Tom Raymond

Marc, the retail price of a 25 year 3 tab is over $100/square. $11 grand is high, but not too far off. I'm guessing 16 to 18 square and upwards of $8,000. There are definately some problems with that program, the CDBG programs I was involved in the contractors were vetted by the municipality distributing the grants. I was asked to take part in a CDBG rehab a year ago (day job) and declined, the allowances for installed product were below the retail price of materials. I was to install an entry door, door knob and deadbolt for less than $300, and provide a warranty.

Tubular aluminum windows do not have any flanges or weep holes. Almost every installation requires a sill pan that projects out beyond the exterior finish. They are typically omitted. The site is a pup to navigate, but there all kinds of installation details at YKK. You might also want to check at the Kawneer and Tubelite websites.

That was it. Maybe the pic won't open because I swiped your image and reposted it without renaming it.

Cool place. What do you suppose this is: Click to Enlarge 34.8 KB

Morgan, it actually felt pretty spacious. The end facing the pic is the living room. From the mid point back is the kitchen on the left and dining area on the right. Behind the kitchen is the bath with a winder stair in the right rear corner. All of this was in the gambrel part, with the sleeping area upstairs. The addition on the left is an open space separated from the rest by a sliding glass door. The lady friend has designs on this space, a closet instead of a coat tree, windows instead of storms, and room to entertain. She also is making him paint and freshen the rest of the space. It seems the poor bastard is getting as remodled as his house.

There is still paint between the boards, and even though the floors had been refinished the XRF still found lead. Lots of it. Same is true for all the refinished surfaces.

Nearly all of the lead in humans is ingested, almost none of it comes from chewing on window sills. Lead safety is about good housekeeping. Regularly cleaning surfaces, washing kids hands and toys, and maintaining painted surfaces in good condition will virtually eliminate exposure, even in buildings that are literally dripping in lead. I have two kids 9 years apart; the oldest had a BLL of 29 at his first birthday, the youngest's was 6, and the original floors in my 1870 house still have almost 50 micrograms/square centimeter of lead in them. The only difference is a quasi-weekly cleaning with a HEPA vac.

Nope. The man who originally placed it there lived in it 5 months out of the year and wintered somewhere warm. The current owner was living there with his dog, but now is making improvements to the building to please his new lady friend. He's been living there 9 years. Didn't you notice the dish?

Some more modular fun from this week. This is a 2 box unit approx 24 x 50. Check out the way the decided to raceway the branch circuits around the entire perimeter of the building: Click to Enlarge 46.72 KB Except for the loose phone line in the pic, the bundle includes phone and cable TV runs. Just out of the frame on either side are the 8" bottom chord bearing floor trusses, finger jointed 2x2 webs and 2x3 chords, where one cable is loosed from the bundle and stapled to a web. The zip ties are roughly every other bay. Quality stuff. I was in this one yesterday. Not exactly a modular, but; the two story part was trucked in whole. It's sitting on skids. The first addition to the left is sitting on landscape timbers. The porch will eventually be enclosed with wood framed screens for summer and visqueen panels for winter. 640SF of heaven... Click to Enlarge 133.16 KB

I found it. Not quite as dramatic a delta as I remembered (taken over 4 years ago) but still pretty telling. According to my notes ambient temps were 24 outside and 68 inside. Click to Enlarge 17.3?KB

It doesn't matter. They put fiberglass against the concrete foundation. Unless the drainage plane details are perfect there will be acres of wet insulation for the mold to grow on.

I wasn't clear; lead mains were banned. Lead distribution pipes; never seen even one in 20 years around here; 99.99% are galvanized iron and copper (and some CPVC, but even that is rare unless you get out in the boonies). Some old waste lines were lead. That makes sense. Sunday's house had some lead waste lines. And presumably their customers...

What Lamb said, but use Durabond 90. The longer open time will give you a time to clean your tools and grab a beer before the finish coat. It's been months, what's another 90 minutes?

If the supply is lead what purpose is served by banning/replacing that little bit of distribution pipe? The exposure reduction is minuscule.

Couldn't you ask the seller for a years worth of oil bills? Averaging Kibble's figures confirms my geusstimate of R-2 (1.98 so Marc doesn't have to do the math). You are correct to assume the mass will make the wall perform better than a more conventional wall of the same R-value, but probably not as much as you think. Somewhere I have an IR pic of my stone foundation (about 18" think at the mud sill) showing the exterior surface around 70 degrees F with an outdoor temp in the mid 20's. I'll see if I can find it.

These were at yesterdays inspection. Click to Enlarge 68.94 KB I liked these better. Click to Enlarge 51.27 KB This gig was postponed twice because after the seller accepted an offer she decided she wanted to keep the light fixtures. Click to Enlarge 30.44 KB Click to Enlarge 40.47 KB Click to Enlarge 36.12 KB I don't normally do inspections at noon on Sunday, at least there were snacks... Click to Enlarge 41.37 KB ...dill pickles from 1956. There were all kinds of preserves but the pickles were the most, well, photogenic.

I like it. What did it cost?

My guess is that he wants to know when the last treatment was. The more pressing question is are the bugs active now? You need a local bug guy to look for himself and tell you.

None taken, that is precisely what happened to me, and at least 100 others who were briefed the same day. They were briefing 130 to 160 people per day they week I was there. I was fortunate to have relatives close enough to stay with, a hotel would have doubled my losses. I may complete the background screening, but I think I'm done with this disaster. I suffered greater losses then either of my relatives that live in NJ.

So it's reasonable to assume I won't get shafted again?

I've seen an entire building energized; foil house wrap, aluminum clad windows, steel entry doors, brass door knobs... all powered by the blower switch on the fireplace insert that was contacting the chassis.

It's been a while, but there have been some interesting developments with PB Disaster Services. I went in November. I spent 2 days obtaining provisions and packing for unknown conditions, 2 days driving there and back, 1 day in briefing, and 4 days waiting for an assignment that never happened. That little sortie cost me over $2000 in gas, tolls, provisions, and lost wages. I was reimbursed $.047 per mile, almost $400. Two days ago I get a call that my 72 hour expedited finger prints have been approved by FEMA (8 weeks later) and they want me to complete the background check so that I can be deployed again. Naturally, I was pissed that they had the nerve to expect me to jump, and I made it pretty clear to the poor gal on the phone just how displeased I was with her employer. We weren't in any position to flush $1600 down the toilet in November, and I fear that it could happen again. Given all that, my wife thinks I should give it another go. I have serious reservations about working for someone that thinks 'sorry for the inconvenience' is adequate compensation for a week long thousand mile road trip to study lame power point presentations. Has anybody had a similar experience with PB? Would/did you go back? Does PARR treat their contractors any better? Thanks.

Pic # 1 is a framed chase with a metal cap. It (the cap) is leaking as badly as the flashing at the roof. Look closely at pic #2. There are two horizontal cracks on the right wall. From left to right about 1/3 of the way across and from right to left a few inches lower and more than 2/3 across. Pic #3 the windows are leaking. What does a stucco replacement cost these days?

My back injury was caused by a three section ladder so I'm a little biased against them. If your settled on one check out http://www.industrialladder.com/quickOrderAction.do. The three section Werner is only $67 more than the two piece. I just stumbled on them in a search so I can't vouch for service, let us know how they do.

Assembled or packaged here, gives the impression it's 'merican. With precious few exceptions, we really only make hamburgers here any more.