Jim Morrison

No offense, Ben, but I don't think that the marginal benefit from linking to a handful of home inspectors I don't know outweighs the risk of, well, linking to a handful of home inspectors I don't know.

Amazing. Thanks Bill.

Which only underscores the fact that it was amateurishly installed. Your clients need a straight-talking, knowledgable electrician's advice now.

The nasty yellow is runoff from an amateurish refinishing of the stairs. Ignore it. And the impulse to suggest it somehow came from me. Like Sr. Bain, I was tempted to move the interior dial and I did, but it didn't move much. The interior dial was movable about 25 degrees or so to the left or right, possibly less, but not more.

Nope. Up is up. Left is left.

Terry, It did rotate, but only a little. The original coal fired furnace was located in the basement and this was on the first floor. It's a dome-scratcher, J

Buncha wise-asses.... I'll try it again. I'll also add that there were no wires attached to it, and I couldn't see where there ever might have been wires attached to it. Download Attachment: Thing.JPG 122.77 KB

I snapped a photo of this roughly 2 1/2 inch diameter thing nailed thigh-high into the side of an interior stair stringer in a circa 1880's house because: 1) I thought it was about time I posted a photo here, and I figured if anyone would know what it might be, it would be our Mighty Mr. Kibbel. The photo isn't great, but even putting your nose right up to it in person didn't offer a clearer view. Thoughts?

Don't let Katen fool you. He asked for the 18th century, because his own exhaustive collection is only complete through the Dutch Golden Age. Kibbel is our resident expert on the 19th century; Mitenbuler & Fabry split the 20th century; and pretty much any male with a heartbeat and a high speed internet connection can claim expertise in the offerings of the 21st century.

That's how I feel when I see nice places getting 'dozed. Like when we see some 19th century guy's initials or full name written (sometimes with a date) in fat pencil on the underside of a marble fireplace mantle in an doubly overpriced condo. It's just some kind of continuity. Most folks couldn't possibly care any less about that stuff. But when we see it, we know that we've just touched the guy who bought, carved & installed it, who is just as forgotten to history as we will be in 50 years, except we artificially and temporarily revived him for a moment. It's a very small but nonetheless wonderous thing. Jimmy

Heya Cuz, When you dig into it, you find that the lead content in brass pipe is less than 10%. Moreover, the interior of the pipe is generally pretty well coated with, well, nondescript interior pipe coating, providing with a layer of something between the water and the lead alloy. I figure that's why you don't read much about lead leaching out of brass into water and causing much of a health concern. I used to mention it to clients, but I've not seen any science to back up the concern. Plus, the pipes are usually in bad enough condition to warrant their replacement without invoking the lead concern. Jimmy

Wish I could, amigo, but I just about never take photos. You could call me 'Old School' but I think that even the last of the Old School Inspectors are all including digital photos in their reports. Once in a rare while, I include a cave drawing with a report, but that's as far as I've progressed. I guess that makes me a Bronze Age inspector. Brass pipes were threaded in the field and I am simply convinced that some guys were just better at threading than others. I've seen the joints fail at 35-40 years, and I've seen them looking just fine after 90 years. Jimmy

Once every 8-10 years or so, I try to make it a point to post something positive here. It's too danged easy for us inspectors to become negative bastards, you know. Today I inspected a stately home built in 1880 that still had some old brass plumbing and I was amazed at what great condition it was in. Some had been replaced, but a lot of it remained and looked just as good as the day it was installed. Amazing. The grandsons of the guy who installed that stuff are old or dead, but the pipes remain. Awesome. And while I'm on the subject, the slate roof and copper flashings were tear-jerking beautiful, but that's another thread. The windows were beat up, but my guy is going to repair them, not replace them. A day of good house karma. Jimmy

That Realtor's article was tripe, but you can hardly blame him for thinking that way. Some knuckleheaded iteration of the meaningless phrase 'should be evaluated and repaired/replaced as needed by a qualified specialist' appears WAY too often in home inspection reports. I don't let it bother me much, though. Like Professor Kibbell and a lot of other folks, that's one of the reasons I get away with charging what I do. I'm pretty sure it aint because I'm charming.

In New England, the smart money would be on an old coal burner, not a Franklin.

I wouldn't get my knickers in a twist over 186 ppm CO at the exhaust. I would tell my client it's too high and find a tech who can fix it. Jimmy

Definitely some AL wiring. You'll see that sometimes in older homes that were renovated in the late 60's/early 70's. Nice work, Jimmy

It turns out the the reduction chamber (a solid concrete tank) is intended to reduce velocity and not flow on this unusually steep pitch. I still don't understand why there was no flow in the pipe (the top of the 'T' had no cover) while I was running water in the house, but I know enough to know that something wasn't right. A septic specialist is on their way to ferret it all out, but I very much appreciate all of your input. Cheers, Jimmy

Seems sensible enough to me, though more than a little odd that he chose this as the first bill to sign into law by this late date. PA has far bigger fish to fry. Sprinklers are nice, but 'mandated by law'? I've never heard anyone make the case for that. When the sprinkler in our condo building froze and burst this winter (ruining my sons' bedroom on the night of my mother's funeral, to boot) I had the opportunity to spend several hours with the firefighters who responded to the call. Several of them told me (anecdotally of course, but emphatically) that sprinkler systems cause more problems than they prevent. Smoke detectors are inarguably our very best defense against loss of life and property. Passing and repealing laws about sprinklers smacks of lobbyists to me.

I like that. Well, at least the part where it's a steam boiler. They can clang, knock, and hiss. If it's oil-fired, they can make just about any spooky noise you'd want a heating system to make. If it's a coal conversion system, you can even open the cast iron doors and dispose of evidence therein.

Sure it could be fatal, but boiler fatalities very rarely make an audible clanking sound. They simply let go inaudibly. A protagonist (or antagonist, or otherwise-agonist) would most likely be made aware of a boiler failure by a soundless lack of hot water, either in the shower or in the radiators. If they heard anything, it would likely be the rushing water from some kind of grand leak.

It is a steep pitch, an extraordinarily steep one. The primary tank hadn't been pumped in 6 months and the house has been lived in since then. I have a call into the septic company and will post whatever I learn here. Thanks all, Jimmy

No, it's not a D box. It's something different altogether. I think it's meant to be another place for solids to settle out before going to the leaching field, but I don't understand why, when I ran water for 10 minutes, nothing drained into the tank. I'm going to call the company that's been servicing it and ask them for more info. Jimmy

Yes, it was buried in line, but I didn't take any pics.

I didn't see inside the septic tank, but the 'reduction chamber' seemed to have a solid bottom. Also, I should have said in my initial post that I ran a hot shower for 15 minutes and never saw any water flow into or out of the reduction chamber. Odd.