David Meiland

In my opinion, the tub walls are wet walls and should have surface applied waterproofing like RedGard OVER the cement board. If the tub has a flange it's also good to furr out the walls ~1/4" so the board doesn't have to bend out over the flange. No VB is needed behind the cement board.

Jerry, I would click over to the JLC Forums "Business Technology" forum, sign up and post there, and/or read some of the existing threads. There are several iPhone wizards and geeks and they will get you set up for nothing. The moderator Joe Stoddard answers questions in detail, and he is a wealth of information. http://forums.jlconline.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3

http://www.cheap-thermocam.tk/

The T&G ceilings are highly suspect. Run the blower door for 20 or 30 minutes and then take a look at them with your IR. If you're going to buy a blower door, my rec is to just order a new unit from Energy Conservatory. You can sometimes buy them slightly used on eBay, but the price won't be much less than new, and you won't get a new manometer that way. As far as training goes, I took BPI training but was fortunate to get it through Washington State U, rather than one of the many diploma mills out there. You could also look into the Saturn Online curriculum, and their books. What you need and can benefit from depends a lot on your experience level with construction, building science, and inspecting.

Sounds like we need some more info here. The unit is 20 years old so presumably at some point in history it was working satisfactorily... otherwise someone would have lost patience and had it serviced or replaced. Did your contact just buy the house? Does he have any info on historical propane usage? Seems to me you should be able to get the house up around 70 on a 20-degree day, but it might take a day or more. Anyway, what else is known about this situation? And, what is the ceiling material on those vaulted ceilings... T&G wood?

I would get your hands on a blower door, run a test, then leave it running and do another thorough infrared scan. Heat leaving the building is not nearly as easy to find as cold air being sucked in. You can find some truly scary stuff this way. It is certainly true that a blower door creates pressures that may never be duplicated exactly under normal conditions, but it gets you looking in the right places. I'm assuming, of course, that you've verified that the heating system is actually putting most of those BTUs into the building...

You mean you don't have a 60-foot extension ladder with you at all times? Nice pics, great idea!

Are those gas units? Are they in unconditioned space?

How did Mickey Mouse get such a bad rap? Kids love him...

I frequently use hot-dip galvanized ring-shank siding nails in coils, and sometimes stainless. To my knowledge there aren't any hot-dip finish nails for guns, but they do make stainless. They won't hold siding on but they are useful for smaller trim pieces that don't want big nail heads showing. They do not hold the way an old school hand-drive finish nail does. If you saw siding nailed with a finish gun, it's because someone didn't own a siding gun, and doesn't plan on coming back to fix their siding when it starts pulling off. I often see siding stapled with narrow or medium crown staples, which may be either stainless or electro-galv. Ack! You need quite a collection of nail guns before you have one for every situation, and some things just need hand drive nails no matter what.

Apparently has been for years...

Try Jet Dry. It's sold at Costco in the dish/laundry soap area. Bright blue color.... active ingredient is citric acid I believe.

The only thing I don't like about your price is that a number like '795' sounds sorta retail-store-ish. When my spreadsheet spits out a number like that, I alter it slightly. I think I would have quoted 780. Sometimes rounding up is OK but in this case it would have put you over 800, adding another perceived barrier to the buyer. The line about the best practitioners always charging more is brilliant. You might get the job or you might be dealing with someone who never hires or buys the best.

Is it typical to upsize the vent going through the roof? Climate here is similar and we don't do that. Looks to me like someone was just lazy and left the top of the cast iron, without supporting it, and now it's crushing the rubber. It may survive a while but it sure lacks class.

Is that in the attic?

For me, the placement of the Fluke buttons is perfect. I hold the unit in my right hand, a have my left hand on the left side of the unit with my fingertips on the focus wheel. I can hit the "save" button with either my right or left thumb without re-positioning.

One possible source of semi-authoritative info the the Cedar Bureau. Personally, I see wood shakes on plywood sheathing fairly often and it seems to do fine. I could get approval to build a house with skip sheathing, but it would require engineering outside the prescriptive code, as far as I know. Never considered it, so I could be wrong about that last.

I get about three hours out of the Fluke batteries. It depends partly on how many images you save. And I agree completely with Kurt, two batteries is a must. How much are the wide angle and tele lenses for the E60?

Wouldn't that make it a 40A 120V circuit?

Why the two doors?

There was a plan there, once... storing firewood? installing some kind of art in those niches?

Can you? Or do you have to open one of the bottom taps to get any water at all?

Contractors will argue about this, but I always put 1/8" gaps between sheathing panels in both directions (and don't use OSB). If the stuff you were looking at was getting wet, so much the worse...

Most of the time an Advantex system is installed here when the soil does not perc adequately for a normal drain field, and water from the system is expected to be at least partly surface runoff. The county here won't allow that without a monitoring agreement in place, and I believe it's mostly or entirely by internet.

That would most likely be the case here. The installer or another third party would be monitoring performance of your system via the internet. Does your property record with the county show a "septic covenant" or similar document stating that some type of monitoring is to be in place? Check the pump chamber for low-voltage wires entering/leaving that indicate an external control is in use. That's where the internet connection would be.