kurt

I know this. That's what's weird....the smell was distinctly fishy. It's one of the reasons we didn't immediately suspect the foam.

Most masons around here have them....but still kinda funny.

Certainly possible or even likely. The fish description is not entirely accurate. Sometimes it's like VOC's.

You could strongly suggest.....

Maybe. But that's not how it worked on the 2 joints I investigated. During the tear out, when it got down to laborers scraping every square inch, we found kinda gummy areas, widely dispersed. It wasn't like it was all goop with pockets of the stuff; it was more like thin stretched areas of failure that would be hard to hit with random core sampling. But, I don't know. We're on the front end of figuring out why some foam applications go bad. I still think it's the greatest invention, but my enthusiasm has been tempered by a couple bad jobs I've seen and some of the stuff I've been reading about failures.

Well, I was curiously aroused. Does that count?

Probably.

This month's Reporter mag has a pullout ad for Holmes Inspections. Has anyone ever seen a Holmes Inspections "franchisee"?

That jibes with my experience. Spring and Autumn temps, moderate to higher humidity.....and the smell starts Couldn't smell it in deep winter, but come Springtime, it'd come back. I have no idea about the blue stuff. You should get in there and cut a chunk of the blue stuff out to see if it's cured all the way through. I'm curious. I've never seen bluish foam.

That's how it worked with the 2 properties I looked at. No smell, then that "fishy" smell that would come and go with changing atmospheric conditions. It was hard to nail down. It never went away after more than a year, so we just started tearing stuff out to find out what was wrong, and we ran into some gooey sections that stank. The blue thing is really weird. Never seen that one. It can't be right.

You most likely have some combination of the bad stuff you described, resulting in incomplete reaction. Somewhere buried in foam that looks OK are some gooey sections that didn't go off. I've been the "expert" called in to figure out two similar things; the storylines are identical to what you're experiencing, and subsequent invasive investigation revealed uncured sections. Foam guys will stall forever because the fix is extremely unpleasant. Essentially, strip it all out and start over. Sorry to be the one providing the bad news.

I have some old coin op Speed Queens....can't break and more steel than some cars. They weigh about 280 pounds. The problem with top loaders is the universal joint agitating the tub (and way too much water). The old Maytags that never broke...had the perfect design. It was ingenious. Everything else is garbage. When Maytag changed from that design, it was all downhill. Front loader technology, with it's adjusting water levels to load size, the extractor spin mode, and the motor mounts make more sense. The LG has a direct drive arrangement...no extraneous moving parts. Mechanically, they're superior. It's the control modules that aggravate. But, they're getting better.

It's unreasonable to expect a high schooler to get Salinger. It took me several years beyond high school to appreciate it. It's not comfort fiction.... First pic is quite nice. Very Prairie.

Parks would do a 6' caisson...check valve, overflow tee, bypass pump, etc.... in the front yard for about $8-10k, complications = another couple grand.

LG front loaders here too. 5 pair, one set each apartment. Flawless function, zero problems. Samsung refrigerators and ranges in every apartment. Way better than other appliances. Recall notices on a single model is useful information for that model. Modern mfg. is about globalized supply chains and all sorts of stuff that can lead any company to produce a lemon.

I appreciate that.

I agree. Most "problems" with report writing are linked to inspectors making things more complicated than they need to be. Whenever I find myself struggling, I put myself in the customer's head...what do they need to hear? It's usually something very simple. Often, the most messed up places are the easiest to describe, and the repairs even simpler.

I agree. I just thought it was funny.

The following Headline sez it all...... kinda funny.... "Clintons Did Not Obtain Permits to Renovate Their New Chappaqua Home, Records Show"

The nerve of those people....this is beyond the pale... www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/us/politics/ ... -home.html

Right here.... The patent is in process, we've been getting the engineering studies done that would back it up for large scale commercial work and code compliance, and we've got a few contractors who we've been vetting so we can give them the stuff and they do the repairs. So, we're trying the blueprint you described. It's complicated, expensive, and time consuming. In the meantime, we're fixing a few buildings. Remember when Hier was doing the split face stuff for NPR about 10 years ago? One of the main problems with getting this impending disaster on the air and talked about is the reticence on the part of homeowners going on public record saying the largest investment in their lives was worthless. We've both had TV journalist types say they'd do stories but neither of us can get anyone to go on record. I don't blame them. It's a tragic mess that about several thousands+ homeowners have to deal with. You've seen 'em, you know how messed up it is. Right now, it's just gigs for rich people on the north side. You should check out the perimeter wall vent flashing system. It completely solves the parapet wall flashing conundrum. We've even put this stuff on solid common brick parapets; it pulls moisture out of them and dries them out.

It is, isn't it. The whole heat shrink boat wrap thing just kinda jumped up at us when we were wrapping a boat for the winter. There's zipper windows, vent components, and all the stuff that makes for a nice work enclosure...no more flapping blue tarps in the breeze and the nightmares associated with flapping blue tarps. Schedule 80 PVC struts, 2" copper tee's and couplers, etc. The whole repair biz came out of necessity in '08, as we all remember...all those people that ignored my reports, bought the things, then started calling me asking me *what to do now?*.... it just kind of happened and snowballed. I'm not on the operations end; Kelly is the Leonardo "inventing" the systems. I'm just the guy that stands around making sure nothing really ****ing stupid happens. So far, so good....

I see.... OK, you're ****ed on this one.

Just curious...... How many of the conditions you found are, not duplicates, but similar conditions as one might find on other houses? Boilerplate isn't where I'm going, but efficient report format and software interface is. There's ways around this....though sometimes we just get ****ed.

I might lean toward well casing then; I've never seen a well casing <4". This was in a 1956 house out in a suburb that was way on the periphery back then....could've easily been on a private well. The tank sweep came up empty.