David Meiland

Just what I needed! Customer reports an intermittent strong smell of sewer gas in or near the downstairs bathroom... and outside somewhat near the septic tank. This is a seasonal house, empty for weeks or months at a time during the 8-month off-season, and heavily occupied during late spring and summer. My presence is not generally desired when it's occupied and I have not smelled it myself. I went out there with my plumber and his sewer-cam. He scoped the line from the downstairs bathroom to the tank and pronounced it intact and unblocked (of course, no one had flushed in a long time). He also scoped from a cleanout near the guesthouse to the wye with the house line, and pronounced that OK also. His is a camera that needs 3" or larger, so there's a lot he can't inspect with it. On the same trip, he checked the downstairs toilet and determined that the wax seal was probably broken, pulled the toilet and found it was definitely broken, and replaced it. His feeling was that this was the indoor problem. This guy is good and I believe him. I've been involved in a few other deals like this. In one brutal case, we capped everything and blew smoke into a roof vent with a re-purposed bath fan and a smoke bomb from the fireworks stand. That helped find an open pipe in a wall that was causing a stink. We haven't yet looked at the outside issue--septic inspector is next up on that one. These folks want absolute certainty. We can smoke test, fill everything with water, perhaps get a camera that does smaller lines. I'm afraid of false negatives, obviously. Any other ideas?

I've had a similar experience. After looking around more, I realized that one room had an entire wall of mirror, and that looking through the windows into that room was completely disorienting.

As far as I can tell, code here has required makeup air for years, and what I usually see is a 6" duct from outdoors to the return plenum, with a motorized damper. I'm pretty sure those provide far more than most houses need.

As far as I know, this is a barometric air inlet. It's connected to the return plenum of a forced air system, in an attic filled with blown-in fiberglass insulation. I believe the air handler was not running when I took the photo. In general, I expect these to be ducted to the outdoors when I see them, rather than drawing air from the attic or crawl space. More often than not they are motorized dampers wired to the air handler, instead of barometric types. This one does not appear to be designed to have ductwork attached to the upstream side, and I believe it's actually designed for use on a flue. The ductwork dates to 1990, and I have no idea what the code was then. Any thoughts? Click to Enlarge 40.88 KB

Flashing and penetrations are definitely the big issues. Being familiar with the types of flashings recommended by the manufacturers is important. When you order metal roofing, there are lots of shapes available, and sometimes guys order the wrong stuff and use it anyway. You should know what a sidewall, headwall, skylight, ridge, rake, hip/valley, etc. are supposed to look like. I have seen issues with early paint failure, sometimes a manufacturer issue and sometimes damage caused by guys working on it or scratching it during installation. Looked at one recently where guys building a stone chimney above the roof had scratched the heck out of the metal in that area, and all the way down to where they had their ladder. There was rust bubbling up through hundreds of small scratches, not quite visible from the ground... yet. If there are any exposed screws with rubber washers, you might want to comment on whether they are coming due for replacement. Same goes for pipe boots.

They do, they work, and I rely on them. I always pull the battery and check the charge before powering up. If the unit sits awhile, the battery can be near dead and you only get a few minutes before it shuts off.

Old Sailor, in my humble and unsolicited opinion, you are guilty of one small thing, which is not fitting into the existing culture of this web forum. I think it is necessary to read for a while first (perhaps you have) and then start posting in a way that fits in. You're a bit outside of that. You can easily fit in and contribute here, but learn who the others are and how things are done. My shop heater has a fan and I'm sure one leg of the 240 carries a bit more current to run the fan. I didn't check the amp draw on each leg because that would mean opening another box of toys. I'm curious, though, wouldn't most electric ranges have at least a clock, if not other stuff, running on 120, meaning that there is always unequal draw? Not sure how much this would impact conductor temperature difference. And, when you see a delta T, how is it known that the panel is the issue--could it not be at the appliance, where the receptacle is connected, in the contact between the receptacle and the appliance connector blades, or even within the appliance itself? Seems like, from an inspection standpoint, you could include a boilerplate section that covered the tightening of terminals in panels. Most electricians re-tighten everything when they are in an existing panel, because things do loosen (or were never very tight to begin with). My camera is a Fluke Ti32, bought when they were introduced, now about 5 years old and has never failed me.

Got me curious here. I opened the panel in my shop, tightened both of the terminals on the 30A breaker feeding the electric heater, ran it for 10 minutes, and took this image. Click to Enlarge 27.96 KB

I also wonder if it's actually humidity and not a roof leak. Any chance there are can lights buried just under that insulation... although it's hard to want to crawl over there to see. How did they notice the leak? How much water came into the house? Did you lift any of the tabs and see what the nailing looks like? There wouldn't be any toe-board nails on a roof like that.

I don't know what the ideal solution is. In most houses there is one water heating appliance for all applications, and we live with the long wait times, wasted water, heat loss from piping runs, various recirc schemes, etc. The main issues are at sinks, where the cold water slug is a problem and the faucet might not even flow enough to cause a tankless to kick in (ours had a 5/8 GPM threshold). I have installed small electric tankless units inside the sink cabinet on a few jobs recently and they are pretty satisfying in terms of performance. You have to run a huge wire from the panel, and you have to spend some money to avoid buying a cheapo heater, but if you can afford it, it works.

We had a Takagi circa 2006. It had a 3 second wait time before it fired, and another 3 seconds to get fully hot, so it added 6 seconds to delivery time. It had the cold water slug issue, mostly bad for rinsing dishes. Have they eliminated these issues from newer models?

Hmmm. Every single thing that any govt employee buys is paid for with our taxes, unless they have another source of money. Dude should still be careful with his toy...

Compression fittings are permanent, IMO. I've used quite a few couplings, and probably hundreds of compression angle stops. They do not leak.

Why not have a septic designer make as-built drawings of the septic system and get it permitted?

I'm thinking there's about 50 feet of conduit, if it's continuous. Apparently so much water was coming out of the j-box that it sounded like a major plumbing leak when he entered the crawl space at the other end and around a corner. That much water through 5 joints. The guys around here usually swab a bunch of glue inside the flared end and jamb the two pieces together. They are impossible to get apart. I guess they leak anyway. A lot.

Idle speculation warmly invited, since I can't offer enough facts for a firm conclusion. Client's house is near the bottom of a long, gentle slope. During/after heavy rain, water pours out of a junction box that is attached to the bottom of the floor joists, carried there by the 2" conduit for the underground service. The outside end of the conduit was located by digging test holes, and it was in a ditch packed tight with native soil. If the end of the conduit had instead been bedded in sand or gravel, I would have thought the water was entering there, but I'm not sure and am wondering if instead it is entering at the various joints along the pipe (there's a slipjoint every 10 feet that's supposed to be glued but perhaps is not). What are the chances that a LOT of water enters through fairly tight-fitting slipjoints, if they're not glued? What are the chances that a LOT of water enters through an open conduit end packed tightly in dirt? Of course the pipe could be cracked somewhere... it could be discontinuous... no way to find out as it travels under a really spectacular patio. I know, nothing to go on here, but what have you seen in your travels?

Not sure, but guessing that the water is coming in on the outside of the pipe, rather than through the pipe. Flashing that particular wall cap nicely would be hard, as you'd have to make a custom sheet metal piece to protect the top of the wall cap, which is going to catch a lot of water. Putting that thing in an exposed location is asking for trouble.

It seems fairly likely to me that, in the future, if someone needed to replace the breaker, they would go with a 20 based on the wire size in the panel, without checking to see that all devices on the circuit were 12-gauge wire. In hundreds of remodels I don't think I've ever seen a circuit with two wire sizes.

How about this one? Is the direct vent FP close enough to breathe in the wood smoke, and does it matter? Click to Enlarge 45.1 KB

This is not my photo and I didn't look at this one. Mostly wondering about the foil tape and about how much single wall is allowed. I believe single wall is allowed up to a masonry connection like this, but if the chimney is B vent, what is the rule?

Click to Enlarge 39.28 KB

I like the roof access too. What's the round pipe?

I bet it has more to do with those being bedrooms than it does with the windows facing west. Bedrooms are often small, heavily occupied rooms. It could also be the case that those rooms have supply registers but no returns, leading them to be slightly pressurized when the doors are closed and the heat's on, causing exfiltration.

Air leakage out/around the window.

Just went through this on a job... we dug up some wire and all 10 guys on the job looked at it and said "that's not UF" because it looked and felt EXACTLY like regular Romex, and it was white, too. Then the electrician came over and looked at it and dug along until he found intact markings that identified it as UF.