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

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Government's Crazy Solutions to Non-Problems

I thought you might get a kick out of the photos below. They are good examples of city government planners trying to figure out a way to solve a problem that does not exist.  In my view at least, what they came up with was more amusing and silly than beneficial.

Regarding the Bellingham warehouse below, my then business partner owned it about 15 years ago, when it was first built, so I remember the details well. I had not thought about it in a long time, but drove by the other day and decided it would be good blog fodder. This was a good-sized furniture warehouse. It is in a neighborhood that is largely retail, with a few, mainly non-owner occupied, residences mixed in. The city decided it was fine to build the warehouse at the site, but the side that faced two rentals or apartments, had to be camouflaged to "protect" the neighborhood.

Well, if you are outside at night wearing sunglasses, and standing on your head, this facade might fool you. Probably it will not however, unless you think the residents all died because there are never any lights on. It is black 24/7. Everything you see is a grand illusion -- stuff stuck on the building. The doors go nowhere, they do not even open, the windows look into the black. There are three fantasy residences here; I have taken photos of the two end units. You can see parts of the center unit hiding behind the trees in the other two photos.

 king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections  king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections

The photo below is the "working" side of the same warehouse. Had the city simply demanded that the backside have no entry or exit, as is the case now anyway, it would have probably looked just as good. People who see the "residential" side of the building think it is amusing. They shake their heads and usually say "what a joke."

king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections

This true story also reminds me of the time, back when I had a radio station, that we put a 10' satellite dish on the roof. To get a permit to do so, we had to plant 12 poplars at the other end of the lot, about an acre away. While these trees were put in as was promised, the nursery did a lousy job and they all died within a year and then had to be removed. The county had no requirements whatsoever that the trees had to be maintained or replaced -- just that they had to be put in one time. A few years later, Western Washington University bought the site leveled everything and turned it into a parking lot. I do not oppose government regulations, they are necessary, but sometimes the rules they come up with are so vacuous and poorly conceived that they result in many of us running in circles trying to catch our own tails.

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.

           

11 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 21 2008 03:37PM

It's All About Flashing

If a homeowner or handyman plans to install a new roof or put in plumbing stacks or roof vents, it sure makes sense to do some reading about the process before getting the ladder out and going up onto the roof.

The two plumbing stack flashings below have obvious problems. The one on the left was probably a decent flashing, new out of the package, prior to the "roofer" slathering it up. He had a proper flashing that would work, but he did not get how it works. Instead of putting the flashing in correctly, so it neatly fits up under the shingles -- water is shed over the top -- he smeared tar under it and then pressed it down onto the roof. He put the roof vent on the same way, on top of the shingles, so he had that method down pretty good.

On the photo to the right, he put a hole in the roof and smeared tar all around it -- that tar was the only flashing. While this method of flashing might work very short-term, it is not the right way to do it for longterm benefit. The only way I can imagine doing this kind of job would be to temporarily patch a leak during a serious storm -- the equivalent of temporarily fixing a flat tire with one of those spray cans that will reinflate the tire until you are in a more convenient location. 

 

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.

           

8 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 19 2008 04:06PM

Wood Destroying Organisms That Aren't

In Washington State, there are laws regulating wood destroying organism inspections. The laws even define what qualifies as a "WDO". Clients sometimes find the definition, or what makes that list, confusing. They are surprised that a mouse or a rat is not included, nor are certain bees or wasps. In this state, and that is not the case in many others, we have no wood destroying bees or at least if they are found they are interlopers from warmer climates and they are in small quantities so they are not a problem. As far as vermin, they will chew their way into the house but the damage they do in that manner is considered to be minor. The biggest problems caused by these pests would be the other stuff they do -- wrecking insulation, cutting insulation off the wires, chewing into certain plastic plumbing pipes, pestilence in general, etc.

The photo below is another example of an insect that will "infest" wood but it is not classified as a WDO. First glance, this looks like wood destroying insect damage. The tunneling looks similar to the work of carpenter ants. Ends up, the critters doing the tunneling were sowbugs, one is visible in the photo. These insects DID NOT cause the "real" damage. They were opportunistically taking advantage of wood that had already been destroyed by another wood destroying organism -- rot. The sowbugs themselves are not classified as wood destroying organisms despite the fact they were hanging out in the wood. They would not have been there at all, had the wood (OSB composition wood in this case) been sound and had it not been down in the dirt which was conducive to the rot. You might say the sowbugs are wood destroying organisms that are NOT!

 

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.

           

12 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 18 2008 06:49PM

Mickey Mouse Can't Dance, Charlie Don't Surf

Active Rain members, I was mulling over a great blog written by Barbara Duncan. She was describing a  scam, that is used to take advantage of consumers with poor credit.

 

She wrote of one person who lost a property as a result of foreclosure. It was interesting information describing how some credit repair companies use legal loopholes -- for a fleeting moment in time -- to make someone's credit look clean, or should we say "incomplete" but not so bad. Then, poof that moment is gone and only ashes are left. I always wondered what those people were selling on the radio and TV ads.

Having had a background as a magician, I find scams interesting. Not necessarily the big ones like the Nigerian letter scam, I like the smaller visual ones -- three shell game, 3 card monte, even pickpockets and their methods. I have given lectures, mainly entertaining, on these methods, even though I have never been involved in bilking folks out of their money.

Street scams can be pretty fun to watch. I did not say to play, I said to watch. You play them you loose, guaranteed. You might even get beat up if you create a fuss. My wife and I spend a fair bit of time in Italy and all those games operate over there on a daily basis in tourist places -- Rome, Venice, Florence.

One of the last times we were there we were in Sicily and they had a great visual scam involving Mickey Mouse. Now when I call it a Mickey Mouse Scam, I really mean what I say. This scam involves Mickey Mouse vs it being a scam devised by my compatriot Charles Buell -- which would also be pretty Mickey Mouse I suspect. So you get the drift, and understand Charlie's thinking, the last time he had a big get rich quick scheme we went into freefall. Get this, he actually came up with the concept that the two of us should become highly influential and affluent home inspectors in Washington State (recent on-the-job photo below)

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Enough about Charlie and me, back to Mickey Mouse. In Italy, street vendors have these cutouts of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. Right there, middle of the street, these things dance like crazy, with no visible means of support. I am a magician, and they looked great. I actually wondered how they worked -- knowing they were too good to be true. Tourist after tourist pays $5 Euro per mouse and, when they get home to give them to the grandkids, the mice do nothing, zero, nada, zip. They are just stupid cutouts, you could hang them on the window I suppose, at least until the cheap cardboard faded away.

Here is the scam: Out on the street, a thread goes from a stationary object (usually the boom box that blasts out the music) over to either the vendor selling them, his buddy, or some small mechanism that tweaks the thin thread that makes the mouse dance. It is well done, you cannot see the thread or anyone working it. Some aspring tourist, in some foreign country, risking his or her life, posted a you tube video of the dancing mouse. Check it out--  Mickey mouse dancing video. In the video, the puppet thread would be hooked to the radio and there would be some sort of moving mechanism with an arm that goes around in the black backpack or suitcase, other side.

Bottom line, if you see a dancing mouse, don't get out your wallet. Because some truths in life remain -- Pigs Don't Fly, Mickey Can't Dance and Charlie Don't Surf!

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.

           

15 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 16 2008 10:26PM

Realtor, Lender Guide to Hud Manufactured Home Inspections

Minimizing the number of phone calls a real estate professional needs to make is always popular with the real estate professional. I think all of us, who work in real estate and related fields, have to make and return what seems to be more than our share of important telephone calls.

Many realtors and lenders become especially frustrated -- I know because I have talked to many of them -- when they need to schedule a manufactured home inspection that is subject to the very specific HUD financing requirements.

HUD demands an extensive, and very specific, permanent foundation inspection or certification and a professional engineer must sign off on it. (The foundation below would not pass that HUD foundation inspection by the way, for a multitude of reasons.)

king of the house home inspection

Normally, HUD requirements also call for an inspection for wood destroying insects. (Photo below is carpenter ant frass thrown down onto a bath cabinet by carpenter ants in the attic of a manufactured home)

King of the House home inspection carpenter ant

 

This need for two professionals is where scheduling delays come into play. Almost no home inspectors are licensed professional engineers and almost no licensed professional engineers are licensed pest inspectors or home inspectors. Therefore, to schedule the two inspections, the realtor or lender has to make two phone calls and coordinate scheduling, timing and all of the details with the two professionals

 

The next dilemma is this: What if the PE is first on the scene and says that the foundation has failed the inspection? If that happens, then there is no need for the pest inspection. On the other hand, the same thing could happen in reverse. To some degree, this is unavoidable but, if the two professionals are communicating and working together directly, then the problem of the client having to pay for two inspections, when the first one failed the place, can be minimized.

 

In my market, to try to streamline this process for buyers and their agents or lenders, I have entered into a cooperative agreement with Pinner and Associates, a professional engineering firm. For more than 20 years they have provided engineering services here in Whatcom County. Pinner understands the HUD requirements. As a result of this cooperative agreement, any realtor, lender or buyer can place a call to my firm and I will take care of the rest of the scheduling. There will be two separate contracts -- one for the inspector and one for the engineering firm -- but the scheduling is simplified.

 

Since my firm and Pinner and Associates have an excellent working relationship, if the professional engineer goes on-site first and finds that the structure will not meet HUD requirements, then he will immediately contact me so the second inspection will be delayed or cancelled. And, if I go on-site first and find a problem, I will contact the engineering firm and tell them to hold-off until the problem is resolved. Obviously, it is possible that the first inspection will be satisfactory and it is the second inspection that will unearth a problem. In that case, the client would still owe for the two inspections but the world is imperfect and we are doing the best we can for the client.

Entering into this professional relationship with the engineering firm is my way to try to streamline a cumbersome process.

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 • May 15 2008 07:47PM

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Who Is The Silliest Of Them All?

It is odd to be out and about and to, suddenly and unexpectedly, run smack dab into a storybook house.

king of the house home inspection photo

When I say I ran smack dab into it, I mean it figuratively. Today I was many miles away from Bellingham, in the woods up by Mount Baker, and I could not resist taking a photo of this place. I was out on a short walk and there it was. I did not know just who to expect, Lil' Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, a witch, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Peter Pan and Charles Buell, or is that Tinkerbell, no matter the same thing. It must be amusing to live in a house like this, all the possibilities. Grandkids would sure love it. But would your friends think you were a bit nutso? A little too cute perhaps?

A couple years ago, I actually inspected a storybook house of a similar design, but it was not nestled in the forest.

king of the house home inspection photo

This house was really compact inside, almost like a mobile home. I also remember that going up onto that deck, if you were about six feet tall, you had to be careful or you would whack your head on the bottom of that scalloped front fascia.

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.

           

8 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 13 2008 11:20PM

Mix and Match Wiring

Mix and match might work for some things. However, it does not make for a pretty or safe sight when working with electrical wiring when circuits include both copper and solid-strand aluminum wiring. The panel below has both -- mix and match. The terminal on the left clearly has a solid aluminum wire on the top breaker. The ones below that are copper. Solid-strand aluminum branch wiring, used for a relatively brief period into the early 1970's, has a history of safety problems. I have seen estimates that a home could be as much as 50 times more likely to have a fire when such wiring is present.

The photo to the right is the same panel, viewing it from farther away, and at that location some odd work was done. They cut many of the aluminum wires off, and then they used wire nuts to splice copper pigtails onto the aluminum. The copper went to the breakers so, in glancing at the breakers, one saw mainly copper but looking at the grounds or neutrals one saw solid-strand aluminum in abundance.

This makes it all more confusing but it does not resolve the issue with the solid-strand aluminum wiring. And it makes each connection at each wire nut suspect -- dis-similar metals in contact.  They do make wire nuts, that they say are designed for this purpose of joining the two different materials together but, even those are suspect as far as any long-term repair. In almost all cases, the recommended cleanup procedure is eliminating the solid-strand aluminum wiring. Sometimes, an electrician might use special pig-tails but for those to be done right it is not cheap. Also, the problem does not exist only in the panel. Those aluminum wires attach to switches, outlets, lights and often, when viewing those locations, corrosion will be apparent. A home inspector, when confronted with this issue, directs the client to consult a licensed electrician for repairs and further evaluation.

King of the house home inspection wiring  

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 • May 12 2008 11:49AM

Open-ended Gutters

Many new homes in the Pacific Northwet, older homes too, have gutters installed that have open ends. These are almost always on dormers so they drain the water from that smaller roof down to the end of the gutter where it keeps on a movin' down the rooof to the main gutter system. Many builders, and buyers, feel that the look of open-ended gutters far exceeds the look of a long downspout going down the roof. That may be true to some people, but open-ended gutters have their own issues. One of those issues is they dump heavy water, especially during major rain, near the siding at dormers (hope the metal flashing at the wall is good) and that river of water does, over time, deteriorate the granular material on compositon shingles. After only a few years, you can see the track of the water. When that granular material goes, UV from the sun will take a toll on the roofing as well. This arrangement stresses wood roofing too. These open-ended gutters, due to design and neglect, often have blocked ends. Organic debris loves those ends, see the photo below. You will notice that there is exposed wood at the end of the gutter. That is very common and should be avoided. The gutter will be running water against this in the best of times. In the worst of times, a big soggy sponge of debris will be resting against the wood. That causes rot.

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 • May 06 2008 09:07AM

Good Lookin' Bad Idea

Crowding. Crowding. Crowding the house. How else would you describe this? I am sure the homeowner likes this plant, probably likes the way it covers the siding. But the problem is that siding needs some space between it and the vegetation. How much? Well usually a foot is recommended. In actuality, you can probably get by with less space than that as long as there is a big enough gap to allow the siding to dry after a rain. Otherwise it retains moisture and is prone to rot. You need some air circulation in there. And the other concern is that those darn lazy wood destroying insects, they like to get from here to there on the quickest and shortest possible route. That means that they will take any shortcut they can find -- such as climbing the plants. Bad, bad wood destroying insects, they spoil a gardeners fun. Don't believe me, just ask my wife when she has to trim her plants. Oh, on second thought, she never does. Drat!

 

 

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.

           

8 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 04 2008 03:09PM

Creepy Crawlies

It seems that almost everybody has some living object that creeps them out. For me it is the snake and lizard variety. For many other people it is insects in general but especially spiders. The other big fear for some people is the vermin variety, rats and even mice -- who I think are pretty cute. One we do not think about but that certainly has an element of the "creep" factor is bats. I think a lot of that goes to horror movies and books, Count Dracula and all. Then we read about them maybe having rabies too.

I, generally, do not mind bats but they have creeped me out a couple times. Once I was staying at a log cabin in British Columbia, a big place, and bats were evident on the upper floor. You would see them swoop and dart by at night and see their droppings. Another time, the wife and I were in Cancun, walking down an alley from a restaurant after having great coconut prawns, and there was a really big bat -- can you say Bella Lugosi lives -- and he or she kept following us, keeping pace, and diving right above our heads. He made spacey noises too.

Now, had I been less of a macho man, more like my friend Charlie B, I probably would have started screaming like a little girl and run down the alley with my arms flapping. As it was, I just speeded up and got the heck out of there as soon as was possible. The wife was pretty mad about that by the way, I left her in my dust, that big bat firmly embedded in her neck. No just kidding about that.

I think if more people knew what bats looked like up close, they would find them even creepier. The photo below is one of the most common bats in my area. He is a good little insect catcher, much better than fly paper. But take a look at that mug. He sure ain't son in law material.

Charlie B is super inspector but I think his newly selected theme music, that runs behind his site, is a bit over the top, click 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.

           

22 comments • Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector • May 04 2008 01:56PM