Jim Katen

And the gel coat is stable in UV light?

Oil furnace flames always flicker, don't they? Or is this flickering somehow unusual? When was the last time it was serviced. With oil furnace's you really have to service them every year. Get a new filter and nozzle in there.

What Bill said. I see the rather often. As I understand it, their variable speed compressors and variable or multi speed blowers will not always provide the traditional temperature differential.

I'm having a hard time understanding the set up. Do you have a picture? It sounds like you have a 200-amp meter/main and a 200-amp sub panel immediatly after it. That's a very common set up for manufactured homes. If I'm describing it correctly, then it's just a 200-amp service - nothing needs to be sized for 400 amps.

Regarding what you're saying: I'm never in favor of recommending "further evaluation" when I know full well that the thing should be replaced. I figure I'm being hired for my opinion, not to defer to others for their opinion. Regarding how you say it: First sentence. You really don't need "in the condo." Isn't everything in your report in the condo? You could say: "The electric panel is a Zinsco type which has a bad history of circuit breaker failure." But then there's that missing comma after "type". Do you really need "which"? Is it important that the failures have to do with circuit breakers, or are there other failures at work? Also, is it a bad history of failures or a history of bad failures? Maybe tighten it up some more and make it more emphatic: "Zinsco electric panels have a notorious history of failure." The next two sentences could be merged and greatly shortened. They also don't make a lot of sense. What's an electrician going to see that you didn't see? Do you really want to say that you looked inside the panel and saw no problems, but if an electrician looks in it, he might see problems? Maybe just avoid contrasting your evaluation with an electrician's evaluation: "While I saw no signs of active failure inside the panel today, that might change tomorrow. Hire an electrician to replace it."

Are you looking for opinions about what your said or how you said it?

It looks like Celotex, a soft compressed fiber product. You can break off pieces with your hand. Firtex and Homasote are similar products but they have different textures and colors.

Yes, that's my experience too. But a heat pump water heater in one of those basements will work like an air conditioner. The 67-degree basement won't be 67 degrees after one hour, let alone one day.

Those basement's must be freezing cold. Where was the 67-degree air supposed to come from? I can see having them in the southern states, but they just don't seem to make any sense up here.

Is it just me, or are these things really stupid? Today's new-construction house had an AO Smith heat pump water heater in the garage. When I arrived on site, it was 42 degrees outside and about 39 degrees in the garage. The water heater was set to 120 degrees in the "hybrid" mode and its heat pump compressor was running non-stop while its indicator showed that it was also running one of the resistance heating elements. Even so, the hottest temperature that I could get *at the water heater's outlet pipe* was 110 degrees. By the time it got to the fixtures it was about 102 degrees. Even when I switched it over to pure resistance heating and checked back a few hours later, the best it could do was 114 degrees at the outlet pipe. Most of the ones that I see are set to 130 or 135 in order to get 120-degree water at the fixtures. In our climate, these are always installed in a garage because otherwise they'd be fighting with the heating system in the house. In the winter, the garage is always going to be close to 40 degrees and the heat pumps generally stop working and switch to resistance heat at 37 degrees. So are these just really stupid or am I missing something?

You must never have a dimmer controlling a receptacle outlet. Doing so could fry non-incandescent or non-resistant loads plugged into the outlet. Imagine how your computer would appreciate having its power supply "dimmed." The mere fact that you have a dimmer controlling a receptacle outlet means that people who had no idea what they were doing were messing with the wiring. As Tom said, call an electrician.

It really doesn't seem like much of a mystery. The TJIs flex a lot and the drywall finishing was crappy. You can order TJIs that can easily support a given span with regard to "bending" but be entirely inadequate with regard to "deflection." When I built my office, I purposely specified TJIs two notches up from the prescriptive size just to reduce deflection. Those suckers flex a lot. On the same job, I hired a great drywall finisher, who, unbeknown to me, sub contracted the work to Goofey & Pluto. They embedded all the tape in topping compound. For the life of them, they couldn't understand why I went ballistic. Scrape down the broken joints and re-tape them with hot mud.

When was the drywall installed?

Never heard of it. Don't trust it.

While I think it's hardcoat stucco, I otherwise agree with Mike. Like so many building defects, this is a failure where multiple trades don't properly resolve their work with each other. In this case, the gutter guy, the stucco guy, and the roofing guy didn't successfully integrate their jobs and the result is a leak right at the spot where they all come together. I suggest pulling the gutter, then having the roof guy come and remvoe a few tiles so that everyone can see what's going on in that corner. Bring a water bottle to pour some water on various suspect areas and you should find the leak pretty quickly. Once that happens, don't let anyone convince you to fix it with caulk.

The roofer can't fix it. You need a stucco contractor to fix it. They'll need to cut back the stucco to about a foot above the roof, install building paper, lath, & weep screed, and lay in new stuco. The roofer did the best he could with what he was given.

Any decent wood shop with a planer and shaper could manufacture it from scratch for you. If you're lucky, they might even be able to do it without the planer if they can find off-the-shelf clapboards with the right bevel and thickness. Finding the wood stock will be the trick. You really want vertical grain for a product like this - preferably old growth.

What a fucking moron. Can I say that?

Water can wick up behind the stucco and rot the wall. The installation in your picture is dead wrong, but it's not the roofer's fault, it's the stucco installer's fault.

Ain't it the truth?

Those look like a lot of fun. I've got to admit though, the first thing I thought when I saw the cover was, "Jovrnal? What a bunch of pompous asses."

I can only speak for the way efflorescence behaves in my corner of the woods. When I see a band of it, with "uneffloresced" brick beside it (as is the brick at the upper left side of your 2nd picture) then it's a pretty safe bet that you've got water entry above that part of the wall. That might or might not be a bad thing, but it's definitely not a good thing. Quick tip to make your writing more engaging: Never start a sentence with "There is." When you do, that sentence is entirely unnecessary. Instead of saying "There is <thing>." Just jump right into whatever it is that's a problem with this thing. For instance, you might write: There is much efflorescence (white powder) at the east and back walls of the building. This is typically caused by excessive moisture coming into contact with the water soluble salts in the brick and/or mortar. You can brighten it up even more by getting rid of two-for-one phrasing and unnecessary modifiers: There is much efflorescence (white powder) at the east and back walls of the building. This is typically caused by excessive moisture water coming into contact with moving through the water soluble salts in the brick and/or and mortar. Finally, get rid of the passive voice: At the east and back walls of the building, water entering and moving through the brick has caused efflorescence (white powder).

If you hire the plumber and watch him work, you can write off the cost as "education."

In the deep recesses of my mind, I recall something that Mike Casey wrote about this. Sadly, I don't remember the details, but I think it had to do with chlorine attacking the rubber on valve washers and O-rings. I'm also unfamiliar with that valve configuration, but I'd start by unscrewing the Phillips head screw at the base of that plastic stem and see if the valve comes out from there.

What's the object in the left foreground, between the butter churn and the washtub?