Tom Raymond

I loved my basement apartment, it was so cool & comfy in the summer. It was a little nicer than that though.

Same here Scott, well mostly. My house has no building paper under the original wood claps. The first addition doesn't have any paper either, but the second addition has red rosin paper on it and near as I can figure it was built in the late 1890's. I see lots of vinyl installed right over the sheathing, and every time I take one apart there is water damage.

Something else changed besides the roof cover. Maybe the A/C is short cycling, or the bathroom exhast fans are dirty and can't push the moisture outside, maybe they just aren't diligent about using them any more, or the filter is clogged on the air exchanger. Or maybe the stains have been there all along and they notice them now because they are paying attention to that ceiling because of the hail damage. People are funny like that. The ridge vent is plausable, but I'd run around and check a few fans/filters too.

Could you clarify that? Was there no WRB requirement before 2006, or just for vinyl?

I see decks installed like this all the time. There is a deck at the end of my street where they put the joist hangers over vinyl siding, made worse by the fact that the vinyl is the fourth or fifth layer of siding on the building[:-bigeyes I have pictures somewhere of a deck done like this by an engineer, I've posted them here before, he had me over to look at it because he couldn't figure out how to flash it after he built it[:-banghea Rob, you were there. If the deck can be made servicable and your clients are really strapped then tell them how to fix it, but be certain that they understand it's a bandaid and not a permanent repair. If it's relatively new and not too terribly screwed up, then a competent carpenter should be able to prop it up and install a properly flashed and anchored ledger along with some diagonals to stiffen it and the stair. If it's old and in need of lots of work beyond that they will be further ahead to replace it. I think it's a bad idea to put new work on an old deck, there's very little cost savings and the hard to fix stuff is still old.

All decking is too slippery when wet to safely set up a ladder on, composite and vinyl especially so. Stained and stamped concrete is wicked slippery too. I once had to replace all the vinyl decking on a brand new deck because 6 people fell off of it the first 3 days it was covered in snow. Set your ladder up on the lawn.

Jim is right, if they want instant hot water there should be a tankles a dedicated unit installed close to that bath.

What?! Once I flush it, it's forgotten. I certainly don't want my poo to friend me on face book.

The wingnut is broken, replace it. I'm suprised I have to explain this.

To be clear, you think we need more references not less. Correct?

Aren't most of the items we write up code deficiencies? All of the gibberish in the various SOPs says that we are not code inspectors and cannot enforce code. I've never seen an SOP that specifically prohibits us from citing code. Read your SOP. The stuff that it requires you to look at is stuff that is covered by the building codes.

With some of the advice doled out at those places a live in HI woudl be a blessing[:-banghea

Loose connection at the GFCI? Put a plug on the end of that romex and try again. Oh, and hold a light bulb in your mouth like Uncle Fester. [:-bulb]

That condensation has more to do with the relative humidity in the house and the quality of the window in question than it does with whether it was caulked properly or not. Windows do not manufacture water, it has to come from another source, ie:high RH. Condensation occurs around the perimeter of insulated glass units because the metal spacer is conductive and that is the coldest part of the assembly. Better quality insulated glass units employ high performance spacers to minimize the conductivity at the edge of the glass. Some use materials like stainless steel and silicone foam while others use a channel rather than a box shape to reduce surface area. While I have seen instances where drafts around poorly installed windows (and high air infiltration rates of cheap units) have contributed to cooling surfaces to the dew point it's pretty rare that it's the root of the issue. The air leak is generally big enough for the warm moist air to migrate out to the cool dry air and disipate it's water vapor outside.

We have a Flir Bcam at the day job. It works pretty well for what we use it for. I'm just fussy I guess, for that kind of money I expect higher res and more features than the camera built into my cell phone. The most interesting project we did with it involved a concrete floor with radiant tubing in it and a client that wanted a wall built acrossed it. We fired the boiler, scanned for the heat signature of the tubing, marked the locations safe to drill, put up the wall and anchored it with tapcons. No accidents, no leaks, and a happy client.

I just applied that formula to my zip and came up with my base fee. [:-graduat

Mark, play with a couple of cameras and make sure you can live with the limitations at that <$5K price point. Those are low res units, don't have a ton of features, and come with pretty basic (read useless) report software. I'm not sure that we need to go berserk and spend $20k on a camera, but I for one would hate to spend that kind of coin on a tool that didn't meet my expectations.

Why were you reading about tabby? There aren't any oyster shells in the canal[:-dev3]

Yeah it's a funny thing, once a guy earns a respectable wage he generally won't go back to working for peanuts. What's truly amazing is that it's such a hard lesson to learn. I find his pricing differential smack in the middle of the fifties to be a bit odd, there's not much difference in construction around here at those vintages. Except for the windows, a house built in 1940 is gonna be very hard to tell from a house built in 1960.

I can see where one might want to see some finely crafted flashings but asthetically speaking, flashing is generally akin to boxer shorts protruding from the top of a teenager's sagging jeans. As long as I can verify that it's present when I have too then I don't need, or want, to see it.

It's especially nice that he lined up the tabs on the first 3 courses above the chimney[:-bigeyes

Sure it is. There are dead plants in the trash, the shower has been converted to an irrigation system, there is enough ventilation there for laundromat, and the place is wrapped in enough tin foil to make hats for half of Bellvue. In my professional opinion, there's more there than Granny getting a jump on her tomatoes. That's funny! The puveyor of that operation ain't into that kind of cool aid. They're making too much money to off themselves in order to hitch a ride with ET.

There is no spec for the water consumption on the LG website, Best Buy says it's water efficient but gives no details. Guess you'll have to read the manual to see what size drain LG recommends.

Where was it in the building? The debris has me thinking the dead front has been off for some time too.

I lost 2 this month to price shoppers, but to be honest my phone inquiries are so few and far between lately that I was caught a bit off gaurd.