John Kogel

Thanks, Scott. That looks like a very good guide. I see an occasional loose piece here but not so much damage to the sheathing. Maybe just lucky so far, but I believe it can be done well. Most important is proper flashing and a good roof overhang, IMO. People shouldn't think it is waterproof, because it ain't.

Why would cutting power to the smoke alarms cause them to sound? My house loses power at least once each winter and our smoke alarms don't holler. There is at least one type that beeps when power is cut. Maybe the alarms that are tied to home alarm systems will do that. There might be another situation, the alarm will beep when AC is cut because the backup battery is low, in which case it will beep again and keep beeping at 1 minute intervals, but if you restore AC power it shuts up.

The electrician ran a feeder from a bathroom plug up to a smoke alarm in the hall. The alarms are daisy-chained together. I don't know why they would not ring again but maybe you pushed a standy by button. Or the GFCI wasn't reset or tripped again. AFAIK, the bathroom receptacles are not normally shared with any other outlets. That's what I'd report. It is easy enough for an electrician to find a new power source for the alarm.

I didn't call it out. I told my client it was up there and gave him pictures to look at. Prairie farmer moving to a retirement home. I'm sure he designed some other bird scare device.

The newer FPE Challenger breakers are assembled in Mexico. The original, bad FPE Stab-loks were made in New Jersey, AFAIK. I have no other info to provide. Canadian Federal Pioneer Stab-Loks are very popular here, not the same product.

Hey Marc. Would you describe that thing as a picayune piece of equipment? []

From Robert's link - It's a plastic gizmo with two lenses and a slide switch that attaches to the back of the phone so your phone becomes twice as thick. In other words it has limited usefulness but can produce some low resolution thermal images.

Well that's right. A basic electric range might only need a max of 30 amps, but a KitchenAid glasstop convection oven for example can draw 45.4 amps per the data plate. Since we can't restrict what the future loads will be, that subpanel should have been upsized to 50 or 60 amps, IMO.

I don't see how I can predict the loads with any accuracy without hiring an electrician to do a megger test. Will the range ever draw 80% of 40 amps? Maybe not. What if they swap this stove out for a different model? My question is whether a 40 amp subpanel can be permitted to supply the 40 amp range outlet and the 20 amp counter outlets.

A drop of coal tar, or tar pitch, or asphalt, depending on who is describing it, takes about one decade, 10 years, to form and drip. It was a big deal in the scientific world in 2013 when somebody was on the scene to witness and film the drop falling. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-bri ... sw_-Ps6z1s Re: sprinklers on the roof, they are there to scare seagulls off the roof. [] I inspected a roof where the owner had a motion detector rigged up to turn sprinklers on. Seagull crap and shells all over the roof. Water was turned off.

I got that book from another inspector who attended a seminar. It is in storage somewhere at the moment tho. I think the encapsulation is a good product for an average house on an average crawlspace. The guy who included perimeter drainage in his assessment is on the right track. You need to deal with groundwater and roof runoff drainage. The green fuzz type mould will die if the wood dries out. Killing it is an extra step, like belt and suspenders. The reason moisture can be damaging to wood is that you could get a wood-destroying fungus growing under there. Then it would be correct to call for treatment of the mold. You mention the piers. I would not let them cover wood posts with the membrane.

A 1975 house I visited over the holidays has had some renos done. In the bedroom wall behind the kitchen, a 40 amp subpanel has been installed. The subpanel has a 40 amp breaker for the kitchen range and a 20 amp breaker for two counter top receptacles. At the breaker panel, the label that originally said 'Range' now says 'Sub'. So we can assume that the original 8/3 cable to the range outlet now feeds that subpanel. I pulled covers and found no incorrect wiring, no sign of a problem, grounding is correct, all copper wiring. Is there anything unacceptable about what was done here, assuming all grounding and polarities are correct? Could the homeowner install another breaker in this 40 amp subpanel, 15 amp for a microwave outlet? I recommended not adding another circuit.

Since your lot is on a steep slope, make sure there is a good perimeter drain around the back side of the foundation to carry ground water away from the crawlspace.

You need a rotary switch that can handle 120 VAC. I suppose you could take one from a lamp. But I would never install a lamp switch in a wall box.

I wish. The grass is dormant and a nice shade of brown now. The drain field area is nice and wet, but because of the lot so is every other area of lawn. I just keep scratching my head wondering if I'm worrying for no reason. So far three inspections and I got three different answers: It's bad, replace it It's fine, don't worry about it Hard to tell, it might be bad but it might just be the wet lot [:-censore The only way to know for sure is to have the drain field scoped. They poke a snake camera down the pipe to see what's up. The hard part is digging up a section of the line, or going in from the septic tank, which would need to be pumped again. But I would dig a bit myself and try to see if the high ground water table is preventing the feild from emptying itself. If that big culvert is working, there should be no major flooding in your yard. Maybe it is clay soil? The best soil for a septic system is a balance of clay, sand and loam. Clay holds the water back. Too sandy will allow the sewage to flow into the ditch and down to the lake. IF the owner waited 8 or 9 years before the 1st pumping of the tank, he might have saturated the field with sludge. A good septic guy can clean the drain field with high pressure and a bit of digging. The pipes are relatively new. This is assuming the system was installed reasonably well to begin with. Naturally, your absolute best solutiion is to connect to the sewer and have your sewage pumped away from the lake.

Neal, do you warn people you might burn paint off their walls? []

I am spoiled by the i-Drill flashlight. 24 LED's mounted on a mirror. It is like a little patch of daylight in your pocket. The Lithium ion battery pack recharges in minutes or if I charge it once a week, then it might take 30 minutes to recharge. It is no doubt made in China.

Thanks all. A vent for leaking propane gas then is obviously a large air vent large enough to not pose any restriction on the movement of the gas. In fact you would not want the furnace to be pulling combustion air in through the same pipe, so you would want air coming in from another vent.

OK, so by their logic, a trap on a propane furnace pan drain would be a bad thing. So what happens when you pipe that drain into a methane source, the sewer line?

No trouble with the master shower drain or the laundry? Then it's just a hair clog. Even with no air vent, water should drain fairly quickly. I forget, did you not get the septic tank pumped? That would be job one. A 9 year old system should be working fine, but if sludge is allowed to overflow into the drain field, that would be serious trouble.

$89 at Home Depot. This one calls you wherever you are. Click to Enlarge 18.08 KB Water Alarm

You'd think they'd learn from the last 5 years of property losses and simply hire a neighbor to watch the place? Five gallons of oil was too much trouble? Maybe they line their pockets with insurance cash. Yeah maybe that's it. [:-graduat

It's easy to tell if you look at it carefully. That's a subject that's been beaten into most of the Oregon inspectors I know. Isn't it covered in CA? No, there might be a course one could take. All I'm saying is when I see sawdust in the crawlspace or a wall cavity, I check it out closely.

By release oil you mean oil on the concrete forms, right? We used to scrape them and put diesel on them. I was scraping forms with a hoe the day whats-his-name walked on the moon.

Yep, it was raining on the construction site. I have a similar reaction to crawlspace sawdust, is it insects or manmade?