Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, WA Home Inspector (King of the House)

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Nice Plumbing Repair

My friend Charles Buell is always very critical of duct tape -- the miracle cure of last century and still a hot commodity today. I have seen everything from the skins of mobile homes and fuel tanks to shoes repaired with the stuff. I always love it when I open a cabinet and find it at the drain under the sink. Come on folks, the stuff really is not very waterproof and let's be honest it is a really lousy way to repair a leak. The photo below does a wonderful job of capturing a leak in progress. What --- a leak from a sink that has been repaired. Yeah, afraid so. Check out the big droplet of water. It is as big as the tear that will be coming from Charlie's eye when he finds out that I have done one more blog this week than he has done so far.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

10 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 17 2008 10:41PM

Another Close, But No Cigar, Job

Below is an electric water heater with an installation that is close to right. But close is not good enough. There is a temperature pressure relief valve and the drain line from it is even routed down and out of the home. And the lower section of the drain is CPVC tubing which is a plastic that is approved for hot water. If you look at the vertical section that goes up to the valve, well that is plain old PVC. PVC works with cold water but is not approved for use with hot water and that includes at the TPR drain. This tank requires a qualified plumber to come in and upgrade the TPR drain. A TPR drain should be 3/4" pipe or plastic tubing and must be rated for hot water. Around here we see copper and CPVC in this application. Also, the drain cannot be a flexible tubing of any type, including copper flex that might be bent in a manner that would change, or get away from, the level to downward slope that is mandatory for safety. A TPR drain cannot go up for even one teeny weensy centimeter.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

4 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 17 2008 10:15PM

Common and a Real Mess!

The view in this photo is so very common, but I always hate to see it. When a roofer takes an old wood shingle or shake roof off, it seems that about eight times out of ten the wood debris ends up inside the attic. Just what a homeowner wants is a bunch of old wood shingles in the attic. What makes better kindling than old, dry wood shingles? The answer to that I do not know because old, dry, wood shingles work pretty good for me. In my own house, and a rental I own, I had to go up there myself, after the roofers, and I got bags and bags of this stuff. My mistake was I did it in the summer and it was one hot job. A home inspector is obligated to call out this kind of mess. Who cleans up? Sometimes the seller from what I have seen and sometimes the buyer accepts it as is.

 

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

16 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 16 2008 11:30PM

Gambler's Guide To Home Buying

In life there are many gambles. Anyone in business has to assume some risk and take some gambles. Even hanging out your shingle, doing whatever it is you plan to do, involves risk. I am not one who is afraid of some risk. One of the best business decisions I ever made, which I can now look back on, was a risk. That was buying a radio station on a shoestring in the mid-1980's. Worked out great more than a decade later but it was not without lots of worry in the middle. So, as far as business and getting ahead, some risk and gambling is to be expected and, in fact, often the element of risk is essential if you are going to do anything innovative that has a strong chance of returning a profit. If it was simple, and without stress, everyone would do it.

Now let's talk about real gambling. The most famous term that comes to mind when I think of gambling is Aces and eights. Aces and eights are the deadman's hand.

The deadman's hand, if you do not know, is the hand that Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot in the back of the head. He normally sat with a wall behind him so he could see all around the room and nobody could get behind him. His changing chairs that night was a gamble that did not pay off.

Now that we are talking about taking big gambles, that can lead to a loss, I will tell you one gamble that people should not be taking -- buying houses on their own, with no professional guidance, when they know nothing about houses. Houses are a huge investment and a bad one can break the homeowner's bank. When people purchase a home without a professional home inspection, or substitute uncle Harry who used to build chicken coops from the ground up as the inspector, it is a bad choice and a silly gamble. As a home inspector who has seen the fallout from such errors in judgement, I urge real estate professionals to have their clients seek out a professional home inspection when their clients are buying. Lord forbid, you do not want to end up with clients who are holding aces and eights and sitting on the wrong side of the table.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

5 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 16 2008 09:44AM

They're Alive, They're Alive

This is not an out of body experience, or some tale that will make you think I am any weirder than what you might already think. After all, you have probably heard stories of the dead coming back to life -- on shows like the Twilight Zone. Call it reincarnation, call it hibernation, or call it whatever you want but please don't call me late for dinner. Take this story as you will, perhaps you will think it silly, perhaps you will think it a miracle, but it is my story and here goes.

In December I did an inspection at Birch Bay and found a major infestation of carpenter ants. I smacked a joist that I knew was bad and here they came. Because I teach wood destroying organisms for Bellingham Technical College, I grabbed some of the damaged wood, the frass (shavings and chewings from the ants) and yes, a few live ants. I threw them in the back of my truck, tied up in a plastic bag. Call me cruel if you wish, but that is what I did. Then I got a cold, kind of forgot about them but decided to leave them in the truck. That was then and a photo of the wood, when taken from the home that day, is below.

This is now. I am teaching a class this week and took the bag out of my truck. Did not even know if it was still there till I had a revelation. But, sure enough, I found the bag and tore it open on the way into class. A couple early rising home inspection students were there and I told them of my treasure. As we were looking at it and I was pointing out the finer points of frass, the "dead" ant on top started moving, ever so slowly. We decided that we would keep him from escaping, so I can save him as a permanent part of the great ant exhibit. Needing caffeine, I put the two students in charge. Officially, in my capacity as the instructor, I made the most interested student temporarily -- "Keeper of the Ant."  After making this appointment, and assigning the responsibility, I went for coffee.

When I got back, the students were both working, and busily so, as keepers of the ant. Except things had changed. Now they were both keepers of the ants. Ended up that about eight of the bugs were scurrying about. I guess, like bees in firewood that come to life when they warm-up, same with the ants. Ants tend to slow down in cold weather, so they did that in the canopy of my truck. Long story short, I put them in another plastic bag and, come Thursday and time for class, I will have quite the display ready. Real C. Modoc Carpenter ants. Silly story but amusing if you could have seen the students keeping track of these hustling insects.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

10 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 15 2008 10:35PM

Steve's Greatest Hits And B Sides

I was looking at my statistics the other day and found that my first serious activity at Active Rain was one year ago yesterday, as in last Sunday. Wow, how time flies when you are getting all wet in the rain.

A while back, a friend had suggested that he had positive comments by posting, or re-posting, links to blogs that were popular. I decided to do the same thing here, with a twist. I am posting, for you to review, five of my most popular blogs, all featured by AR over the past year. I weeded through the featured blogs and put links to some that I liked.

Below that is the twist: I am posting five also rans. Read that this way -- bombs, stinkers, turkeys, losers. They were just slightly more popular than skunks at a wedding reception.

I think all of us have written more than a few of those types of blogs. We like them but nobody reads them. Why? Sometimes it has to do with the time of day, or even what else is on the site that day. 

Loser blogs, which the last five below might be, were personally selected from many choices because I thought that they were better, or more interesting, than statistics might otherwise indicate. I hope you find something here that you consider to be worthwhile. Many of them focus on wood destroying organisms, which is an area I have special interest in.

Five featured blogs that earned significant points and comments:

Home inspection, it is all about straightening the pictures on the wall

Carpenter ant infestation in all its glory

Electric heaters and related fire hazards

Duties and scope of a professional home inspector

Moisture ant infestion (most people had never heard of this pest)

Five never weres that floated like yellow submarines:

Cell phone towers and the trouble companies go to to hide them 

Spoof of home inspector lingo and acronyms

New wood destroying organism in WA State per WSDA

Fattening up the wood destroying organisms at your home

Anobiid beetles and their path of destruction

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

2 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 14 2008 11:48PM

Canada and US Border Communities

The local daily newspaper, the Bellingham Herald, had a story today that confirmed a trend I have noticed in my inspection business for the past eight months or so -- the rising Canadian dollar, which fluctuates from a bit below to a bit above the US dollar, has led to more Canadians spending money in the US at communities located near the border.

The figures, in the story, are retail sales; however, not a month goes by (no I am not challenging the universe here) where I don't have Canadians using the services of my inspection business. That means they are buying US homes, as I cannot legally work up there. If trying to generalize, I would guess that the majority of them, that I see, are buying at Point Roberts, followed by the Mt. Baker area (skiing) and that is followed by Birch Bay. Point Roberts and Birch Bay are right on the border and both communities are near the water, some with great beach property.

Back in the 1970's the retail market in Bellingham was dependant on Canadian shoppers. That faded away a few years ago and many businesses geared to that trade failed. But now that business is strong again, especially in communities like Sumas that had gone almost dark. The negative is that now I can no longer, on the cheap, pop into Canada for a weekend. I can still go, but it ain't that cheap!  To read the story in the newspaper, you can go here.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

2 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 11 2008 09:37AM

Cricket, More Than Just A Game

No wonder people who are learning English go crazy sometimes. Take, for example, the word "cricket." You probably think it means an insect or a game the British favor that is similar to baseball. Well, there is a third meaning as you are about to learn. The photo below is a good example of a wide chimney, more than five feet across, that should have a "cricket" behind it, at the junction with the roof.

If you are wondering why anyone would want a cricket, as in a little insect, behind the chimney then you have never learned, or heard, that third meaning of the word cricket.

A cricket, also called a saddle flashing, is a device that should be put behind a wide chimney. You can see that, while not perfect perhaps, it does help guide leaves, debris and water around the chimney instead of it all collecting across the chimney in back. At the above chimney that moisture had lead to damage of the roof sheathing at that location. That much was clear, despite limited visibility. Recommended widths vary -- that is when is the cricket needed, depending on whom you talk to, but certainly this chimney needs one. A photo of a cricket is below. 

Some people believe a cricket should be installed on any chimney that is two feet or more across. Others go with 30 inches and wider.

 

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

4 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 10 2008 07:04PM

Home Inspection, Why Must We Get Out Of The Car?

Charlie Buell and I sometimes joke around that there are times you could do a home inspection from the publicity photos of the property. It is amazing the things the trained eye can see and, from the photos, you know to look very carefully at certain areas or you might be able to predict a problem in advance.

The photo, an inspection photo, is one of those instances where you know most of the story from looking at the picture. If this was an inside shot, then the problem would be the missing cover on the receptacle -- little fingers can get in there and get a shock. Big ones too if a person is not paying attention.

Now, the tree makes it pretty clear that this shot is outdoors. So that brings up some other things. Not only is the receptacle missing a cover, it is actually missing a "waterproof" cover. The other thing, being located outside, this receptacle needs to have GFCI protection (which helps prevent shocks). You can tell all those things from the photo, except you can't identify if it is GFCI protected or not. Obviously it is not specifically a GFCI receptacle but an outdoor receptacle such as this could also be protected by a GFCI circuit breaker or it could be a slave of another GFCI receptacle located elsewhere in the system.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

1 comment • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 09 2008 10:02PM

If It Fits It Must Work

This photo has to go in that goofy and misguided category we home inspectors see so often -- "if it fits then it has to work". The photo below, believe it or not, is a dryer vent. If you have ever cleaned a dryer vent, or looked at all the lint and junk they spit out, you know just how illogical the location of this vent really is. It has maybe, at most, an inch of clearance between the concrete and the lower lip of the vent. This, by the way, is the new location for the dryer vent. They did not like where it was located before, decided to move it to this ideal spot and,  in so doing, they left another open hole in the side of the house.

This is another good example of the old proverb -- just because some bozo can get two things to squeeze together, that does not make it right.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

 

        

        

Check out "This Day In History" -- music and vintage television from the 1950's through the 1980's.  I enjoy writing these articles because they take me back to my days in radio broadcasting. Click on Elvis' gold record, below, to revisit those golden hits of yesteryear.

           

4 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • April 09 2008 08:48PM