kurt

Well, nothing is broken, so no fix is necessary. It's just old stuff. If using old stuff feels better, use old stuff. It may be true that new stuff isn't better, although, new software capabilities have often led me to discoveries previously unimagined w/ old software. The amount of time I've wasted dinking w/ workarounds on old software have often been solved in one or two mouseclicks w/ new software.

Gotta agree w/ Jimmy; AmiPro was great, but give it up. Word is only one option, but if you want to stick w/ WP, & not go database report software, get Word. Since one can pick up an entirely adequate Dell desktop machine w/ CD-RW, 256K Ram, Windows XP, and multiple other options for under $600, buy a new machine. The time taken dinkin' around w/ an old piece of crap computer will take you (at least) several days; do one inspection & buy a new machine. Hanging onto old computers out of sentimental value is extremely counter-productive; you could be out doing a thousand better things. Computers are a commodity, to be used and recycled. Plus, w/XP, just buy any damn mouse or peripheral you want, plug it in, & go back to work. Unlike the old Windows versions that were "Plug & Pray", XP actually recognizes new peripherals & loads drivers automatically. What's that worth? In my life, it's worth a lot. I hate computers.

60 amp panels. The entire system should have been upgraded, as the meters, trough, & related components were all ancient. Possibility for electrocution seemed to be paramount. There were plenty of other things to hang the entire building on; I was just curious.

I looked @ a 4 flat today; total piece of crap. Of particular interest was the electrical panels. The old fuse boxes had been removed, & new breaker panels installed by splicing into the mains & neutrals to get enough slack to tie to the new equipment. In two of the panels, the old neutrals had been spliced to and then led through conduit to adjacent panels to become the neutral for those panels. IOW, the panels were sharing the main neutrals. I can imagine several nasty things taking place w/ this installation, but don't want to overstate my observations. What sorts of specific bad things could happen in this scenario?

Written report. All the above reasons. Multi-family inspections appear daunting @ first, but are not. Commercial is the same way. Surprisingly, I find commercial inspections to be much less liability, for several reasons. The average investor isn't worried about a cracked windowpane. They know that they have to change out major equipment. The don't care about someones stained ceiling tile. Subcontract out the environmentals. Very often, the inspection boils down to a big flat roof, a package HVAC system, sidewall & glazing, & the parking lot. Very often, tenants are responsible for the package units and mechanicals in their spaces. I've modified my report system to accomodate an unlimited number of interiors and HVAC systems, so multi-family reportage has gotten real easy. I'm going to do the same for the electrical & plumbing. If one is adept @ single family for buyers, the move to multi-family & small commercial is relatively simple.

http://www.cdw.com I get all my junk @ CDW; it's local. I put up a will call, drive downtown, get it that day. They also have much larger drives, but I find that the 80gb is more than adequate for my pipsqueak business. I've got 15 years worth of reports on the thing, several thousand digital photos, & I still have about 60gb free space. Chad, I definitely understand the paranoid thing. At any point in time, I have my entire world running on 3 - 4 different hard drives. I have duplicate laptops. I carry one of my laptops w/ me wherever I go. When that is impractical, I have been known to burn a CD & carry it in my shirt pocket. Now that the bug is in my ear for the USB key, I suppose I have to have one of those also. Day in & out though, the Maxtor is a really kick ass solution for small fry like me.

Those memory keys are quite slick, and they are worth every penny, but their main benefit is portability. For another $50, you could have 80GB of hard drive storage w/ a Maxtor One Touch. Plug in the Maxtor Drive to a USB port, load a simple program that comes w/ the machine; that's it. When you want to backup, touch the button on the front of the Maxtor drive, & the software backs up the entire hard drive. IOW, you have a mirror of your "C" drive, including programs, Favorites, etc. If you don't have USB 2.0, it's a little slower, but still works fine. Hit the button every night before you leave the office; if anything happens, buy a new computer, plug the hard drive into the new machine, & you are off and running.

I wouldn't bother w/ the insurance commission; that's a long road ending in a dead end. They aren't going to pay. Replacing the old tank is asking for trouble; the "new" insurance company could just as well get out of the business, and then she's in the same boat. I would put on my best bedside manner & advise her to hook up to the gas grid & install a new gas fired boiler. Cheaper, cleaner, better. After 5-6 years, she'll have saved roughly $1500 in insurance, gas is cheaper, maintenacne is minimized, and she's s winner all the way around, IMHO. A new Weil Mclain boiler, installed, is around $3500 in my neighborhood. Most gas companies have incentives for hooking up. Either way, she's gonna get hit for around $3000-5000.

If I'm following this, there is now an oil tank in the living room behind some folding closet doors. Isn't there a habitability code somewhere that would preclude storing oil in habitable space? Doesn't it stink up the LR? In my entire career, I have never looked @ an oil burning anything; I've actually inspected functioning coal fired equipment, but never oil. I know the fundamentals from reviewing tech manuals, but that's it. In a lighter, & decidedly more scatological drift, I've read that WWII diesel powered submarines lacked bathroom facilities; the crew pinched their loaves into buckets of old fuel oil. The oil, being lighter than water, allowed the "goods" to sink & prevented undesirable smells from further disturbing the already tense atmosphere on board. OK, I apologize; I'm snowed in[:-cold], can't work, & the mind is wandering.........[8]

The accessory shingles I am aware of are "starter" shingles, hip & ridge cap shingles, & a couple other products that I've never worked with. The hip & ridge accessory shingles are coordinated to be compatible in color and design w/specific Certainteed lines, i.e., same color, reveal, texture, or whatever. The units come in bundles, are pre-formed, & provide a very nice finish to ridges & hips. I've seen them on 2-3 residential roof systems, all extreme high end installations. As an industry "standard", they don't seem to exist in my market (Chicago). 99% (or thereabouts) of all installations I see use the same tabs for ridges as the rest of the roof; a laborer sits for hours & cuts them by hand on a jig. Seemingly an expensive manner to obtain ridge & hip caps, but apparently cheaper than the Accessory shingles. The Accessory shingles, due to pre-forming, are vastly superior to hand cut tabs; cracking is essentially eliminated. While not wishing to condone "cracked" ridgecaps, I am a realist. Triple coverage ridges have to be nearly non-existent to leak; minor cracking just doesn't do anything. Yes, it can accelerate, degree dependent on cracking, i.e., what's major & what's minor. As an aside, what about ridge vents? There is an open space approx. 1" wide running the length of the roof on both sides of the ridge. Is this a potential leakage location? Not according to the mfg. According to Certainteed, a cracked shingle is a problem, but not a ridge vent. Do you get my drift here? It is helpful to have some hands on experience w/ the product if one wishes to convey meaningful information to their client. Reiterating the contents of a mfgs. instruction manual can be very pertinent w/ certain products, but in the case of ridge cap shingles, I'm not sure it is useful information in all cases.

The operative word(s) here are missing, i.e., degree of cracking. Of course Certainteed is calling it in their manual; their attorneys likely require it. Then there is the world of roofing & roofing contractors that we must exist in. If one attends the Certainteed class, it takes about 30 minutes to realize that nothing is being done the way Certainteed thinks/wants/requires it to be done. The class then continues for another 3-4 days, & by the end of it, you are made well aware that the world is completely off axis. The general disconnect, IMHO, is that very few, if any, individuals in the home inspection profession have any practical experience w/ roofing (or any other aspect of actually building stuff), i.e., no one has any sense of tolerances. If one spends just a few hours nailing down ridge caps, one learns very quickly just what tolerances are acceptable. Without that knowledge, one is left to analyze via the manual, which pretty much consigns all installations to the garbage pile. Since our report SOP requires us to not just note the defect, but inform the client as to what it means, & as to what appropriate action is necessary, where does one reasonably go w/ "cracked" ridge caps? Following the instruction manual is certainly safe, & provides maximum CYA, but excessive CYA always leads to mushy reports, & ultimately to the pedantic. Spend some time nailing off ridge caps, & this question (more or less) answers itself.

No picture.

Georges answer cuts to the heart of the matter; temperature is "important", but is somewhat meaningless if the equipment is not compatible w/ the house.

Nope, not likely, and almost nothing if there are just minimal cracks.

Well, I never thought I would, until I had a client quite upset that the bsmt. FR didn't receive enough air movement to provide adequate heating in extremely cold weather. Somehow, me telling her that it was "beyond the scope of my inspection" didn't placate her. The harsh reality is that we can, & will be held liable if a particular client thinks we should be. I now subcontract suspect installations to a certified air control technician. That really blows......

Just a quick aside.... Anyone who wasn't @ the class taught by Michael Leavitt ("3 Bulb Testers & Big Fat Liars") missed something really good. The fact that I was a raw little guinea pig was one of the best educational experiences I've had in my life. I was humbled in my opinions, something that I value greatly; walking around in the fog of ones own limited experience is dangerous. Michael cleared the fog. Scott has been pestering me to get a SureTest for a year; he (& Michael) were right, I was wrong.

OK fellas; I've submitted some photos to Master Chief O'Handley. The Cocopelli avatar is now up for grabs (although I reserve the right to grab it back!), & Profile photo is now something other than a werewolf.

Thanks Scott; you're a champ. I'll leave interpretations up to those inclined to interpret. Richard..... Just remember, infinity is a long way off, & you can't get there from here. It doesn't matter anyway, because if current theories are correct, you're there right now. And there, and there, and there, and there..........

I'm gonna give that a big fat AMENid="size5">id="size5">

These are the sorts of discussions that scare me. I'm usually busy finding all manner of grotesque major defects in the City that I tend to overlook this sort of detail. Please pass the hairshirt........ Douglas is so correct that I should just study harder & charge more, but sometimes I have to study lots of other stuff instead of minutiae related to a single bathroom circuit. Could someone just say it in a sentence that is 20 words or less so that I can digest it & then move on to trying to understand the current changes to the Chicago Mechanical Code?

Spyware Nuker. I learned about this from Cramer, & he's always right (dammit). It costs money, but it allows more selective scrubbing of your system. I run it once a week & always find 20-30 spyware components hidden the cookies, or sometimes even deep in system files.

That's what makes this business fun; there is so little history, and even less legal case history, that everyone imagines all sorts of things as gospel truth, such as "using special tools will make us expert", or somesuch goofiness. We're making this thing up as we go along; anyone that doesn't realize this is missing something. Think about it; it's only within the recent past that there are even published Standards of Practice for this profession. I realize that it has been a few years, but a few years isn't squat. Someday, these ideas will become more consistent across the board, but for the time being, it's still the Wild West; that's one of the greatest things about the job.

I kick the overall average up; itemizing my charge based on what tools I use is too complicated. Just crank up the average fee to cover the cost. Chad is right about charging for time.....

Stop the presses; Stingers are great "little jobs", but 500,000cp spotlights are where it's at. I've got 3 of them, all obtained from Bass Pro Shops for $19.99. Yes, they are big & mildly bulky, but they light up a crawlspace/attic like nothing else.

Double yep. There is no way, and I mean no way, that it is possible to accurately assess all the components of a septic system. You can pump & view the tank interior, baffles, outflow tees, or whatever else they do in your locale. The drain field is another matter; it's impossible to know what is going on without excavating the entire field, which is 2/3 the work of installing a new "Infiltrator" system. Speaking of which, has anyone else installed an "Infiltrator" w/ the plastic "drums"? I installed one 2 years ago, & it beats heck out of dinkin' around w/ stone, finger tiles, hay/straw, & the usual other installation techniques. http://infiltratorsystems.com