Jim Katen

Once again, the article starts off great and then goes off into the weeds. Instead of advising people to never exceed the standards of practice, here's an idea: Take the time to find the problems and tell your customers about them.

Too easy. Make the little ankle biters work for their keep.

Even better: make the kids dump the bins.

I assume you're not just filling up the storage card?

Well, it's not sexy, but spelling is important. An occasional typo is no big deal, but nothing in your boilerplate should be misspelled and you should never misspell construction terms that might not be part of the customers' vocabulary; when they go to look them up, they'll be baffled. There's just no excuse for a report that talks about "rusting lentils" and "lathe & plaster." It makes you look like a dumb hick. (And if there's more than one furnace, don't call one of them the "principle furnace" unless it has high moral standards.) I'd also focus on getting rid of what I call "mushy mush mush" report writing, "It was observed that the roof is older than it's average condition and might or might not perform satisfactorily over the course of its remaining service life, which it might or might not have exceeded. Hire an expert licensed roofing specialist to advise." (Taken verbatim from an actual report.) Strive to tell the customer exactly what the problem is and exactly what to do about it. Avoid word salad. Use clear words. Don't say, "Debris between the deck treads can facilitate rot." Deck treads? Facilitate rot? Who the heck speaks like that? Here's another, "Confined spaces were inaccessible." What this mean? Why might it be important? What should the customer do about it? One of my favorites: Have any rot in the deck removed and replaced. (Where can I find some "replacement rot"? )

Is this the same building and the same crack in this topic:

I think that by "sanitize" he just means to remove the actual names and addresses from the report. That shouldn't remove any good stuff. I know some excellent inspectors who have less-than-excellent writing skills. Their customers still get a great inspection. No one excels at everything. Still, if you have nothing else to go on, the report can tell you a lot. It's really amazing how a person's writing reflects a person's thinking and vice versa.

Thanks, Mike.

Of course you don't. Here's how it works: The agent wants the home inspector to find all of the important defects but then report them in a way that discloses the defect, but downplays its significance in such a way that it won't kill the deal. Later, when the home buyers realize that they have serious problems with the house, there's little that they can do because the home inspector did, in fact, find the problem and report on it, but then he downplayed it in a thousand little ways - none of them too obvious. This doesn't, of course, apply to all agents or all home inspectors, but it's the agents' ideal world. In places like Texas, where agents control the home inspector rules, it's baked into the laws. When this paradigm is successfully executed, it never comes to the attention of the insurers because there's no claim - just a disappointed home buyer. Check out Herner vs. Housemaster. It's very telling case in which the judge found the real estate agent to be the "client in fact" and where he called the inspection report "pablum." Unfortunately, this model of agent/home inspector relationship is still very widespread.

It's an alternative to soffit vents, which can scoop up flames and smoke from a burning neighboring building. You can't have soffit vents in a rated wall.

Yes. In the '50s, the architectural fashion was to have long, low houses with linear, horizontal windows that were generally high in the rooms. (Thank Frank Lloyd Wright for this.) Adding modern egress windows to a mid-century house will generally destroy the design.

The rules - if they apply - apply to all bedrooms, not just basement bedrooms. If this is boilerplate, you might want to clean up the spelling and grammar.

We call them "under-shingle intake vents" and they're getting more popular here as well, not just to meet fire codes. They avoid the occasional issue of steam rising up off wet walls in the morning and flowing into the attic via soffit vents. I wonder, though, how they perform in ice-dam country.

A "fixed double slider" could mean anything, including a cocktail.

In my area, it's been accepted. In fact, I had a city inspector suggest it to me at an inspection of my very own personal house.

I believe strongly that there's no "delicate balance" there. Serving my customer and limiting my liability are indistinguishable from one another. For decades, I've preached that viewing them as separate, conflicting tasks is what gets people in trouble. I summarize my philosophy in this maxim: If you cover your client's butt, you're will be covered automatically. You've completely deflected my point with an unrelated, if interesting, side issue having to do with an *incredibly* dopey home inspector. Doesn't matter. It's all about the perception. If you can see it happening, then it happens. Saying, "but wait, let me correct your perceptions" is not a very convincing alternative. The analogy is flawed because the primary doctor has nothing to gain from referring to a specialist who botches things up. A real estate agent, on the other hand, has something to gain from referring an inspector who is "soft" - even more so if he's the indemnifying type. That aside, I'll observe that by the time we get to a lawsuit, it's too late anyway - everyone has lost. My objection to the scheme is that it create perceptions that I'd rather avoid.

Any contractor who installs windows for a living should know what the requirements are. It's unreasonable to expect the homeowner to know these things.

Of those inspectors who use this coverage as part of their marketing to real estate agents, I'll bet that most, if not all of them do not advertise the fact to their actual customers. In fact, I'll also bet that they intentionally keep quiet about it. Look at it this way: if you were a home buyer and you knew that the inspector that your agent recommended was paying to indemnify that agent, would that elevate the inspector in your eyes? Would it make you think twice about the agent's motivations and the inspector's loyalties? In my experience all but the most credulous home buyers would view this as a "scheme" or perhaps as an "arrangement" that benefits the home inspector and the agent, but not the consumer.

Schemes like this have always made me feel uncomfortable. It's just a half-step away from paying a real estate agent for referrals.

I suspect that this initial message was spam. It originally contained a link that the moderators removed and the poster's IP address is in India.

Without really good pictures, this entire discussion is like a circle jerk.

Mark Cramer's Intelligent Reporter software share some of the characteristics of Inspectit. (I believe that Inspectit actually grew from an earlier version of IR.) Having used both, I greatly prefer IR and have used it for about a dozen years. It is *amazingly* flexible for someone who is facile with Word - I should probably rephrase that to say that you must be facile with Word. The thing is, I'm not sure that Mark is still selling it or supporting it for new customers. You might get in touch and ask him about it. Here's a little bit about the program: https://www.besttampainspector.com/Software

Where are you located? If you can make the finger drains run to the street, why not just pave the driveway and let the water flow to the street on top of the pavement?

I see about 1 electric on-demand water heater for every 40 or 50 gas ones. They're generally in the 30-36kw range. (About 120,000 btu/hr.) They work ok, but not as well as the gas ones - just like electric vs gas storage-type heaters.

Isn't Davidson made by Louisville? I'd call them with your ladder model number and ask them for the correct standoff. Just browsing the web, I see that some standoffs say they can be used on any extension ladder and some spell out limitations. By the way, I lean my ladder against roof rake boards all the time. I just angle it so that the rungs both touch the angled edge of the roof at the same time. It works fine, but I'm not painting. If you do that while painting, you'll constantly be in your own way.