Tom Raymond

Around here there are a lot of guys with trucks and ladders that think they are contractors. These guys smash details like wood drip caps, sill horns, water tables, etc. Basically if it doesn't conform to the off the shelf parts it gets whacked with the claw of a hammer until it does. Even the really good crews will resort to these tactics on occasion, there's not enough margin to do the job right. Fixing that is a far cry from replacing a few clapboards.

It's already been covered by something else. In my experience that means pretty bad.

She just texted me and asked if I'd check out one of these: http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/ ... _200446397 Any one run across one yet? The best part is on the Q&A page where someone actually asked if they could put it in a vinyl replacement window[:-graduat

I kind of like this one: Click to Enlarge 144.81 KB Sure the back fed main chews up some space, but 8 branch circuits and a double pole for the range should be plenty for your place. This was new, with the electricians name and phone number written in a girly cursive on a torn piece of lined paper taped to the cover. I'll check my image files and find it for you if you like[]

You could do that, or if it's as spotty as you say-document it well, remove the conducive conditions, come back and check on it's growth rate. Either way the BOG will still be there, dead or messed with and dead. I'd opt for the long lasting, non-toxic, comes with a re-inspection fee approach myself.

Phillip, I think Kurt was commenting more on the composition than the image quality. That has everything to do with the operator and little or nothing to do with the equipment. Great shots.

The transfer of contaminants from one person to another (first hand and second hand exposure) and then on to yet another (third hand, etc.) is very easily understood. The concept that there's a difference between secondary and tertiary exposure is quite a bit less so, and when we attach the emotional baggage that goes along with addiction, well them's fightin' words! My wife has two part time jobs; one where only one of her coworkers smoke, and another where everyone smokes but her. I can tell which place she worked at on any given day from 10 yards away, the smell of tobacco smoke is that pervasive, and since I quit around 15 months ago, quite offensive. As an experiment that even a smoker can smell, go spend about an hour in a dairy barn then drive home. Your clothes (second hand exposure) will smell like manure for at least the rest of the day, and your car (third hand) for at least a couple of days. When the smell of shit sticks with you for days, so too does the stuff shit is made from.

Thanks Nolan.

I didn't get a letter. Perhaps the HOCs are scanning their lists and only mailing to those not in compliance? The Feds aren't that efficient are they?

It's on the wrong side of the weir. I can imagine why that's bad design but not why it's bad building practice. The code is not a design manual so I was after why that was the latter. Apparently no one knows. A basin with an occasional belch doesn't bother me all that much.

Siphon is the commonly cited 'problem' with S traps but in practice it rarely happens. If all three of those basins were filled and then drained simultaneously, there would be a large slug of water on that line initially, likely recurring a couple times as they emptied, but not at the end of the cycle when it could siphon. It's even less likely since it's vented, wrong side of the weir or not. I guess I want the 'this bad thing will happen if you don't follow the code' reasoning behind the cite, 'because I said so' was never a good enough reason in my book.

So it's not allowed by code, but what exactly is going to go wrong with it? I can imagine it gurgling a bit and the vent will flood in a back-up, but so will any other vent connection. The intent of that cite can't possibly be to prevent a noise?

If it's attached, or supposed to be attached in the case of a range and its anti tip bracket, I look at that attachment and check out the plumbing and electrical connections if they're visible. I will not turn them on and I don't move them. The test is to flip the switch and say 'yup it works' or 'no it doesn't'. It's dumb. It wastes my time to check it (if I check it I have to write about it) and it wastes my clients time to read about meaningless tests. Now if we're talking about vintage appliances, I always take the time to check them out. Vintage appliances are cool.

I don't test appliances. I look at built-in stuff but don't touch anything free standing. My reports are 20 pages long and in the vicinity of 4000 words, I don't think my client wants to read that 'I opened the fridge door and the light came on, it was cold inside, the freezer was colder.' It's pointless. Brandon, sorry for your troubles.

It proves that there are plenty of contractors out there that don't have enough work. It also proves that the guys that aren't working aren't good enough to have kept their jobs anyway. The monkey that pulled the ladder out of the box couldn't open it, the other monkey had to show him how.

They're already proud of the sills, if they were on edge they'd be above the glass.

When I bought my house it had a whole house trap and vent just outside the foundation. The new septic eliminated that, and now I have a bathroom that is unvented. I haven't quite figured out the planetary alignment that causes it, but about once a year flushing the toilet will siphon the tub trap. An AAV would fix it, but I can't figure out how to attach it to the S trap on the sink. If I can't recreate that condition without cosmic intervention, there's no way it's gonna happen with vent.

He can't get his basic building practices right, how's he gonna fix that?

You have to remember; he's not an actor, he just plays one on TV. Holmes is raising awareness of our little profession, and he's setting the bar higher than some of our licensing boards. That ain't a bad thing. Now if only we could get HGTV to make him fix stuff correctly [:-banghea

Thanks Bill, I just spit coffee all over my laptop.

No, it's crap. Expensive, heavy, difficult to remove crap. I don't see any drainage. All that fooked up concrete is going to blow up without drainage.

In general, I think it has more to do with frost depth than price point. In your area, you have to get the footings so deep that a basement is a logical next step. Out here, our footings only need to be 12" below grade, so adding a basement is a large, and very expensive, step beyond that. Yeah, I get that part. Unless there is a geological obstacle (boulders or bedrock) or a geographical one (having to haul away the soils), a full basement is only a couple thousand more than a full crawl, and only a few hundred more than a partial. It's a no-brainer. My point was that there'd be no dirt within the envelope at that price point and build date, it would be covered with concrete. It's a regional thing.

This is the land-O-basements. A house like the OP would be very unlikely to have a crawl, and if it did, it would be a very small percentage of the footprint, be 3-4' high, and have a concrete floor. We still have out share of crawls, just not at that price point.

Wow, one can tell times are tough when mini-mansions are built over crawls with dirt floors. Must belong to one of those Politocos barely scraping by on $400K a year.

It could have been worse John. The utility ran this overhead more than 200' through three trees. The homeowner is going to have to eat the cost of the fix and the tree trimming. Click to Enlarge 141.35 KB