Steven L. Smith's Blog

We are not quite a month away from the big Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley. This festival, beginning April 1, is now famous in this region and it draws photographers and admirers from all over. The tulips in their full splendor are most amazing to see and are in the La Conner and Mount Vernon areas.

They gets less publicity than the tulips but the Skagit Valley is right now ablaze with daffodils. The tulips are the main show but the daffodils are earlier and they are splendid in and of themselves. Soon the heads will be cut off and the growers will harvest the bulbs and sell those to gardeners all over the world. Many of the tulip bulbs grown in the Skagit Valley end up being sold as Holland bulbs. Many of the farms are owned by people with Dutch names.

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Steven L. Smith

I have google alerts setup to report back to me when my company name, or things I have written about, are found online. Every once in awhile I get an interesting or very strange google alert. Once I found an article that I had written, on water pressure, and it was posted on an X-rated page surrounded by naked women. I had written the article on one of the "expert" sites so I had agreed that others could republish the article just as long as they gave me credit. In that case I was not so sure I wanted the credit down there at the bottom of the naked page.

The most recent google alert takes the cake. I got an alert last night and when I followed the link, someone has filched my contract and posted it to some sort of online document sharing community.

Docstoc is the premier online community and marketplace to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform to upload and share documents with the world, and serves as a vast repository of free and for purchase legal, business, financial, technical, and educational documents that can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded.

You can see the "lifted" King of the House document right here.

Anyway, at this fleeting moment in time, my standard contract has been reproduced, word for word, graphic by graphic and is being shared by someone who had no right to share it. There are any number of hoops you have to go through to get a pilfered document removed from this site, but I will probably jump through those hoops.

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Steven L. Smith

This weekend, my wife and I drove down to the Bow-Edison area of Skagit county. From Bellingham, the most scenic route and a very direct route is to go through Fairhaven and then take Chuckanut Drive. I have lived in this area all my life and this is a place where you might say time has stood still. The changes in scenery are minimal compared to what I remember from my years visiting my relatives in Bow-Edison in the 1960's and even the late 50's.

On the the way to Edison, in a field just past the Rhoddy Restaurant, we saw a couple of what my wife refers to as the "oreo cows." They really do look like oreo cookies.

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Steven L. Smith

One time, when he was at home during the inspection, a seller wanted to argue with me about his furnace. I do not argue with people when I am in the field but he had seen that I was taking a number of photos of the furnace, and he wanted to make it clear to me that it did not require service by a professional and I should not call for that in the report. He claimed that it was old but it was just fine. A problem is the guy was obviously a do-it-yourselfer who had many views that were not concurrent with industry standards.

The furnace above was in the category of one that the home inspector is not going to happily check off as being just fine. It was 28 years old and well beyond the design life of a gas furnace. The rust was a good visual indicator of age and potential problems.  In a case such as this, the inspector should, and any good inspector will, state that the furnace is beyond design life and call for another look by an HVAC professional who will, at the least, service it and at the worst state that a new furnace is required ASAP.

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Steven L. Smith

This is the weekend before the next home inspection training class starts at Bellingham Technical College.

We get underway on Monday morning, 8am. This weekend before, as lead instructor, I get any number of student phone calls and Emails as students -- often from out of the area -- try to get themselves oriented and figure out what they need to pack and bring to Bellingham for their four week stay.

This session we will have students taking both the state approved fundamentals of home inspection course and the supplemental course for those with some training, but not enough to meet grandfathering requirements.

This session the course will be offered in building T, room 3. Those individuals -- be they guest lecturers or students, who would like a map of the campus are in luck. This link will give you the official BTC map and building T is in that bottom cluster of buildings, left side. 

Campus map is here.

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Steven L. Smith

A few years ago, I used to do a clock-hours credit presentation on home inspection. It was a simple course, designed to teach realtors the basics as to what a home inspector is looking for. This was approved by the state real estate division and was presented under the auspices of Bellingham Technical College.

I have printed below the final slide from that presentation: Things a realtor can do to facilitate a smooth home inspection. This is a point that cannot be "preached" too often. At almost every home inspection that I perform, there is some part of the home that is totally inaccessible due to storage and belongings.

I have had the sellers tell me to go ahead and move anything I want. They say this as they are running out the door and I am stuck with no attic access, no electric panel access and blockades in front of most of what I need to see. Storage -- everybody has to have it, and when sellers are moving, certainly, they are in the process of packing and need space. But it is not part of the inspector's job to move massive amounts of storage. Often the storage is heavy or fragile and breaking a glass vase or a lamp is not a risk most of us are willing to take. Often, due to such storage, these areas are excluded from the inspection and someone has to pay for an inspector to come back when the excluded areas are accessible.

In the spirit of improving the situation, one step at a time, I am re-posting the last slide in that presentation for realtors. It is good advice and it would be helpful if seller's agents would pass this on to their clients.

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Steven L. Smith

During the course of doing home inspections at King of the House, I run into this one frequently. In an older home this condition is, almost always, present. In a new home, usually it is not an issue.

Regardless, it is one of these subtle guidelines about how things should be done that most homeowners are not aware of. In real life it is not a big concern, compared to the serious problems one can find at an inspection, but it should be noted.

Air-handling ducts, and that includes things like the heat ducts from the furnace, the ducts from the bath exhaust fans, the laundry exhaust fan, the dryer and the range hood, should have insulation (R4 or better) around the duct where the duct runs through unconditioned spaces such as crawl spaces and attics.

In a new house, often this is accomplished at all air-handling ducts by using the plastic covered flex duct, with insulation inside the jacket, that is commonly used on heat ducts. But other times, the ducts are wrapped with fiberglass batt or blanket insulation.

Sometimes people ask why this is required at all. The answer is that it helps prevent condensation from forming inside the ducts by keeping cold air off the outside as warm air passes through the inside. One point here: Obviously this does not apply to runs of cheap accordion flex duct or improper ducting materials. Fact is, those types of ducts need more than insulation. They need to be replaced with proper ducting, smooth metal, and then the insulation should be installed.

Another word of caution, if you are a do-it-yourselfer, this information DOES NOT apply to runs of B-vents (gas furnaces, gas water heaters, gas fireplaces) or vents from oil-burning appliances or metal chimneys from a wood-burning device. These runs need to stay naked and have proper clearances maintained from all combustibles including insulation.

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Steven L. Smith

It is common to find significant water damage near the tub or the shower. This is often the result of water that is leaking out around a shower door or a curtain. Or, in some cases, the shower door, often a slider, is installed in such a manner that the shower water runs down the track and right into the wall. That can make for a huge mess. Sometimes, for an inspector to locate moisture issues, a moisture meter is required. There are other times (below) when a meter is hardly necessary.

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Steven L. Smith

I am the program coordinator of the fundamentals of home inspection training program at Bellingham Technical College,

Frequently, in this economy and with people being injured on the job, I am asked by state and federal agencies that retrain workers about the physical demands of being a home inspector. As a result of interest in this topic, I have compiled the information below that I supply to potential students and government agencies.

Probably the heaviest thing an inspector carries around and lifts would be the ladder. These come in different weights, but if the ladder is long and going up to a high roof, there can be a real strain on the muscles used to get it up there and back down again. Speaking of roofs, an inspector in this state is expected to traverse most roofs. If a roof gets too steep, or if it is a slick surface or one that could be damaged, then it is likely that it will be viewed from the eaves.

The ladder also gets the inspector into an attic, which can be strenuous, and stressful, depending on how much poking around the inspector does.

Again, state law here in Washington mandates traversing an attic if it can be done safely and without damaging anything. This one, like the roof, is often a judgment call on the part of the inspector and has a lot to do with the agility of the inspector. Stepping through a ceiling is not good for the professional reputation.

Next, the inspector must be able to crawl. Crawl spaces can be tight and hot. So that part of the job leaves out people who are too big to get under there, afraid of what they might find, or are claustrophobic. This is another area that must be accessed if it is possible to do so.

The crawl space, due to it sometimes being a challenging and rigorous adventure, and the roof, because of the risks involved in getting up there, weed out some inspectors early in the program. The rest of the job, mainly, entails walking, getting a closer look at things in whatever position that takes, including laying down, kneeling, squatting.

There are risks associated with the job, mainly those involving heights and ladders, although there are also tripping hazards, falling through deck type hazards, electrical risks. As far as ladders, I have always admired the courage, but not the smarts, of the individual pictured in this photo that has seen it's way around the Internet many times over.

Anyone who would like more information on the state approved home inspector training program at Bellingham Technical College should call 360-752-8796.

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Steven L. Smith

The next state approved fundamentals of home inspection training course at Bellingham Technical College begins on March 8.  Anyone interested in the course may obtain more information here.

This is a four week course: The first three weeks are comprised of 120 hours of fundamentals training and instruction while the last week consists of 40 hours of actual in the field training.

The student who passes both sections of the course will be approved by Rhonda Meyers, Manager of Home Inspector Licensing, to sit for the state home inspector licensing exams.

Steven L. Smith