Rob Amaral

simple crawl with a little 'cellar' area for that old furnace that is now on it's side... The drain.. who knows.. So, it's a crawl space for structure, with a little pit for the old furnace and has a drain entering it.. maybe the drain was to let water 'out' of the pit to a lower location?

Hmm.. cyma-recta with dentils... Never mind.. I won't go there.. !!

el no insulato el pipes-o?

This all points to the 'why' of all of this..

Ditto with hearthman... the 'area is clad with non-combustible material' and that requirement is met... You have to cut bait somewhere..

"BAD SIGN" Jim.. !

I could flip through that old magazine link all day.. I eat this stuff up..

Great catch.. great fun.. I found a fridge like that a couple of years ago.. that clinker thing is something else.. thanks for sharing..

gotta pull out your moisture-meter to determine if it's damp.. your a home inspector, right? You don't enter an attic without a moisture meter... a camera, a flashlight

Looks like a pile Mike.... anyway.. 'B-A-D" of course.. ..A pile with the top exposed can rot and get short... thus the horizontal cracks..

I have been using Tramex Moisture 'encounter' for many, many years.. great tool.. I use those Eagle Creek belt-bags to carry it.. maybe guys don't protect the pads properly and damage them..???? I also have a Delmhorst two-pin for 'disputes' but never need it.. After many years in the field, you can use your experience coupled with a decent moisture-meter to get the job done...

wow.. all concepts lost...

Photo of Eddie getting Bronze Star, probably on Pavuvu Island .. ? The officer is Maj Gen Roy Geiger, USMC, the commander of the "Cactus Airforce" on Guadalcanal. This was the only photo of the entire 'story' I ever knew as a kid. Thanks to the internet, I found images of Ed in a foxhole on Peleliu (day 1), with his squad (That TV Series, "Victory at Sea', and a photo of him on Talasea (Guadalcanal area). Thanks to the guy who wrote the book "The Old Breed" and HBO "The Pacific" and other stuff.. I learned minute details. Realize that Uncle Ed never spoke of this stuff AT ALL to us kids. All he did was act normal. ... I knew Peleliu was 'bad', but I did not know 'how really, really, really bad' it was. Oddly, his kid brother Joe Amaral (Seabees) actually participating in the Peleliu operation and got to link up with him on the beach.. "He was standing there with no shirt on, a Thompson MG slung on his shoulder and eatin a can of peaches.. " Dad and his 3 brothers were always telling 'war stories'.. Most were not of combat.. just the funny parts... When it came to anything related to combat, they did not linger on it and it usually ended with them sort of softly saying, 'those poor bastards.. '. Download Attachment: CROPPED PAVUVU.jpg 902.25 KB Download Attachment: Uncle Joe Seabee.jpg 26.21 KB

Yes, Uncle Eddie was 'in' the Palau group on Peleliu Island... He was a rifle-squad leader (1/5/1) Got his guys (AND their 37mm field piece) ashore (Orange Beach) under mortar, cannon and MG fire, hit the edge of the airfield.. repulsed a Jap counter-attack (13? tanks) afternoon of day1, actually had one over-run their position, bore-sighted one of them personally. (Japanense troops were 'lashed" onto the tanks and running behind them). Night 'hand-to-hand' attacks in their positions first nite, then an absolutely insane 'dash across the airfield' rush to attack the 'airport buildings' at the NE end of the airfield the next morning. Made it. 9 more days of 'cleaning-out' the opponents until he was 'hit' on Day 10 and 'off to Noumea' for recovery. Bronze Star/Purple Heart. And as I like to say, "No Flak Jackets, no night-vision.. Just M-1, Thompson MG, Grenades and 'training'. Then, another 31 days during an exercise known as "Okinawa". Wounded again during a massive Japanese counter-offensive on May 4. DI (Korean Conflict). Eddie died one AM getting up to take a leak in his house. 1987. He went straight to Marine Corps heaven and bypassed the 'malarkey' of the nursing home circuit and all the other associated bull*It. When they landed on Peleliu, his squad got kind of 'f'd' up on the beach with fear due to massive mayhem going on around them and kind of froze. He stood up and told them we either die here or 'in there'... Eddie of course suffered from PTSD for the duration of his life afterwards. Nightmares of mortars, cannons, night time attacks and such. He was a bartender at a local Vets club and after he died, a guy he had barred from the club for being a jerk tried to re-gain access. The new bartender told the guy, "Not until Eddie Amaral says so.. OK?" Download Attachment: MARINES LOADING 37MM ON DUKW PAVUVU.jpg 105.67 KB Download Attachment: peleliu-37mm-zero.jpg 33.28 KB

Jim's right.. Fields can wreak havoc with your findings with those things..

My local WW2 'ship' shrine is USS Massachusetts, Fall River, MA. She's sitting there with the "Lionfish' WW sub, USS Joseph P Kennedy (Grr) and some other very cool stuff including a Higgins boat and a PT-Boat. The other shrine is USS Constitution (Boston) and the USS Cassin-Young (veteran of a kamikaze attack during invasion of Okinawa. Old Ironsides is 'the shrine' of the USN and indeed.. 'please visit'.. The Cassin-Young is extraordinary .. especially if you get on the bow and look-back... very narrow... very very narrow and if you use your imagination, the Battle of Okinawa (and the associated voracious Kamikaze attacks that ensued) come back... over 3,000 of our guys died "offshore'.. (never mind the poor bastards on Okinawa.. of which my Uncle Ed was one who got wounded after 31 days of hell. (1/5/1 USMC).

My Dad was on: Marine Carp (Liberty Ship) Marine Raven (Liberty Ship) Marine "Etc's" (Numerous.. he tried to write them down.. and lost track) USAHS Emily H.M. Weder (hospital Ship) USAHS Frances Slanger (hospital Ship) Queen Elizabeth (1) (Never 'in convoy') Queen Mary (1) (Again, never in 'convoy').Both the "Queens" were in Navy drab and were too fast for U-Boats to hit.. Ports of call: Liverpool, Southampton, Le Havre France, Oran, Algeria, Manila Phillipines.. Halifax NS, Charleston SC, NYC, Boston, Virginia Beach VA... Numerous troop ships, Army Hospital Ships.. he was a medic in the 609th Medical Hospital Ship Platoon, US Army, attached to Army Transport Command/Services Command and at the mercy of the 'port commander' where ever he ended up.. NYC, Halifax, Le Havre France, San Pedro, CA, Manila, Oran, Liverpool, etc.. The guy was an 'Army medic guy on 'ships' with either 'fresh troops', POWs and our wounded... (T.Sgt) Join the Army and 'see the world' via the Merchant Marine.. Odd..

I agree also.. it would have to be an odd situation for the air to go in... Just looks kind of odd like this... air is always rising out that vent...

Looks like the short-guy is too close to that roof vent , monsieur... The chimney-to-chimney issue is not an issue (to me..)

We should have a whole section devoted to this type of issue.

Nice gest here.. This reminds me of the bachelor-pad condo I inspected once.. the owner-guy was there.. (30-something, no decor, nothing..) and as we got near the electric range, he said.. "I do a lot of 'grilling' in there..". I nod and open the oven chamber... He had been using the SHELVING as grille-surface for years... literally putting the meat on the shelves.. Grease-pit city in there.. totally ruined.. :

No Mike.. reason: "This panel was not test-engineered for this type of connection. It is a connection contrary to the panel manufacturer's 'third-party-approved' instructions.. " It is not proven 'safe' under all possible 'electrical circumstances'. This is another case of 'it works, but.. " Does it 'work' (provide power, work during a surge, ground fault, short-circuit, etc, etc) SAFELY and was it tested and approved for this.. ? Nope.. Does it 'deliver the power to the circuit(s)? Yes.. but not proven to be safe.. I like to tell people "..we could pull the meter out of the meter box, get a pair of jumper cables and 'power a lot of this house'... but 'would that be safe'.. ??? No.. The entire reasoning behind the 'proper' installation of equipment is 'safe control of the electrical system'.. And this is not 'proven to be the case' with this type of makeshift, jerry-rigged connection work..

probably is ok..they take awhile to find the groove...

copper embedded into concrete directly = corrosion=leakage=air-entrainment=air-bound.. (Maybe).. (Air entrains during cold period... builds-up.. no movement). A 'pressure test' of that zone can be done to isolate the problem.. and then give them the heads of the downside of copper-in-direct-contact-with-concrete (=potential leakage, air-binding and over-working of the boiler). We have thousands of these systems from the 1950's around Boston area and they are mostly being upgraded to above-slab systems by now..

I use 3x5 notepads and sometimes will 'name' an object and take a pic of the pad in front of it.. then take a 2nd without the pad.. establishing shots with the background and then another.. etc.. Done the sharpie thing a few times as well.. and with multi-unit props, the note-pad and apt# thing for every unit.. hand signals (up/down/left/right) # of fingers.. including 'thumbs down' !.. the whole nine yards.. Pics of the general 'state' of the basement are very important (clutter, stored items, finished areas) and a walk-around of the exterior at least 4 shots or more... Photos are great.. too little.. not good.. too many.. not good.. there is a sweet spot for the number and type..