kurt

Good question. How old do breakers have to get before we don't trust them anymore? It probably varies between mfg's.

Yes, you're seeing this correctly.......under the kitchen counter in the corner. Click to Enlarge 25.14 KB

Help me out a minute.... All other things correct (bonding, grounding), what's the hazard other than someone doing something like inserting a paper clip into the recep while chewing on the pipe?

We dug a few foundations last winter and the ground was frozen like a rock down about 6'. Code cited frost grade is just an idea.

It was the cold one...(?)..

It started in the 70's. I'm not aware of anyone doing insulation retrofits in the 50's and 60's. But, for sure insulation retrofit. Pull a plug to see if it's UFFI. Not that UFFI is bad, but the general public perception, driven by idiotic government mandates since repealed, has made it "bad". You want to know if it's UFFI.

Yeah, Mike....Devwave. He knows his way around. It's also good to have a basic background in Wordpress. Wordpress comes in very handy.

I've never seen any below frost grade. They're all in the freeze zone around here.

No shit. Been eaten several times.

Sounds like a septic vent....(?)....Yeeesh, vent a septic into the areaway. Septic next to the cracked areaway....why didn't you tell us?[:-bigeyes ok, red alert.....

Good points. I owe me. I remember Ghent talking price 20 years ago, long after $100 inspections were history. He's one of the only old guard that understood the biz end.

If it was a multi-week gig with several dozen or a few hundred columns, where logistics can be set up to justify that price.....sure. I could make a decent living, but not what one thinks. I know guys and work with guys that have those gigs like putting up the OSHA required railings on top of Pepsi plants, or making fundamental alterations of primary structural components in large buildings, and all that sort of big ticket commercial stuff that's all around us but most folks don't see. They do OK, but they're not killing it. Raising families in comfortable lifestyle but nothing fancy and firmly in the middle somewhere. Us setting up to change out just a couple columns? Shit, I'd better be getting $2500 per or I'm looking stupid. Break points shift as the number of columns increases.

Every basement areaway I've found with a sump pump out in the areaway....there's always a flood problem of some type, maybe big maybe small, but always something stupid. I kinda skimmed over the age......built in 1974 and it looks like that, I'd be taking a harder look at a lot of stuff.

Can I hear a Brother?

My good buddy Steve ("RR Man") Hier had this to say years ago about HI's...... Look under the skin of any HI and one finds a boy desperately trying to live up to his Father's expectations. IOW, we're all operating under self imposed ideas that we're not good enough for whatever, and never will be, therefore how dare I charge an amount that I think I'm worth. My father wouldn't think I was worth it, so why should I? It's taken a long time for that to sink in, but if one is honest with oneself, they will find some truth in it on varying levels. I have.

What's a given house? Rich people buy expensive houses, middling income people buy middling houses, poor people pay rent. I charge more for one, as much as I can for the other, and try to help out the remaining group by offering a fine apartment for a fair price.

There's more truth in Kogel's post than I've read in most report system reviews. Too much text, not enough white space, folks just skim through it. Simplicity is not easy. If one wants to be humbled, try dictating an entire report. It's surprisingly hard. Dictation is a skill not easy to master. Composition, tone, voice, avoiding redundancy, clarity, simplicity.....all remarkably hard to do while dictating. Much easier for me to write it and see it. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say."..........Flan O'Connor

OK then, I get it. Engage me, if you will, in a small debate..... #1 Ghent made a point in another thread that by raising prices, I'm finally getting fees up to where they should have already been. The idea that any of us involved in HI work, and by extension the building trades, are charging "too much" is fatuous. We crawl around in ratshit delivering a necessary service that allows us (me anyway) to achieve only a very modest middle class lifestyle. We are not gouging; we are merely trying get things up to where they should be, and even once fees are where they should be, it's nothing to get all that excited about. #2 I'm a product guy. Always have been. My list of 1st's in Chicago.....first guy to use a laptop on site, first guy to deliver reports .pdf, only guy (until Jamie D.) to use an extension ladder and insist on roof access, first guy to use CO testing equipment (Draeger tubes, 1988), first guy to have a Protimeter, first to use digital pics and include them in report, and only guy to have developed their own report software system built around the use of digital pics. Yup. I'm not a sales guy. Those are the one's claiming in their advertising of being the "best in a particular neighborhood", pounding their ratings on Angie's List or Yelp (which are humorously easy to achieve) or some similar silliness. I'm not a sales guy, and more's the pity....maybe I'd be retired by now if I was a sales guy. I try to charge more because I've got the best service. All the other folks claim it, I actually got it. After 28 years of doing it, I'm finally getting the "clout" to jack my prices where they should have been years ago. Charging a "fair" price for a good service.....what's it mean? What's fair? So, I am entirely in favor of "surge pricing" although as I said in the other thread, "surge" is overblowing it. It's just getting my due for doing a really good job for nearly 3 decades. And, "my due" is pretty ****ing anemic compared to most other professions, but I'm not complaining because after 3 decades, I still like the gig. "Surge Pricing".....do it if you can and let the moralists tsk tsk. Your turn......

Already built one in FM Pro. Originally, one had to be online. Now, it's built into the OS. FM Pro container fields hold pics, video, audio, pdf's, or just about anything. I had audio comments (and video & pics) categorized and filed in the DB under each clients ID#. Cool, but unnecessary and already behind times. Built into current OSX is damn fine VR ability; I voice dictate some stuff...... I'm using it right now to "type" this comment. Double click the Function key, dictate, hit Function again (one time to end dictation), it "prints". Dictating on site is weird.....walking around talking into machinery isn't as easy as taking pictures and typing a few words when I'm in the office reviewing pictures.

Not in Chicago. Pretty much the same way now as 50 years ago, although now we can use PVC for DWV (limited in scope, though) and we use copper for main water service. Resistance to change is as strong as ever. Every other business establishes prices by supply and demand. Why can't we? Most every HI I've ever met is baseline hard thumping Constitutional Right to do whatever I want free enterprise is sacred kind of person, yet confront them with something so basic as S&D pricing and they go hissy fit. Agree while disagreeing? I don't understand all the way. Most HI's disagree with me just because it's me, but I know you actually think about this stuff. What's the disagreement part?

If I didn't have 10 pages describing all the stuff SOP's tell us we have to include, mine would be about 10 pages and most of that is white space. DB print protocols usually don't ever cut a field across a page break, so sometimes my reports only have one comment and pictures on a single page, similar to Homegauge. One of the largest problems nowadays is report systems are operating on outdated concepts. Like it or not, we live in a 140 character world and folks read in chunks, not long narratives. Factor in most folks having no idea what we do or are talking about, and long form goes over most folks heads. I only use long form for commercial or historic gigs. Young people, meaning most of my customer base, read in chunks. I give them chunks and pictures describing the chunks.

There's some question as to whether or not it needs fixing. The floor crack is just a floor crack, the wall crack sure looks like someone with a backhoe whacked it. I look at an awful lot of old properties with similar cracks and issues in basement entry areaways. If one is looking for best practice, buffed out, no defects whatsoever property, OK...fix it. Around here it'd be $10-15K. If one is looking at old properties that need various repairs and maintenance and you're fine with that.....this would be somewhere way down the priority list in my world. No seismic issues in Quebec, oui? With the info we have right now, I'm more concerned with that pipe sticking out of the wall. It looks like a fuel oil storage tank vent. Anyone talk abut UST's? (Underground Storage Tanks)

Think long and hard about using Scrivener. It's an amazing program, but I can't imagine why I'd want to use it for HI reports. If you are going to make the database useful and not bulky, you will want it to be relational. Relational databases and clouds can get ridiculously confused. The cloud is always trying to synchronize the DB, the various files in the DB will be different sizes, and the cloud will not necessarily keep them all in the same sync with the speed you would like it to. One discovers this when opening files; ID #'s are looking for information in other files that are probably not all at the same sync state. It can blow things up pretty quick. It will work, but it doesn't necessarily happen with the speed one imagines, and you can really demolish your system and reports with misaligned information. Also, building around a device (or devices) sounds cool on the front end. Did it. A couple times. I won't do it again. Think systems and forms, not devices. But, go ahead if you have to. You'll understand what I mean in a few years, and by then you will have done what most, including me, did.....as you begin, so you must continue. Think really, really hard about how you begin. Lots of smart DB folks thought through our issues years ago; it's all actually quite standardized. Thinking you're going to come up with something new......well, go for it. You'll understand in a few years. Sure they will. Some/most do it now. Where most mess up is lots of bells and whistles. HI's like sparkling twirly stuff, and bells and whistles sells systems. But, they're largely/completely unnecessary for informing clients simply and competently. The hard part is making your system simple. It's real easy to make report systems big and complicated; simple is much harder.

Quite right. I think Robert's design is lousy. Nearly incomprehensible. At 57 pages for a simple house, excruciating to read. All one needs is a sentence or two for each item, a picture illustrating what the sentence is about, with items formatted into a simple list. Some things need more than a couple sentences; if so, write a few more sentences. Categorize each item as Major, Minor, FYI, or whatever. Do not have more than 4 or 5 categories. Minimize boilerplate; it's often easier and much faster to type what one is trying to say. Have a list of the stuff you didn't inspect, exclusions, restrictions to access, etc. Include a list of the stuff SOP's require us to describe and stuff it in the back somewhere; few care about it....those that do can find it. That's about it.

I was going to break it down via spreadsheet, but didn't want to be overbearing.....not. Who are these people charging $500 to install a Lally column? It costs $200-250 just to drive over to figure out what the job is. Do people keep a stash of lally columns in their truck and when called, run over like it's a pizza delivery, slam a column in place and then go do it another 6 or 7 times each day? The column is cheap, going to get it, deliver it, and install it is not. Health insurance, other insurance, retirement accounts, office administration, phones, computers, a truck that costs about $30,000-37,000 (or more) full of approximately $15-20k in tools, capitalization of the truck and all those tools, one's own time......shit, I couldn't do a column for less than a couple grand, and even then I'd be eating part of the job. Who knows an actual skilled trade person that's killing it so bad they got money to burn? I don't know any.