Jim Baird

...prizewinner.

Looking at the pics there doesn't appear to be anywhere for water to drain away from the building. Crawl likely stays wet, which might mean lots of rot in the floor frame. If you cannot crawl that whole space probing the framing you might be getting a lemon. Jump up and down on the centers of rooms inside to check for floor stiffness.

...it's an extension to the telegraph receiver, before they had phone nooks.

We live so far out in the woods that it is we who live in the coons' yard. They move through here in packs at night and dig in the yard for grubs. I have a bowhunting friend I call my "gamekeeper" who reported on the coon packs. He takes deer out of our woodlot most years, has even taken a trophy buck or two. You Canadians have long been way ahead of the US in terms of environmental issues.

I don't have an advanced degree in composting, but have had a working pile for over 25 years. Always have been told not to put protein in there. Meat and fish scraps and waste go to the backyard chickens.

Thanks for posting this. Notice the reference calling for cleanout is from the IMC not the IRC, which means it does not apply to houses.

Our state defines "inert" waste as material unlikely to create "leachate", such as stumps, trees, concrete.

Up is allowed, but to me common sense says lint falls more than it flies.

Very funny. Ask him for a codes quote. Up is always the wrong direction for dryer venting and commercial (but not residential) requires a power boost for the up vents.

Incidentally, in our state it is legal to bury a person on your property, so I guess if you put Uncle Ralph out there in the yard you would have to disclose his location. Parcels I have visited where little graveyards lie have usually had them fenced off with guaranteed ingress/egress easements recorded on plats for memorial visits.

I'm told there is a real estate law that says if you bury anything on a site for sale you have to disclose. In our county there was an official inert materials landfill that went broke about the time of the finance/housing collapse. In the case of this builder, I have determined that he owns an adjacent odd shaped lot in this subdivision which is where he may be putting this stuff. In our county many subdivisions were approved, platted, and recorded but never built on, so that cleared parcels became overgrown with pioneer and weed species like sumac and chinaberry. These lots are some of those, that have to be scraped off to build on.

These photos are of an L shape ditch a spec builder is making at the rear of a cpl of lots he is building two houses on. Half acre lots generally, some 3/4 ac, all septic tanks. Neighbors don't like it. Their call to state environmental officer got zero answer. In nearby metro areas sinkholes from buried c&d wastes caused numerous problems that only occurred up to 15 yrs after the deed, in a state where this kind of violation has an 8 yr stat limit. Is this practice allowed where you guys live?

...or the fellow using those tools lost his balance and took that one long step to terra firma that turned out to be his last one. Not thread drift since chimney tops are up, this cap is made to keep water not drain it.

I only bring up codes when I want to make a point about a finding, and I warn in my intro that codes are mentioned only as guides. Violations of manufacturer instructions are more important.

Most here would not agree, but code certs in residential make a good knowledge base. They are not cheap or easy to get, tho.

The installer on this new construction used way wrong nails for both blind and face nailing. It looks like about a 6 penny finish nail or brad, practically headless, in violation of manufacturer direction. All the face nailing looked like the picture, penetrated and sunken, so when you strike a blow with the meat of a fist the material rattles back and forth on the shafts of the nails. Installer face nailed way more than he should have. Every course was peppered like this. I declared the whole installation to be toast, because I cannot see how you could remove these wrong nails and put the right ones in, especially the blind ones, without spoiling the material. Has anyone here seen such a botch level on this kind of siding? Buyer not running away. Buyer is sprinting.

Inspectors report on what they see. They might "operate" equipment but do not analyze operation or performance. An inspector does not operate a roof unless he ducks inside for shelter. Even a sloppy roof job might not leak,...yet.

I inspected a house in the fall where there were these closet bags for moisture gathering that were all full of water. Best I could find as a reason was that the AC unit was a little oversized for the sq footage, which they say cools summer air without drying it, leading to clamminess.

...the little trough where the upper slope meets the lower one is a drainage ditch. Hope it slopes to one side or the other like a gutter. BTW those shingles on the upper slope look fried like a rasher of bacon by their shipwrecked seaman's exposure to too much sun.

...as noted in an earlier post it was built in 1959 and looks good from below, though the ceiling was plywood that likely adds some stiffness to the whole thing. Like Mark noted, in residential you don't see very much in terms of loads on anything, especially when it comes to a one level ranch.

A little background, Nolan. My grandmother's Scotch heritage was so ingrained that through all my childhood years, she would only buy me and my brothers socks and/or underwear for Christmas, with the rationale that only what was truly needed qualified as gifts.

I dropped an "affordable" LED flashlite at 350 lumens, and the bulb broke. Have been unable to find any LED flashlight bulbs online. Anyone here able to replace bulbs? Am I just such a cheapskate that flashlights I am willing to buy are throwaway only? This one was 17 bucks at a big box and uses AAs.

Thanks, Mark. I agree that it looks "country". It looks like an attempt to transfer loads to outside walls, as trusses do, hanging the beam off the peaked rafters, as well as hanging the ceiling joists of the carport.

Focus on the job at hand. A couple I met recently bought a house last year that was fairly new. Their concerns were more about location and value etc., the kinds of things that realtors tout, incidental to the idea of the building as a "machine for living", as some have defined it. They let the realtor handle the inspector selection and booking, and they got one of those companies the realtors love. The recent buyer said to me, when I told him I was an inspector, "Our inspector was not having a good day when he was there." To my raised eyebrows he went on to say that the inspector's phone would not stop going off, that he kept stepping away to answer calls and that he got into some protracted arguments with some people the buyer thought were from his home office. Despite the low level to which my jaw dropped while the buyer explained, I was still able to bite the lip while gritting the teeth and suppressing my urge to ask, "You paid this guy when he was done?"

...lateral support on the bottom is the regular spaced ceiling joists? This is a carport (no insulation), and they needed something to make a 20 ft span on which to rest ceiling joists of 9 ft or so. From below, after 59 yrs, you can see a little sag across the span. I'm sure the top is tied to something, but not at intervals down the slope. Not bad, huh?