Tom Raymond

If you plan on pressure washing first, I would suggest paint rather than stain. That way you can spackle the scars from the pressure washer.

Hmm, you need a license to cut hair but they'll let any idiot run a pressure washer...

Tom

I sell copper every now and then. This little house...I'd say about enough to get a case of brew if he didn't strip the sheathing and insulation. Maybe a keg if he did. That's just the wiring, not the plumbing.

Marc

What kind of brew? LOL

Old English. Can you get 40 bowls by the case?

Tom

Brandon, besides the stone issues, I don't see any ventilation for that composite decking. I know it sounds like a seperate issue, but there are several points of contact between the stone and the composite and bound up and overheated boards will exert enough pressure on the veneer to break stones and create addition points of entry for moisture. That system can't cope with any amount of water as it is, no need to introduce more.

How old is the building? If it's as new as it looks, I'll bet you a donut that the screwed up details on the building are screwed up, or missing altogether, on the plans. It's bad enough that there are builders out there botching stuff like this, but there is an alarming number of 'home designers' and 'architects' that don't bother to read the directions either.

Tom

You guys actually read that? My head hurt after the first sentence. In addition to hiring a writer I'd add a web designer to the list, the page asthetic as as bad as the text.

Mike, you might want to rethink the elementary school as a writing resource. You wouldn't believe some of the written material that comes from my son's school. It doesn't matter if it's the principal, the super, the teachers or the PTA. It's a wonder these kids can read and write at all when you see the faculty's proficiency.

Tom

Nope. They sell em at Walmart. My boy got two estes rockets for Christmas. They were one of the first things he wanted to play with. On the maiden flight he insisted we use the big engine, over 800' altitude, a beautiful chute deployment, then half way to the ground the wind shifted and picked up considerably. A nice near vertical descent became near horizontal, and instead of landing in 10 acres of open field touch down was 25' up in a tree.

Tom

Oh dammit, I wish I had my pictures on this machine. I did a house where every luminare in the basement (there were almost a dozen of them) had foil pie tins nicely fitted into the groove for reflectors. I chuckle every time I think of it.

Tom

Call the manufacturer and ask them to email you the installation and service manuals for that model furnace. If you're lucky they may be available online. After you look up what you need, forward copies of both to your client. They'll appreciate the effort.

Tom

PS, if it looks wrong, it probably is.

Do the homes that back the drainage ponds come with docks? I have seen at least two developments in Amherst where they do. The developers market these bodies of water as if they were desirable, and go so far as to landscape them so they look natural, none of the buyers realize they would be parking gondolas in their garages without them. Shifting several tens of acres of water from a site doesn't make it a good place to build. Proper land reclamation isn't that simple.

Tom

Anyone who buys in Amherst has more money than brains. The frist step in any development project there is to build a drainage pond, some are more like small lakes, to dry the marsh so that roads and utilities can be installed. They've been doing that since the early 80's, maybe longer. Now we have to do soil testing for every new build or addition in the County because the houses built on swamp land sink. Who'd a thunk it?

Tom

The last time I checked, a cell phone was still a phone (admittedly, just barely). We as a society have been practicing basic telephone etiquette for about 100 years, we should have it figured out by now. If our consultations occured in an office over a desk we wouldn't be expected to miss a call, why should a cell phone be any different. Answer the phone but be polite about it, we were all taught how to do that before we left grade school.

If it's bidness I answer, if it's personal I'll call you back. It's good manners!

Tom

The several counties I inspect in have the tax records online. I can type in the address and see a photo of the structure, the build date, square footage, deeds, past sales, owners names, # of bathrooms, and bunch of other stuff. I don't trust any of the information on an MLS listing even if I could access it.

Erie County, NY has online tax records as well. I refer to them for every inspection, and so far every one has been wrong. My parents house, for example, was built in the 50's to replace an old farm house. The build date is the demolishion date of the old house (almost a decade off) , and the square footage is off by 64%.

My report would look like:

Square Feet:1800 (from County tax data, I estimate around 4900)

They had it appraised about a year ago, and the turkey used the tax data. His description said 1800SF with 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths and 900SF In-law suite. He obviously has no idea what a square foot is.

Tom

That class action will probably die on the vine anyway. The lawyers have a new target to replace the asbestos, mold and shingle lawsuits - Toyota.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

That was very fortunate timing, or they'd be all over contractors with the new EPA RRP rules.

Tom

John,

Word automatically runs consecutive numbers for you. You have to make it stop numbering. My report is divided into sections: exterior, roof, plumbing, etc. The SOP stuff is listed at the top of each section, followed by a numbered list of comments, then on to the next section. My comment numbers pick up where they left off in the previous section. If Word tries to start over with '1', I just type in the number I want to use and it takes over from there. Most of the time it is automatic, but at least once or twice per report I have to correct it. It even works when I start a report on one machine and finish it on another using a different version of Word, which I do frequently.

I do not use templates or macros. I created an outline and saved it as a master. I open it, save as a new doc and fill in the blanks. It doesn't get any easier than that.

Tom

It's just a bad idea. Bath fan on blowing 150cfm out the roof and the dryer on w/ a need for combustion air and blowing 200-300 cfm through the side wall. The wind will be coming under the door at leaf blower rates.

I've yet to see a bath fan that moves any significant amount of air. Even if they're sized correctly the ducting is so screwed up that all they do is make noise.

Tom

I think it would be helpful to add the type of foundation:

I'd rather pull that off of the MLS sheet. Many of my client's don't have clue as to whether there's a crawlspace.

Neither does the agent, or they spin it into something else.

Tom

That roofer should be hung by his thumbs and flogged with one of those shingles. The builder should be forced to watch so he knows what to expect when he takes his turn.

Ben, those are high end Certainteed shingles, Cape Hatteras I think, and run about $280-300 a square.

$1 million sure does get you a big turd these days.

Tom

I just checked all of my supplier catalogs. There are fiberglass doors rated at 20 minutes, and steel doors rated at 90 minutes. All doors are in steel split frames with self closing hinges. The 45 minute rating applies to certain solid core flush wood doors (only those labeled) and the Stanley B series steel fire door.

Chad, as a code officer would you approve a wood door? Label or no, it would never fly here between the house and garage. Fire seperation inside commercial buildings is about the only place we can use them, and most of those are concrete cores and rated well beyond 45 minutes.

Tom

What is the fire rating? Every 90 minute door in my supplier's catalogs comes standard with two self closing hinges, the pins to set the spring tension are shipped loose but with the door. Every jurisdiction around here requires a 90 minute door with self closing hinges, but I've had a lot of 'handy man' types asking for 3/4 hour doors lately. I haven't heard of any 45 minute rule and the last time I used such a door was to meet a 20 minute smoke and draft requirement for an existing apartment complex, I was required to use the self closing hinges.

Unless you have access to the plans you will need to call the AHJ for the right answer, but smells like BS to me.

Tom

No question, the initial expenditure of time is great. After that expense the principles of Moore's Law apply, efficiency and speed nearly double with every report until you reach a practical minimum, the current speed limit for me is my typing. It's been the fastest learning curve I've ever experienced.

Clearly I should have used a smiley, without one my metaphor seems a little harsh. Sorry.

Tom

My longest report was 18 or 19 pages. Take out the cover, introduction, closing, and two pages with 8 pictures each of electrical and crawl defects (in addition to the pics embedded in my narrative) and you get 13 or 14 pages of commentary on one of the biggest POS's I've done.

I'm a cheap basterd. My PC should register this year with Selective Service. I'm not shelling out $500 for new hardware, why would I spend that on software, especially one that runs in Word?

I was hoping the others here would stop standing around trying to prove who has the biggest software (no ofense to our sponsor) and see that there is an easier way, and a pretty cheap one at that.

Tom

If they were installed in 1987, half of the shingles on that list will be 70% or more through their service lives.

Tom

Yep, and it can't be fixed.

Sure it can. All you need is a jack hammer, a bunch of 5 gallon buckets, and a truck load of illegals to muck it all out. Or you could call Mike Holmes and he'll bring all that stuff for you, but I'm not sure I could put up with a camera crew in my basement[]

Tom

I don't quite understand the $12.00 that you say that you are 'paying' for each report. My Emailed reports cost me nothing per se. The printed reports cost me the ink and paper. Is this where your $12 comes from?

Marc

Rather than plunking down the entire cost of buying a software package, some companies offer a pay-per-use program. You pay for each report generated.

-B

Ouch.

This might be a stupid question, but here goes... If one is going to completely rewrite the boiler plate why pay for it in the first place?

I created a Word doc that consists of a cover page, an intro, and an outline of the items I need to look at broken into sections. My outline serves as my checklist so that I don't miss anything. I open my master doc, save as a new file, then fill in the blanks. At the end of each outline there is blank space to insert pictures and describe the issues in detail. Frequent comments like 'gas water heaters tend to last...' are part of the outline, and I simply delete or edit them if they aren't relevant. I authored my own comments about asbestos siding and lead paint that I cut and paste into the report as needed. Everything else is written on the fly.

Tom

EEEEEEK!!

That is one scary looking cat.

Tom

Unfortunately I haven't had to deal with too many calls on my inspection gigs, but I do have some standards that I follow regarding my cell phone while working sales calls for my day job. When my phone rings, I say 'excuse me' and check the caller ID. Personal calls are silenced, business calls are answered, and either way I thank my client for their patience. A little courtesy goes a long way.

Tom