allseason

Septic or municipal sewer? Septic fields wll have view ports built in. You can pull the cap and check for saturation.

The switch needs to be in somewhere in the public space, on a timer, locked up perhaps.

Put in a solid door and paint a window on it.[:-spin]

Jim, I agree.

I see it, but again, knowing it's wrong, no one foots the stairs around here and the muni inspectors don't bring it up. As I had mentioned with my own stairs they only asked for a concrete pad, which looks like crap so they okayed the bluestone application. It's as good or better than the concrete as far as durability. Unfortunately a tree service backed a giant chipper over one of the stones and cracked it, but it did not push it down more than 1/8 of an inch.

Okay.

At the bottom or where they meet the deck? No one in this area puts footings at the base of the stairs, commonly a concrete slab. At my porch the base of the stairs rest on 1 1/2" thick bluestones on top of 4" to 5"of compacted quarry process. They have not moved in three plus years. The pic shows the stairs in question. Click to Enlarge 78.25 KB

I inspected a house yesterday with a new deck, permitted construction. The stairs end on the ground with no masonry pad, just a block of wood. Otherwise they are well attached to the deck with modern brackets. Is a pad required at the base of the steps or is that just considered good building practice. I know that when I installed a front porch on my house 3 yrs ago the town required a pad. I'm recommending they put it in anyway to protect the base of the steps.

I had a client to whom I quoted a price after he had basically interviewed me for about 10 or 15 minutes. After telling him the price he asked if there was any room to move on the price, I told him "Yes, I can charge you more if you want". His reply, "Good answer". I got the job.

When I tell people I'm not busy that usually means that I'm not in my office until 2 AM for days on end. Things have actually picked up the last few weeks. I remember 10 years ago when I was doing three to four inspections a day 6 days a week for a mulit inspector firm, that's busy.

You need junction boxes at the exposed splices..

That's what's (Watts) called a pressure relief valve.

Just heard from Watts, that valve is UL approved for Natural Gas.

Can this ball valve be used on a gas line? On the Watts web site it says it is used for a full range of liquids and gases but there gas valves have a distinctly different handle. Click to Enlarge 32.17 KB

I've been in ASHI for several years. It has generated some work and is a good source of continuing education credits in NJ and NY. I don't know much about NAHI. NACHI? What's that? Nuff said.

He would not have had to remove the cover to find half of the issues anyway. He could have failed it from halfway across the room.

In the AHIT literature I like the income claim, it must be a bag with $75,000 inside that the instructor is pointing to behind the a/c unit.

I did see one other headscratcher. Two zone a/c with dampers at the blower in the attic. One themostat on the first floor and one on the second floor. House advertised as two zone cooling. One of the dampers was outside the duct, the hole covered with metal tape. The damper was still wired to the unit. Both thermostats are now running a single zone which is the entire house. I had to run up and down the stairs to check and see if the exposed damper would open, it didn't. Nothing else lacking from a structrural point if view. Click to Enlarge 39.5 KB

Maybe the are just getting started.

Yes, its wood, not metal. I don't understand why they did not just do a ledger on the house and move on from there. Nothing special, block foundation and wood frame construction. Looks like it needs redo.

Could be the rebar that I saw as the three fasteners, one on the bottom and one each at the upper portion to the sides of the beam pocket. Very low elevation of the deck made it tough to get close.

Has anyone ever seen a deck beam support like this? I know the picture sucks but it may get the point across. It is a 2 inch thick plate that looks to be glued to the foundation and with three nails holding it to the house. It has a space cut out of the center as a beam pocket. There is no ledger on the house as the beam runs perpendicular to the house. The joists run parallel the the house and are sitting on a ledger on the beam. No movement of the deck noted, house is about 16 years old and the deck looks like original construction, but it doesn't look right, no visible bolts seen at the interior of the basement. I've never seen anything like this. Click to Enlarge 41.6 KBClick to Enlarge 40.73 KB

Not sure about the Northwest, but here in the Northeast carpenter ants are black. Anything else indicating that they are inhabiting the wood-frass or discarded body parts nearby?

Old phone.