not wanting to dive into Jacobs or Kotkin. We can't get away from the idea of cities, though. They are the human invention that creates the wonders we all enjoy. Doesn't matter if you like 'em or hate 'em...they're necessary. My high school was way rural; 42 kids in my high school class, nearest neighbor about a mile away. I thought I hated cities. Then I moved to one. It takes a while, but now I'm a city guy. And the guy does reason like a 9 year old. Because that's how simple some of this stuff is. He's not off target. It's simplistic because it's simple stuff. Building massive road systems to provide housing so we can build more roads so we can have more houses to build more roads to so we can have houses....is kind of like that shitty movie "Waterworld" where Dennis Hopper exhorts his minions to row, because if they stop rowing, they'll see the pointlessness of their existence and go nuts. If one wants to have their heads opened up wide to what real planning looks like, start reading everything you can on China's "Belt and Road Initiative". There's a couple out there....one by Sharma & Kundu, and another by Tai Wei Lim and Hui Tseng. They're ridiculously expensive, so no one is likely to read them, but google around and get an idea of what is happening on this side of the world. It's Chinese scale, it's smart, and it has the highly possible potential to make America a very secondary consideration in the world economy.

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 can demolish Chad's points with a large mountain of credible data and research, but not in here and not on my phone skirting internet censorship with a VPN. We know where the future is going with this stuff. Marc's point is right on target. They can do it here for all those reasons. Those reasons make the average American angry, not curious. Which is a problem. We are held hostage on a lot of levels to misguided perceptions based in a time long past that largely didn't exist as we remember it.

I agree. Except when you aren't home.

An interesting topic, one that I an my friends give a lot of discussion and attention to. If you're ever in Shanghai, go to the Urban Planning Museum in People's Square. It is an entirely different approach to the issues, one that is sustainable and provides actual growth, not just Fed money lobbied into roads to nowhere. Much is made in the West of China's empty cities, built on spec and never occupied, but no one thinks for half a second about our millions of miles of roads going nowhere that are used by about 12 people. The rural population derides the urban population for it's welfare state operations, yet they don't even begin to comprehend that they are receiving much larger stipends from government than the often useless social programs. I just got off a high speed train....Wuhan to western Hubei in the mountains at 150mph. In the flats, we were hitting 225mph. The train network in China is almost beyond comprehension; it's Jetsons right now. The Wuhan stations have about 120 platforms. Imagine the largest football stadium you've ever been in, expand it 10x, and that starts to provide some sense of the scale of operations. As we were blasting along, we saw additional lines getting built, running in all directions. And they get used. It's the height of Spring Festival when approximately 275 million people hit the road to go back to their home villages. I wouldn't get on a bus in Chicago; it's expensive and I'd rather walk because it's quicker and easier. Here, I use the bus all the time. It's 30 cents, they run on service roads that parallel the main road, they have short, medium, and long haul runs, and they get you where you're going on time. The subways...all brand new and they get you where you're going. One really doesn't need a car here. It's nice to have one for certain things, but overall, they're unnecessary. Vast cities are tied together by comprehensive transportation networks, and inner cities woven together in the same manner. It's planned, the plans are executed remarkably well, and it's a wonderment. I'm living in the future over here. It's mind boggling. Click to Enlarge 63.96 KB Click to Enlarge 68.96 KB

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.

This might be another outgrowth (or tumor) from Holme's show. He's always bragging how he only uses screws instead of nails. I've even had customers comment or ask "did they use screws or nails"; when I question them why they asked, it's always "that's what Holmes does".

We'd call that a cheap felt cap; essentially a thin felt barely mopped down over some previous nastiness. There isn't any "usually" with a thin felt cap; it's whatever the gapped toothed hillbilly that applied thought would get by.

That's right. Inasmuch as these little walls can prevent catastrophic disaster, you want a good firewall. I've personally seen what happens when firewalls are incomplete or compromised, and it's bad. Really bad.