David Meiland

Tom, there may be some info in this thread and others on the same site http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/com ... nge-window The other thing you can do is add flanges to the windows using sheet metal L, which I have done.

Stephen, check out the image in this thread... sorta like yours only different... http://www.thesnellgroup.com/community/ ... /2354.aspx

With these problem percentages... are we talking % wood moisture content with a pin meter? Pinless readings in wood? Pinless readings in other stuff? In my experience, around here, stabbing framing lumber in crawl spaces... if it hasn't dried to maybe 16% or less, there is an elevated moisture issue. Around 20% and there's funk, or there's gonna be.

Are you talking about REL or %WME mode on the Surveymaster? If the latter, you are getting a direct readout of moisture content in percent, assuming use of the species correction chart. The REL mode is not intended to give a percentage, just a reading relative to other areas of the same material.

I use the wide angle lens on my Fluke well over 50% of the time when inside a house. You will not be disappointed.

In the visible light image, the wire comes out of a cutout in the insulation and appears to cross over the face of the furring. Not particularly well dressed, so it could easily be that the lines in the IR image are wires also. Any chance you got a wider view with IR?

How much space do you think is between the drywall and the foil? How sure are you that there is an airspace, and not batts? Do those lines point to electrical outlets? Can you remove an outlet cover and use a "crochet hook" to see if there is fiberglass in the wall, by sticking the hook in the gap between electrical box and drywall? My guess on this is poly sheeting, foil scrim, or similar over the studs. The lines are wrinkles in the material--they don't look like wire paths (too sloppy/random), and the pattern is continuous across the studs. Another reason to steal your wife's crochet hook. Or, you have my blessing to buy a borescope.

I assume by "isofoil" that you mean foil-faced polyiso. How thick is it? Is it installed directly behind the drywall, or is there a chance they put batts on the inside of it? Those look a little bit random for wire paths, but who knows, it might have been done by a non-pro (for that matter the whole thing could have been done by a non-pro, and have some funky characteristics. That could also be tunneling of some kind, but aren't you a bit north for termites? Including the temperature scale on images is always helpful.

There is a similar requirement here in Washington state, which I believe came into being with the 2009 Washington State Energy Code (very similar to the IECC). It lists various energy characteristics of the house, and is supposed to be in the form of a sticker placed in the panel. The AHJ does not enforce it here.

I can sorta understand giving a discount in this situation, but can you go elsewhere and make your living for the day? You blocked out the time for them...

Passive air inlet

I assume there was no licensing at the time, so what else would a guy have aside from his phone number? Around here the inspector green-tags the panel, but there's nothing to identify the contractor. A few of the contractors put company stickers.

My question is, when the current owner bought this, should the HI have mentioned the lack of bolting? It's mostly an academic question, and I recognize the answers could vary. I'm not reporting anything, I'm just a contractor mooching off your forum. However, I do find myself reading HI reports fairly often when people call me to talk about the property they might buy or just bought. Fortunately, right now, one guy is working this area a lot and he seems decent although I don't think he's as thorough as most of you would be.

Their mistake was leaving the old mudsill, and not wanting to disturb the existing siding. You pour the foundation, bolt a mudsill to it, lower the house onto the mudsill, then nail sheathing to the mudsill, the rim joist, and the wall studs, and then deal with siding repair all the way around the bottom of the house. If you really had to, you could drill the existing mudsill for the new bolt locations.

Yeah, I doubt there's rebar either, or any grout aside from what's in the top of the blocks. I'm sure an engineer could design a solution, probably involving some sort of connection to the footing, which is poured concrete. Whoever moved the house (one of many from the SeaTac airport expansion that ended up here) did a lousy job of the interior posts and piers, so it settled, and we did some jacking/leveling of the floors along with new posts and piers. All the new stuff is tied together nicely. We were musing about how it made absolutely no difference because the rest of the house could just slide off the foundation. It got me wondering if the owner was made aware of this when they bought, and whether it's the type of thing that is/should be reported.

I have a customer with an older home that was moved onto a concrete block foundation about 20 years ago. There are no anchor bolts or other means of holding the building to the foundation. Most houses that were built new around here would have had anchor bolts in the mudsill, starting probably some time in the 70s. Just curious, would you mention lack of anchor bolts on your report on a house like this?

Tim, air-sealing means foaming/caulking or otherwise sealing all air openings from the main living space into the attic--around pipes/wires, soffits, interior wall top plates, everything you can find. It is easiest if you hire an insulation/home performance contractor with a blower door and an experienced crew. Your access door would become an exterior door and the stair area (walls, under-stairs) would need insulating. Marc and Tom are correctly pointing out that you would never do what I describe if you want living space. I'm talking about putting the attic fully outdoors because you don't want to heat it or deal with moisture issues.

Probably the best thing you can do is remove the planking temporarily, remove the insulation, air-seal the entire attic floor very carefully, then re-install insulation (probably more than was there, I would go with 20" of cellulose) and re-establish the planking as needed. You will probably need to build up the framing so that the planking is above the deeper insulation--in my attic I built some simple 2x4 "ladders" and laid them on their sides across the joists, then put plywood over that for a storage floor. Here's a lousy pic... these are 15" high and 24" on center and I laid 8' ply across them. There is cellulose right up to the bottom of the ply. If you have access to bring in long I-joists, that is quicker and I have done that when we had room to shove them in through a gable opening. If you do the air-sealing right, my opinion is that you can ignore the attic ventilation AS LONG AS YOU MONITOR what is going on in the attic down the road. You need at least one good hygrometer to do this. Check for dewpoint conditions at various times of the year, starting right away. If you have too much humidity, then you need to cut in more ventilation somehow. If you're not going to do the air-sealing and put in knee-deep insulation, I would do nothing, as any less won't do you any good. If you ignore your attic and then go in there five years later and find black stuff growing... not my fault. Click to Enlarge 37.54?KB

Top image definitely looks like form lumber reused. The roof deck is weird, almost looks like pressure-treated boards. What is the white stuff sitting on the top of the duct?

Around here there could be 3-5 30A for wall heaters or possibly a couple of 50-60A for an electric furnace, a 30A for hot water, a 30A for the dryer, a 50A for the range, and a lot of places would have a 60A or 100A for the shop. Lot more stiff wire to wrangle.

I'm guessing I would get a bill for 5 or 6 hours for a job like that, including a little bit of travel time and the fact that it's two trips. Clean looking panel there. Why only (1) 240 breaker? I suppose everything's on gas?

That looks like plastic flex with an insulation jacket, the only metal being the spiral wire that the plastic is glued to.

We didn't paint it, maybe we should. I thought long and hard about this one before doing it. The entire underside of the place was bone dry. No signs of any splash-back, and in spite of a windy location, no rain blows under there. It's waterfront facing southwest, up on a bluff a bit, out in the open with a few trees around it. Most of it is well clear of the ground, but it's tight in the back. It's all slope so there will never be standing water. There's one hole per joist bay in the shorter sections, one at each end in the longer sections. All the holes are covered with 6" plywood squares. We thought about running 1x over rows of holes, but then we'd have to drill them in a line, which was not conducive in the tighter spots. I have a long-term involvement with the place so will be watching how this ages. Housewrap would get ripped to shreds by animals and wind under there. I do have a client with batts and housewrap under his joists, but he is in a protected location and he is there every day to notice if anything starts flapping.

We did a project like this last year... joists over post/pier, no skirting and none desired. We installed 3/8" CDX under the joists with medium-crown staples, drilled a 4" hole into each bay, and dense-packed it with cellulose. We put 6" square plywood covers over the blow holes. The attached photo shows one area ready to blow. This is a property that is rarely used, and the owner is not there to notice whether rodents are moving in, so I wanted something that was fairly impenetrable (unlike batts and housewrap) and not subject to wind damage. Dense-pack does a good job of air-sealing compared to batts. It was expensive, it worked well, and it is permanent. The main issue was cleaning up cellulose afterwards. Click to Enlarge 42.4?KB

Hate it when zombies follow me into the attic. You know to double-tap 'em, right?