Tom Raymond

It's rare to find them with the "rench"...

TIJ has a typo fairy. A misspelling in my post above was miraculously corrected over night. How do I go about getting one of those for my reports?

This is a 4 box mod, 2 wide by 2 long, done by one of the better builders here. This pic clearly shows missing insulation, all 4 boxes had similar conditions. Click to Enlarge 14.33 KB So much for factory controlled build quality... There were site problems too, like the marriage of all 4 boxes on a single 4" column. The bearing surface was bent 1/2" and was crushing the beams by 3/8". I wish I could find the picture. There are plenty of really nice mods out there, I've seen them at IBS. None of the manufacturers I spoke with will ship to NY. I guess I won't be seeing any in the field.

New windows will probably make it worse. Losing the air leakage your old windows provide will drive significantly more moisture through the wall. Try running your exhaust fans for extended periods, and for God's sake turn off the humidifiers.

That's my guess, and the chimney is a newer and seperate issue.

Why? My old gold Honeywells work just fine. I have three of them set between 64 and 66 and my house is very comfortable. I can't imagine that letting my hydronic radiant system modulate based on the whims of everyone else and their hot air doing me any good.

I think you meant "probable". The vast majority of furnaces and boilers I see are the same size, regardless of what size the house is, or how well insulated.

Marc is right, run like hell. Whoever tries to fix that is gonna be married to every inch of wire in that place.

These are some nice repro's, but they're not cheap. http://www.rejuvenation.com/search?q=tw ... n+switches

No one will be inspecting his plumbing. AAVs all around would save him a few bucks on pipe.

I can't decide whats worse, over regulation or no regulation. Here one needs a permit to replace a roof cover, and in at least one 'historic district' the committee has to approve colors.

How old was the DW? If it's less than 10 years it should come with a factory installed high loop and not need an air gap. I had an RE ask me once if I was going to inspect the appliances, her parents were my clients and were out of town. I replied that they were spending $200k on the house, are they really concerned about a couple hundred bucks worth of used appliances? No? I didn't think so. Beyond the basic safety stuff, I only inspect antique appliances.

I dozed off somewhere in the middle of the terms and conditions. What a nice listing though. So much better than the drivel we have here.

What is a refurbished ladder and why would anyone want one?

I don't get the hysteria over the event in the OP. Lot's of brutal things happen in houses, especially the comparatively ancient ones that Kibble inspects. Births, deaths, plagues, battery, and even the occasional murder. My house was owned by the same family for 111 years, I am fairly certain most of the items on my list occurred there. The house I grew up in was sold at the end of a bitter divorce and family feud (the dad was sleeping with one of his daughters-in-law) that included gun fights and dynamite. The stories were kinda fun. One of the sons still goes by the name 'Crazy Larry'. That said, I think it would be amusing to make the disclosure. Who's going to faint first, the RE or the client?

What issues is it having? What's readily apparent in your pic: It needs a good cleaning. The circulator wiring and conduit need repair. The make up water is turned off. I'd wager that a good bit of your trouble is related to low water. It should also have a back-flow preventer on it.

I always describe the condition of the service drop. It's either new, newer, or damaged. I don't care what size it is. We have two big utilities and several small municipal coops here and all will replace damaged/deteriorated service drops at no charge to the customer. I have even seen the coops fix stuff that was run through trees at no cost, the big guys could care less.

Cars are scavenging a waste product to make heat for the passenger compartment. It's >100% efficient from a climate control perspective. If air was effective at moving heat then the heaters in the old air cooled VWs would have worked a whole lot better. Hydro air works best in my climate as a solution for problem areas, like toe kick heaters. If I were trying to heat and cool a whole house I'd want two systems each optimized for their specific task. It'd be cheaper over the life of the equipment.

Dumb. It squanders the benefits of hydronic heat for the convenience of central air.

The black staining below windows indicate that the wrap and flashing details don't work. They're on every one I have opened up. Where the WRB has been omitted you can poke through the sheathing with your finger, or peel off the 'strands' just like skinning an onion. I looked at one last week where a contractor put several feet of Grace ice and water shield around a window and it was still leaking. Dummy put it on top of the WRB.

Serious question, are all new receptacles rated CO/ALR??? or can you actually see it on there? I didn't think the 39 cent recepts were CO/ALR, just the $2 ones. The giant bar code sticker made me think it was new, and from a big box. I searched "15 amp duplex receptacle" and the first one that popped up was at Lowes. Now I'm gonna have to stop and look.

If the stat was pegged and the temp was only 120, and it fails to fire when the temp drops, why are you looking at the dip tube? Sounds like a bad gas valve to me.

It's a 10 year old asphalt cover. It's either at or passed the mid point of it's service life. Unless you observed significant damage from the attic, the OSB should last at least as long as the cover. FWIW, an installed asphalt roof goes for $4-600 a square. Replacing the sheathing will probably add another $200 a square. That is a major expense they'll need to budget for in the next 5-10 years. Probably enough to make some walk.

John, what you wrote is accurate but way too long winded. You need to pare that down by at least half, and once you become comfortable writing like that, prune it some more. I know, I struggle with keeping my comments brief. Also, your VSI document is way out of date. The current version is 2011. Instead of linking a document, consider linking directly to the website. That way your report contains the volumes of information you wish to convey, while subject matter experts are charged with keeping it current.

If there is 3' of standing water in there and no means to evacuate it I would report that as if it were a flooded basement. There is more remediation needed there than just the hatch. Tenants won't complain about the building until that bedroom begins to fill with water.