John Kogel

Try to borrow a Humidistat. I wouldn't try to go without something to measure relative humidity in the house. Poor circulation of air and not enough heat is what I would look for. The worst case I've seen was a house full of kids and pets, piles of laundry everywhere, lots of long hallways with small cluttered bedrooms, and a woodstove in the dining room. They were not using the electric baseboard heat to save $. Humidity in the hallway was 74%.

Faux stone is cheap, real rock is expensive. [] Faux stone seems to float magically in the air, and that is how we like it. Faux stone cracks will appear right through the stone instead of following a mortar line. Click to Enlarge 65.1 KB Click to Enlarge 46.29 KB Click to Enlarge 48.84 KB

They say it is safe to burn in an unvented enclosure, or maybe it's not. http://www.realflame.com/product.cfm?id=124&f=0 I used to do slashpile burning for logging outfits, and we all knew the petro-gel was toxic. The guy with the toxic materials ticket mixed the gel with diesel and gas. Then we would pack bucket loads or plastic pouches of the stuff out to the piles and make like pyromaniacs. The rule was "Don't get it on ya". OTOH, if the canned heat is pure alcohol, our systems could probably tolerate a fair bit of that. []

My client was a little disappointed to learn that his so-called gas fireplace is just a metal shell with 3 canisters for burning gelled alcohol. Do they give off any heat? I've never come across one before. Don't try to read that lingo under the mouse turds. It's French. Click to Enlarge 40.28 KB Click to Enlarge 83.32 KB Click to Enlarge 52.22 KB

Agree with Scott, write it up as unknown, tell clients to ask owner the purpose, if bank owned call an electrician. I got a note from a realtor last week. There was no electric baseboard heat, thermostat display was blank. It took 6 or 7 phone calls before the owners were able to install two AA batteries in the thermostat. The heat came on, and everybody could finally relax. BTW, that timer switch also takes a couple of batteries, probably the little wafer jobs.

If you are referring to the original pics, some kind of northwest softwood. If it was here in my area, I'd say Western Hemlock. Could be Spruce or Pine. It may have been carrying the mushroom spores when the house was built. They usually kiln-dry hemlock to reduce its moisture content, but then it can sit in a lumber yard for a year or so. To get Honey mushrooms from a piece of lumber, it needs to be water-soaked and rotten. I do see mushrooms coming out of lumber from time to time, but haven't been hungry enough to eat them. I'm hoping the local economy will recover before things reach that stage. [] Click to Enlarge 45.97 KB

It is not only more interesting, but also more serious. That looks like a species of fungi that attacks wood and turns it into dry chunks that fall apart. The good part is it won't attack your clients, although it could turn on them too, if it gets real hungry. []

Marc, I too have seen vermiculite in one bay only. I put it down to homeowner's lunacy, but maybe there was a perceived fire hazard there? Vermiculite is extremely fireproof. It was sold in convenient sacks, so maybe somebody acquired just one sack.

The cracks correspond with the top edges of the shingles two rows down.

Copied this from Malarkey's website. They are indeed claiming 50 years for their top of the line shingles. Malarkey?s revolutionary Legacy? shingle technology begins with a durable base layer of fiberglass mat. Malarkey?s unique fiberglass mat is coated on both sides with the SBS modified rubber asphalt which provides tensile strength and increased flexibility, protecting your investment. SBS MODIFIED ASPHALT The rubberizing aspect of SBS increases flexibility and weatherability for your roof. The thermo cycling resilience of SBS modified asphalt provides greater granule adhesion for the shingle to create a better barrier from the elements. When granules stay on the shingles, you ............

Jotul is a Norwegian brand, Godin c'est francais. Were they used for burning coal, by any chance? They look like they could be coal burners. Read about the Petit Godin here: http://www.antiques-bible.com/ppf/term/ ... nition.asp

I think it's part of a homemade incubator, for hatching chicks from eggs, see?.

Write "It'll swell up quicker than a schoolboy's xxxx" and the phone won't ring no more. [] You mean like "Eight miles outa Memphis and I ain't got a prayer?" Yeah, that could be fun. The toilet's leakin, floor she's creakin, I'm all thru speakin and gone all weekend. []

Right. If I start with the command to fix it, then tack on the why, the descriptive part is less cumbersome. Click to Enlarge 35.56 KB

"Beside the main tub, a baseboard trim piece needs to be painted where it was cut. MDF medium density fiberboard absorbs water more readily than wood and needs to be kept painted". I wish I could take that back and rewrite it. "Paint the raw end of the MDF to minimize moisture damage". Is this better?

That's a handy gizmo. You could check on the status of the plumbing while you were on the crapper. []

Canadian Federal Pioneer breaker panels - no problems, no history of problems, cheapest panel and therefore the most plentiful. Owned by Schneider Electric, who also own and market Square D and their own Schneider brand. Sorry you had to learn the hard way. Stab-Lok breakers - no problem. They stay in tight and the covers are the easiest of all to remove and replace. And there were never any New York or New Jersey breakers used in Canada that I know of. The breakers came from a factory in Toronto right from day one. That was when we had real manufacturing in Canada. Yes there was a recall of one batch of breakers. Some of the other brands have had recalls. I see several FP panels every week and I've got one in this house. I don't like them but I don't hate them either. I will call out the older panels as being antiquated and suspect. They will be labeled Federal Pacific. FPE No-Ark are old but a lot of them have nice copper bus bars. There is one model Federal panel that to remove the panel cover for the main breaker area is a real grunt. The cover catches on the breaker and the guard part jams in the box. I hate it when it trips the main breaker like that. One time the owner was on his PC when I did that. Another time it triggered an alarm when I turned the power back on. [] You should also know that there are literally hundreds of differences in the Canadian Electrical code from the NEC rules that you see here on these boards. Learn the Canadian code rules or you will get more than just bad vibes.

The mats are small and expensive. It is a nice feature if you are selling a place. I see them in the higher priced units, and people like the warm tiles. Programmable thermostats let you set the heat to come on before you get up in the AM, then turn off. On a concrete slab, you are paying to heat the earth, and the earth is a fairly large mass to heat. In our previous place, I laid a heat mat on a concrete slab from the bathroom door to the tub for about $250. I didn't put a heat mat in front of the crapper on the right, which was just a little square patch of tile. So you'd walk in and have nice warm tiles, step over to the crapper and the tiles were 10 degrees colder. That contrast was worse than no heat in the floor, probably. Tiling wasn't hard. We just laid down a slightly thicker layer of thinset where the mat ran out. My wife is better at leveling tiles than I am. Fussier, I mean. Just like Kurt said earlier, the sensor quit after only a few days. I had to diagnose the problem first and then had to install a new sensor under a tile without cutting the heating cable. It was a delicate operation, but it worked ok after that. We have a little 300 watt baseboard heater in this house. It heats the tile floor pretty well, but this house is over a crawlspace with an insulated floor. Upstairs bath has a wall-mount fan heater. The electric fan heaters are compact and pump a lot of heat, good choice, IMO. We never even use the one upstairs.

Thanks. I wish I'd had an extra 15 minutes to apply power to the thermostat and the blower. My clients would have liked to know if the $10,000 heat pump is going to work for them. I had hoped to check it out at least a bit, but there were multiple issues with the rest of the place, and the sellers realtor had sent this message, problems with both units. If someone called for auxiliary heat and the oil furnace refused to light, would the thermostat switch over to the heat pump or would the system lock up until reset?

I could use a bit of enlightenment here. Not a lot, just a bit. [] The house has been vacant for a few months, and the listing realtor has turned off the furnace because the tank is empty. The purchase of 5 gallons of oil would be a burden? Also, the new heat pump is not working, needs service, per the realtor. I had my hands full with the rest of the place anyway, so was happy to defer the heat system to an expert. So this question is to further my education, hopefully. The oil furnace is nearly 50 years old. A 2 year young Heat pump has been added, with the indoor portion perched above the oil burner. They are using the old blower fan to push air through both units, I believe. There is one programmable thermostat upstairs. There is a Heathkit control unit and a Westinghouse control unit all daisy-chained to the old furnace controls and the heat pump. Does this look like a Mickey Mouse mish-mash of products, or is it a typical way to control a heat pump and a backup furnace? I am thinking maybe the controls have been tampered with, or gone faulty, knocking out the heat pump. It is a nearly new Carrier unit, and it shouldn't have just quit on its own. Maybe with the heat pump off, the poor old oil furnace was ordered up, so it burned up the last of the oil. Or vice versa, could running out of oil for the backup heat cause the heat pump to shut down? What is most likely to cause this system to quit? Click to Enlarge 65.18?KB Click to Enlarge 58.21?KB Click to Enlarge 51.38?KB Click to Enlarge 35.95?KB Click to Enlarge 58.49 KB

I see that you have cellulose insulation blown in to the rafter cavities. Those corrugated plastic baffles are supposed to allow air in to the attic through the perforated soffit covers, if that is what you have outside. You can see in the pics that the baffles are crushed and there is no air coming in at those points. Cellulose packs down tight and does a good job of stopping air movement. A bit of moisture in the attic is not unusual, especially with a new build. But you need repairs to your attic ventilation, so that those areas can dry out properly. If you have a builder's warranty, give him a call. The insulation contractor has screwed up, from what I can see. Most of the mold will die off once the moisture is gone. Make sure your attic hatch has weather strip around the edge and is insulated will a fiberglass batt or foam. Make sure there are no leaky pot lights and that all your exhaust vent pipes are sealed. I don't know if the humidifier is in the attic, but if it is, you definitely need improved attic ventilation to compensate for that moisture source.

The 'cap' is a recycled drain cover, so there's a reasonable chance the pipe was also recycled to provide a cleanout access. I remember seeing that style pipe used for drain or sewer work back in the 70's, and didn't have any clue that it had asbestos fiber in it.

I agree with Mike, that's a very old GSW water heater. General Steel Wares is an ancient Ontario company. I think they started out making frying pans and tin stoves for trappers and gold miners. Today, they make a lot of water heaters under the GSW and John Wood labels. The McClary brand name has been dead for way over 20 yrs, AFAIK.

Why I hate plumbing reason #46. [] Soldering, wire leads to terminals, I can do that all day, every day.

It's pretty dark in that attic. [] My theory about old attics with minimal ventilation is that the insulation is also minimal, so the attic warms up with the rest of the house and there is no condensation on the roof sheathing. Also, quite a bit of air leaks in around the old planks at the eaves and the edges. Warm interior air is leaking into your old attic through plaster cracks, interior walls where they meet the ceiling, light fixtures, etc. If you decide to add a lot of insulation to your attic floor, first work on sealing off the places where warm air can leak through. There are new paints that they say will act as a vapor barrier. If your attic becomes cooler in winter through more efficient insulation, condensation will become more of an issue.