tim5055

they have Natural Gas in "town", but up here it's LP. Right now the only thing on my buried tank is a set of gas logs and the Weber BBQ grill.

P Well Jim, I think you have hit the target. In my current world, comfort wins. The "old geezer" comment is right on point. I was driving a couple of years ago, listening to NPR (I would prefer Neal Boortz, but he retired) talk radio and thought to myself - I have become my father. I like to be comfortable and I think the heat pump can keep up with reasonable outside temperatures but not when it drops. That is when I want heat, now.

Thanks Marc! I do think there is a balance problem as there is not even heating throughout the house. Plus, the main return register is in a closet behind a louvered door. I can actually hear the difference when the door is open or closed. According to him this return is being serviced by one 14" flex duct (the entire house is flex) and two other returns share a 12" flex duct line. Him not verifying the heating issue is probably more my fault as I brought him out to specifically quote the gas furnace replacement as that is what I'm used to and really like. So part of me wants to go with the gas, but am I just spending stupid money for what I like/am used to? If I do go gas, 80, 90 or 95% efficiency? Glad I could help,with the other post. I just thought of something else and need to go back and edit it.

Well, for those of you who have not followed our continuing saga, here is the short version. We are within a couple of years of retirement and have purchased (hopefully) our last home in the mountains of North Carloina. I've been here for two weeks with painters and other assorted folks getting things sorted out. Well, this "artic vortex" as the news likes to call it has me thinking about the furnace. Currently the house has a 4 ton Trane heat pump installed. The compressor is 2002 and the air handler is 2004. Air handler is installed horizontally in the crawl space. Back up heat is supplied by resistance coils. The current temperatures are unusual, but the current configuration just can't keep up. I like gas furnaces and had the Trane dealer come out to give me a price on switching it over. One comment he made was that this furnace should have 4 coil packs providing the back up heat, but by the temperature coming out of the ducts he suspects one or more are not working. Surveying the complete install he also said the amount of return is not sufficient for the 4 ton with the number of registers installed. His recommendation is to change the air handler to a gas furnace with the heat pump/AC coil installed. It will be programmable so that down to "X" ambient outside temperature the heat pump would run, then below that the gas furnace would take over. Or, I could manually go direct to gas. Options would be 80%, 90% or 95% efficiency on the furnace. Hopefully this,will be our last house, so I'd like to get it right. One other thought is that with my 15,000 KW generator I can't run this resistance heat, but could run the gas furnace. (The generator will move with us from the current home in SC) So, thoughts? Fix what we got and stay with resistance back up or switch?

I'm the "token" homeowner here who likes to read what all these smart folks are talking about. Every once in a while I'm able to add a little something to the discussion. I will probably be reinforcing what other have said in these comments. The wife & I worked for the government and moved every 4 - 6 years, so we have experience with inspectors. The key to us hiring an inspector was a good web site that fully explained the services and a little about you. A single photo with the wife & kids somewhere on the site is fine, but the rest I want to look professional. Photos of you, not stock photos or clip art graphics. Keep it up to date with current phone numbers and email addresses. You can't believe how many disconnected phone numbers I have called trying to find an inspector. Better define your service area. You know the counties you serve, but I'm sitting in a hotel room on day number two of a house hunting trip in a city I have never lived in. Plus, is it only those counties or will you cross the line? I like the way Scott has it on his web site: "Our normal service area is a 100 mile radius of Nashville, TN, but we often accommodate our clients in locations outside of this area as needed" Talking about email, how about an auto responder. When I send you an email automatically reply that you will reply within X hours. Whatever you decide for X, make sure you meet the goal. Website has to be optimized for mobile phones. Many times I'm surfing on the iPhone while the Realtor is driving to the next house. On our last search we looked at 55 houses, the move before that was 70 houses. That's a lot of driving time to fill with research. I'm not sure I like the 200% warranty as I think you will do a lot of free inspections, but in any case call it the same thing everywhere. You link says 200% Guarantee but if I click on the "?" It say 200% Warranty Details. Which is it? Be wary of the Realtors and their recommendations. While I have used a Realtor recommended inspector in the past, I always wonder who the inspector is looking out for. Look around your area for companies/agencies that regularly relocate employees. Not sure how many management transfers the BMW plant has, but look for things like that. Federal agencies (usually law enforcement) move people regularly. They generally use a single relocation company per company/agency to assist employees. You may be able to make inroads with a relo company and get business that way. Look for tie in companies that "assist" homebuyers with locating a Realtor. We use USAA for insurance and they have a preferred Realtor program that rebates part of the commission to the customer. There may be a way to get hooked up,with some of those companies for referrals. I know for our last home USAA sent a person by to verify the featurs in the house to more accurately determine rebuild cost. Something like that may help,fill,time and generate income while you work on the inspection gig to pay the bills. I know you are working out of your house, but don't advertise your home address on your website. There are too many nuts in this world. Get a box at the UPS store. It's $120 a year for insurance to cut down on the nuts a little. OK, that's it for now... Good luck with the new business!

Interesting - Installation instructions say this: Read it here in the PDF

Well, while not a true "disaster" I got to test my set up in a real world situation. Power went out yesterday - I waited about 45 minutes because a few minutes out is not totally uncommon. Rolled the generator out of the garage, hooked it up and fired her up (electric start is nice). I had TV, cable and internet the whole time the power was out. But, it showed me I need some sort of way to know when the power comes back on. Best I can tell the power was back on for about 30 minutes before I knew it.

Perfect timing on this question as I'm about to add a disposal to a house that does not have one. Every house we have owned has NM kind of lying like this BX. I have always gone in and at least attached it to the back wall of the cabinet kind of like the dishwasher drain high loop. As I'm doing it from scratch, what is actually correct? BX? To follow up on Kurt's question, is the switch the disconnect?

My brother was with the City of Miami FD for 36 years and if I remember correctly for commercial construction they require a fire inspection in addition to any AHJ inspections . I thought these inspections were limited to "Fire" related issues such as sprinklers, and stand pipes. Hazards in a required egress path may be included it their perview.

Article in the Washington Post regarding this: Fannie Mae's bid to boost appraisals accuracy draws fire

If you go to the Fannie Mae web site you find that while they are implementing this in January, it is not "required". From their Q&A: Will things change in the future, probably. But it's not the crisis that these two guys purport it to be in January.

Have you tried curiosity? Well, the best I can tell it's really not a cat issue - it's something that periodically happens after encapsulation. But as the cats belong to the wife and her job requires an above average level of competence with devices that can cause bodily injury I'm not going to go there[^]

Thanks - I thought about that, but wile the smell is strongest in this area we do smell it in other areas. I'm guessing any penetration of the floor is allowing it to enter the house.

Well, a new chapter in the crawl encapsulation. We developed a smell, concentrated around the kitchen cabinets that is best described as that of cat urine. As we do have cats I broke out the black light looking for signs of urine in areas that we were noticing the smell with negative results. So, I remembered - Google is your friend. A search has revealed that this is reported by some folks who have their crawl space encapsulated. No consensus, but off gassing of the plastic used or changes (rise) in the humidity below the plastic are the direction most fingers are pointed. I don't raelly notice the smell in the crawl, but the wife says she does. Inspection under the house revealed a large hole in the sub floor (hidden by insulation) that the original carpenter cut to route the cooktop downdraft pipe. The "cure" that is talked about is installing a vent system under the plastic, similar to a Radon remideation system. The main difference is that this only need to vent out of the crawl, not above the roof. I'm figuring I can do this myself for less than $500 so I guess I have a New Years project. Any suggestions on how to label it so a future inspector does not flag it as an improperly installed Radon system? Thanks

They have pills for that now......

Always picking on us homeowners[:-paperba

I spent many hours on my hands & knees cleaning corners of terrazzo floors in a Publix supermarket during high school. All their stores had terrazzo. I remember one new store being built had a beautiful brown terrazzo floor poured. Probably 30,000 sq ft. It didn't match the color chip so the contractor had to jack hammer it out and re-pour....

The screws have probably rusted away already, this is a five year old post.

This is what I did a year ago. The house we bought already had two 50's in series. As it is the two of us with 4 cats and a German Shepherd Dog 100 gallons at 120 was more than we would ever use. I turned the lead tank down to pre heat the water going to the finish tank. So far so good.

talked to them today. Seems they found a neutral wire coming off the stator not connected anywhere. Don't see an empty lug and it doesn't show on their schematic. Generac told them, oh - you must not have the new schematic. Should be ready Monday.

While I consider my self above average on the handy scale, an o-scope may be just out of my range. Yes, it was blind faith, but I admit this unit was selected because it is a pure sine wave unit for use with electronics. I'll have to ponder on how I can get it tested......

I lost 2 fluorescent fixtures. I'm going to guess they were on the high leg and took out the ballast. One was in the laundry room (surface mount, 4 bulb) and I was looking for a reason to replace it anyway. There are now three recessed fixtures,with LED bulbs. The other was my fluorescent fish tank hood. Again, I was looking for a reason to get an LED hood. When I figured out something wasn't quite right I had turned on about 6 circuits, all 120v. Most of my lights in the house have been replaced with LED bulbar and they worked. I also remember the display on the microwave oven was lit, but obviously I didn't try to operate it. Those 2 fixtures are all I can find damaged.

Well, interesting twist to my back up generator project. I handled most of the wiring, but brought an electrician in ton finalize everything and play in the load center. We had to swap 5 circuits back and forth between the two panels so that the emergency circuits would be in the panel the generator supplied. I had time Monday to test out the system. I threw the main on the back up panel and started the generator. Got it up to speed and engaged its breaker to supply power to the panel. Went back inside and turned on a few lighting circuits. Heard a pop when I turned one on but really didn't think anything of it. Well, I turned on the lighting circuit that controlled the laundry room that the panels reside in. Heard a pop above my head and no lights came on. OK, even I can figure,out there is a problem now. Killed the breaker for the generator and shut it down. An inventory of circuits I turned in revealed that the fluorescent fixture in my fish tank and on the ceiling of the laundry room were dead. A little late, but I grabbed my trusty meter and started checking things. Seems the generator was putting out 30v AC on one leg and 155v AC on the other leg..... Dropped the brand new generator off at the service center today.......

I actually finished the hardest part of this project today. I made a document template so i could make new overlays to identify all the circuits in both panels. Now the question, as an inspector, how should I label this so it makes sense when you walk in and look at it?

stations carry it all over Check out Pure-gas.org Since discovering ethanol free gas a few years back, I've started using it in everything except my car. It's amazing how much better everything runs. Mower, chain saw, tractor -- it's like day & night. I use it in everything other than the car also. But on things like my generators (I have three[:-eyebrow ) I drain them each year and the drained gas goes in the car. Everything does seem to run better.