kurt

Could be for heat or (this is a WAG) a goofball attempt at balancing return lengths. I have seen various scrambled pipe configurations, but not like that. Pretty weird. How'd everything work?

I agree. Looks toasted. It does not look anything like common weathering. If it was common weathering, why would the other connector be pristine?

That thing looks toasted to me. Doesn't the left side look cooked?

I think they would if there was food in there. Which there probably is.

Then, you better be looking for the reliable garage door company now....

I'm with Steven on this one. I am also all for folks DIY'ing, it's not hard to do this task, but online instruction on electrical stuff can get really stupid and dangerous. No offense intended to those trying to help, but c'mon folks, don't be hanging yourselves and us out on DIY electrical advice. Get an electrician.

Erby's approach is exactly how I designed my interface. It's about interface design. We figured out all those extra 10 and 15 second motions required in so many off the shelf packages added a few hours to the day. Get rid of all the unnecessary moving parts. Most of the package system's interface are ridiculously bad. And people still buy them and use them.

IR helps sometimes. Sometimes it's worthless. Coping is real, real important; they leak up top, the water runs down to the floor platform where you're seeing the white line. We've found rotten roof structure, just like at floors.

It's true. We've never opened one up where there wasn't some water stains someplace. They can look perfect and still be wet. We saw one house where there was mold growing under every picture hung on the walls. The wall was breathing to the interior. Eventual excavation revealed a cavity running water like a swamp.

In the boom, there was a crush of developers throwing up "3 flat condos". Front wall is usually insipid faux historical detailed masonry, and the side and rear walls are split face. Potemkin village engineering, a perfect storm of lousy materials and incompetent building practice. UP'ers living outside of Seney wouldn't build a deer shack like this, but it was the magic that sold a lot of credit default swap packaged mortgages out of Chicago. Interiors are usually furring slammed onto the block, spray cellulose between furring, drywall. Often visqueen VB's on block interior, creating you know what. Flashing details are nonexistent. No capillary break or boot on the truss end. Crappy installed flashing, no end or back dams and sometimes no flashing at all. No recognition that water migrates into the cores and then goes everywhere and anywhere. Some of them are spooky bad, others merely horrible. There's about 15,000-20,000 of these messes throughout Chicagoland, with a concentration in the hot youngster neighborhoods of the near N, W, and NW sides. Fair amount scattered through South Shore, Bridgeport, etc. Lamb, where do you see them?

The real problem is using the stuff for multiple wood floor platforms. I grudgingly concede it's ok for single story strip malls or walmart. No interior finish or structure to rot. Mix in a bunch of tree farm top chord bearing truss extending into the block core, and that is a problem. Even if there's no serious moisture issues elsewhere, the truss ends rot out. No one used capillary breaks, back dams, or anything else to control water.

I'm not familiar with the Smith products, but I've been using Abaton, West, and a revolving cast of epoxy suppliers for > a couple decades. Wood boats, old dumps, whatever. A lab analysis would probably provide performance differences, but as a carpenter on the ground or boat monkey in a yard, they all do pretty well. They're a miracle. It's a miracle for old rotten window sash; I've saved stuff that one would swear was junk, and have repairs last >20 years. I used WEST for the windows. That porch? Replace the posts. Epoxy would slow it down, but it'd be a bigger mess than it was worth.

Oh. I've got one that's 20+ years old, and it sometimes gives info that doesn't correspond with another instrument I use.

Jim, this is interesting. Where I live the counter staff won't tell you anything more than which version of the code they enforce. That's exactly what I thought. Even getting them to acknowledge there's a version can be impossible. CBD guy's usually refuse to give information without an FIA request, and then they send it over to DCAP or somewhere else as a subterfuge. Living in IRC land must be nice.

Thanks much. You did the hard work. The piece does a good job of describing the problem and a possible solution. On almost all of these buildings, the inside face of the block is a huge problem. There needs to be a moisture control detail for the interior parapet and coping. Ideally, the coping would be vented. Page layout lacks eye appeal; it could use professional graphic design. We're still some number of years away from this sort of repair being widely adopted. Most of my customers (the entire real estate industry, actually) work through the 5 stages of grief to somewhere around #3-4, whereupon folks decide to sell (mostly). Someday, and I have no idea when that is, the music will stop. It's an interesting local story, hugely consequential, wholly undecided.

How old are the "old style" BLD5360 meters?

They are nice. I've still got mine...somewhere. I used to use it on the job; people loved the show. Nowadays, 12v impact driver. Light, ergonomic, powerful enough for this gig.

GAF is the old line best material and practice manufacturer there is, imho. Tamko....they're OK. Most of the time. There is the threat of a class action against Tamko, or there was anyway. Not sure where it is now. A few hundred bucks is all that separates them, so why not get the good stuff? I'd be more concerned with the design and material used for the IWS, valley liners, drip edge, and all the other stuff. I can notice a visual difference when I'm holding them or installing them, but once they're on the roof, I stop caring. Put them on a decent drained roof with the right details, they'll both look pretty good in 20 years.

There's a few of those in the midwest. The one's that work have big eave overhangs and architectural features that shed water. I owned a cast concrete house in Kalamazoo for a few years; dry as a bone. OTOH, there are some that are dank moldy boxes. Not exactly sure where the dividing lines are that make some work and others don't.

Fallingwater is Fallingdown. How many times have they spent dozens or hundreds of millions to put it back together? I was there in the 70's. It was the definition of dank moldy concrete box.

But not working well. By far the biggest complaint I've found most people have is the poor heating & cooling about the house, with uneven heating/cooling about the house leading the pack. My pre-drywall inspections find extremely poor insulation installs 99% of the time. Add that to the lack of *science* in the design and installs of the HVAC systems, and you've got my own (tract) house, one with an electric space heater running this very moment by my desk. I know what you're saying, but sometimes stuff does work OK even when it's stupid. I'm not saying how to report a condition; everyone can do whatever they want. But, sometimes systems are installed stupidly and they work fine. I see lots of small houses that work fine, even though supplies and returns are all "wrong". That said, stats say the #1 home complaint on the north shore is inadequately performing HVAC. Put a stupid system in a giant house, and they usually don't work.

I agree. But, I've found a lot of HVAC stuff over the years that "can't be working", but it does. So, whether or not this is a problem or merely stupid is known only to Kibbel.

If it wasn't comprising function in any way, I'd might put it in a report as an FYI, i.e., "dipsquat but functional". It's garden variety stupid. It wouldn't make my "top 10 stupidest things I've ever seen" list.

I see those on 40's and early 50's houses around Chicago. I think they're cast concrete with a little color, almost like a sandstone texture.

My guess is he didn't know how to lay out or assemble a flare. Square boxes, no problem. A little math, not a chance.