Does your home smell “doggy”
It’s true that those who lie down with dogs will get fleas…unless of course you use a good flea treatment! It is also true that a house full of dogs is likely, from time to time, to smell a little like the hairy beasts.
At my house we keep between 180 to 250 pounds of dogs moving around at any time. Meg and I feel that they are a necessity for a good life and ever so much more pleasant than teenagers! However the down side of dogs, particularly hound dogs, is that they smell. A Bassett Hound, for example smells a lot but a Boxer only a little. Regardless of the breed their odor tends to permeate the home.
We have found that on humid days during rainy spells that the house gets particularly doggy. A few years ago someone suggested that an air purifier would help. They sold me something called the Alpine Air purifier which is an ion generator. It is amazing! Within about four hours all of the dogginess was completely removed and the house was fresh. The system work by generating negative ions rather than filtering the air. The negative ions attach themselves to particles in the air and cause them to drop to the floor or adhere to surfaces. It is remarkably effective. Alpine no longer is in business as they apparently ran afoul of the FDA but there are plenty of others.. The only claims that I make is that these table top units will take the smell out of a house or clear the air of cigarette smoke in a hurry and keep it that way. We have used ours for about 10 years.
In addition to dogs, if you live in an old house then there are days when the ghost of decades of Southern cooking will come back to haunt you. There is something about the odor of seventy five year old collard greens that will twist your mind! We were living in a home built in 1890 and we began to resent the replay of Thanksgiving dinner of 1932. In any event ion generators will remove accumulated stink of dog, southern cooking and teenagers.
As the Alpine company is out of business www.naturalairproducts.com has similar units or you can do a Google search for “ion generators” to find other providers.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net
Firestops!
……then there was the brand new house in which the chimney stopped in the attic! That’s right, the builder forgot that the chimney had not been extended though the roof and it wasn’t discovered until I inspected the home. Imagine how exciting the first fire would have been. It would have been a fire all right-a roaring, all encompassing, disastrous fire.
Which brings me to Firestops. Most contemporary homes, that is, homes younger than 25 years, have metal fireplace inserts. A fireplace insert is really a large open faced wood stove. The chimney is a triple walled metal stove pipe which typically runs through a shaft in the center of the house or at the ends or sides. This shaft or chase is constructed of wood. Sometimes the chase has brick installed on it but underneath it is still a wooden structure. Having inspected some 14,000 Middle Georgia homes I can say with confidence that metal fireplace inserts are safe. In fact I have seen more problems with fires from traditional brick and masonry fireplaces than with metal inserts.
Fireplace inserts are somewhat like ice bergs in that you only can see a small portion of the unit. The insert itself has multiple casings with large air spaces between each layer of metal so as to protect the house from the high temperature of the fire. In fact you can place your hand on the side of the insert housing when you have a good fire going and you will hardly notice any heat at all. It’s a good system. The chimney pipe is the same deal with three concentric layers of pipe with air spaces between each layer so that it will stay cool in the wooden chimney chase. Even though the fireplace insert system is extremely well designed and safe the building code requires one extra safety precaution which is called the firestop.
Picture the chimney chase as a small elevator shaft running from the fireplace unit up through the walls, through the attic until you get to the top of the chimney. If a fire did somehow get out of the insert into the shaft then it would draft though the chase and roar into the attic with a resulting huge roof fire. In order to stop this from happening it’s required that the shaft be blocked at the floor level of the attic. Typically a piece of plywood is used to block the shaft and the chimney pipe passes through a hole in the plywood called a thimble. Since the entire shaft is made of wood why wouldn’t it simply burn up? Good question. Blocking the shaft with a firestop will cause the smoke from the fire to be held in the chase which will smother the fire long enough for the fire department to come and save you, your kids and your dogs and cats!
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and all of Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net.
Is your weather proof panel weather proof?
We all know that if we stick our finger in an electrical outlet and put our toe into a wet spot then the electricity will “reach out and touch someone” Suddenly! So the idea that water and electricity don’t mix is not a new concept. However as we inspect homes in Middle Georgia we often find places where water is impacting the electrical systems.
Almost all homes built in the last few years have a main disconnect box located at the outside near the electrical panel. This box normally contains a main circuit breaker which will turn off all the power in the house at one time. Many other homes have an exterior electrical panel where many or all of the circuit breakers are located rather than installed inside the home. These are all called weatherproof panels as they are supposed to prevent water entry into the box. Supposed to……..
Earlier this week my son and I were inspecting a really pretty home in Macon which had an exterior panel. Part of our inspection includes opening the covers on panels so we can see the actual wires and connections (please do not do this yourself!). When we opened this weatherproof panel we saw an alarming condition. The circuit breakers were coated with a white corrosive residue and the actual connections were covered with rust and corrosion. Obviously water was entering the panel and washing over the circuit breakers.
Breakers are spring loaded and designed to suddenly turn themselves off when too much electricity tries to pass through them. If the breaker is corroded then the spring and the movable parts will tend to gum up sometimes making it impossible for the breaker to turn off. When we see this condition we call for an electrician to replace the corroded breakers and that the panel is re-sealed to protect against water entry. Usually the water enters around the top or the side of the panel where wiring is connected to the panel. These entry points can be re-sealed by a home owner with a high grade silicone sealant applied to the OUTSIDE of the panel to close any cracks or gaps. Some times a panel is located below the draining edge of the roofline and heavy amounts of rain water will drain onto the panel. This is asking for trouble. Even the best quality of weatherproof box will leak when repeatedly drenched. If you have an area like this then install a gutter or diverter at the eave over the panel.
I was inspecting a brand new and rather snazzy home in Houston County earlier this week. One of the features was a large number of recessed lights in the kitchen. These lights are the ones that are recessed into what appears to be a nest in the ceiling and that allow the lighting to be virtually flush with the ceiling. Whereas these are very attractive, the fact that the light sits inside a small enclosure causes the enclosure to get hot-really hot. In fact some of these will get so hot they can ignite the surrounding materials. The home that I was inspecting had one serious problem with the installation of these lights. The insulators had completely covered them with attic insulation. These particular lights had a label on them specifically stating that they could not be covered with insulation and that they required a clearance or space around them of at least three inches from combustible materials.
Since heat is a problem with recessed or “can lights” a variety of modifications have been developed. One safety solution has been to include a type of fuse in the light fixture. This will cause the light to turn off if the temperature gets too hot. Although this is a good idea I have frequently seen these fuses become erratic causing lights to turn on and off for no apparent reason.
Another solution is to purchase recessed lights that are designated IC or rated for “in contact” with insulation. These fixtures have a double wall around them or other means of staying cool which prevents fires or overheating. It is important to note that most recessed lights use incandescent bulbs which get hotter and hotter depending on the wattage of the bulb. Since incandescent bulbs are really miniature furnaces then it follows that the larger the wattage of the bulb then the hotter the bulb will be. Most recessed lights are rated for no more than a 75 watt bulb. Unfortunately people often put larger bulbs into recessed light risking their homes and their families. Fluorescent bulbs can be used in the recessed lights but most of them have that funny coiled appearance and look bad for this use. There are a few fluorescent bulbs which have enclosures built onto them so they have a more conventional look. Fluorescents operate at much cooler temperatures in than incandescent bulbs and they are much cheaper to operate.
If you have recessed lights then it is worth a trip to the attic to see if they are covered with insulation and whether they are designed for this. If you cannot tell then go with the safe approach and clear the insulation so that it is not touching the recessed light enclosure.
It’s all in the Can.
Did you know that prior to about 1879 that most homes in the United States did not have paint jobs? When we think of highly colored Victorian homes the coloration was added during the very last part of the 19 th century all because house paint was very rarely used. In fact the interior of most Victorian homes were entirely covered with wallpaper-even the ceilings.
The main reason that house paint was so rarely used was that it had to be compounded on site. The pigment, the oils or other paint vehicles would all have to mixed up similarly to the way that drugs were compounded at the pharmacy. Not only was it difficult to do, it was expensive and if you made too much and couldn’t use it then you would lose the whole batch as it dried up. However the break through came in 1879 with the invention of the re-sealable can! Yep! It was the paint can revolutionized the entire process since paint could be manufactured at a factory, sealed and transported. It could then be opened and tinted, then closed again and sold.
Prior to oil paints which were introduced along with petroleum products in the late 1800s most paint was made of an egg tempera base which literally used egg yolks to form the base of the paint. In the mid 1800s it was found that oils were a good medium. It was also discovered that if you wanted your paint to effectively cover things up then the material to do this was lead. Unfortunately, although lead was great for paint it was not so good for people. Finally in the late 1970s lead was replaced by something called titanium dioxide. Typically if you look at the various grades of paint you will see that the better the paint then the more titanium dioxide is used per gallon.
Finally, latex paint as we know it was invented during World War II. It is water soluble and cleans up wonderfully. For years serious craftsmen would smirk when they saw a painter using what they called ”water paint”. However now that this has been under development for over fifty years, “water paint” is generally considered to be the equal or superior to the older alkyd or oil paints. They sure are easier to use.
None of these wonderful paints would be of much use to us unless they had first invented the re-sealable paint can. Who woulda’ thunk it?
A Sucking Sound from the North!
A few presidential elections back Ross Perot coined a phrase regarding “ a sucking sound from the South”. But he was talking about problems with free trade to South America whereas I am talking about our chimneys.
Most of us don’t know the dark side of our warm crackling fireplaces. These are supposed to heat our houses but instead they frequently cool them off! Anyone who has an open fireplace knows that once the fire gets going then the smoke goes up the chimney…duhhhh. If it didn’t then we’d be chased out of homes by the smoke. However what many of us don’t realize that after the fire dies down then the chimney will continue drawing air from inside the house out the top of the chimney due to something called (amazingly enough) “the chimney effect” In fact the chimney effect can continue to draw our nice warm interior air out of the house indefinitely. Let’s get the picture. After the fire is out you are running your furnace so that the chimney can suck the heat out and dump it outdoors. What to do?
The solution is to close the damper. However I was in an older house earlier this week which had several large fireplaces and no dampers….and a huge heating bill. A damper is a door which is used to close the chimney flue when the fire is not going. Most homes with brick chimneys have a clunky old style plate steel door in the throat of the chimney which flops back and forth and frequently falls out of place rendering it inoperable. These dampers always get your hands covered with soot. Bah! However even in the world of fireplaces there have been great leaps in technology. In this case it is called the chimney top damper. This is usually a spring loaded door that mounts on the top of your chimney. A chain runs down the flue to where you can reach it. When you decide to close the chimney you merely pull on the chain and the door at the top closes. When you wish to open it again simply release the chain and the spring will pop the door open so that you can burn your fireplace again. There are a few variations on this type of damper but they all operate on a similar principal. The only down side is that you must wait until your fire is all the way out before close the damper.
I will be at the HomeExpo this year February 3, 4, an 5 th at the Macon Coliseum. Please come down and see me at our booth and ask me any questions you might have about your home.
Had the flue and wasn’t getting any better...maybe it was the house
My sister has recently recovered from what seemed to be an extremely long bout with the flu. She and her husband moved to Middle Georgia about six months ago into the quintessential “Gone with the Wind” plantation style home. What it had in style, beauty and historical significance it was also lacking in modern conveniences such as central heat and air.
In any case my sister, who is normally hale and hardy, came down with a bug. She was tired and nauseated, had a constant headache and didn’t seem to bounce back the way she was used to. I accused her of being old but she was so beaten down all she could do was agree!!! I instantly became concerned. A visit to the doctor yielded the latest thing in antibiotics but even then there was no relief. Three weeks passed and she was still in the bed. I was envisioning blood tests and hospital visits.
She called me one morning announced that she had figured out the problem. “My gas space heaters!” She had old style gas space heat. I agreed she needed to get those old things out- so she turned them off and immediately began to feel better but she was also getting cold! So the next day she purchased a modern gas space heater with all the safety devices including an oxygen depletion sensor. The new space heater was installed, she got warm again and all seemed to be improving-for awhile. About three days later I called only to find her back in bed with the same symptoms. Drat! After some prayer she decided that if it was space heaters the first time then maybe the new modern “safe” heater was causing the problem. So she turned off the new heater and within twelve hours was back on her feet. Since then she has purchased a couple of electric oil filled space heaters and has felt fine ever since.
Carbon monoxide was the culprit. The old space heaters were putting out loads of the toxic gas which cleared up after she moved them out. The new gas heater is supposed to emit safe levels of combustion gasses and in fact they were so low that the carbon monoxide tester did not trigger. Nonetheless my sister had a sensitivity that completely debilitated her. Hardly anyone is using gas space heat and more but many thousands of families have un-vented gas logs in their homes. The newer they are the safer they are supposed to be. However, if you have a vented fireplace then open the flue when you are using the gas logs. If you have an un-vented fireplace and are feeling under the weather then try turning them off. It may be that this will heal you quicker than antibiotics.
The theory behind un-vented gas logs or space heaters is that 100% combustion of Natural Gas or LP gas will put out Carbon Dioxide which is normally harmless-However incomplete combustion (a little yellow in the flame) will put out carbon monoxide which will make you sick or cause you to assume room temperature! Infants and older folks are the most sensitive.
Mushy iron pipe.
“Look at that weird iron pipe going down into the ground” The sharp eyes of my 27 year old son Christian had noticed an odd deformity in the ¾ inch galvanized pipe where it was entering the ground. On closer examination we were able to see that the deformity was an encrustation of rust around the pipe. I gently scraped the side of the pipe noting that most of the wall had been eaten away with rust leaving the pipe wall paper thin. Using a time tested forensic technique I lowered my precision and rather large nose near to the pipe where it registered the clear scent of natural gas! Zounds! A gas leak!
My son and I nodded with satisfaction realizing that had we found nothing else then we earned our inspection fee that cold December morning. Had much more time gone by without a repair then there would have been a major gas leak possibly followed by a major explosion.
Black iron or galvanized iron pipe has been the primary material used for distributing natural gas throughout homes. In recent years various forms of plastic pipe have begun to show up for handling gas but iron pipe remains the major material. Typically iron pipe will last indefinitely however when it is buried into moist soil then sooner or later it will begin to rust and ultimately rust away leaving a gas leak. It is the same problem with iron pipe that is used to carry water throughout your house except with water it will rust both the outside and the inside. Older homes with low water pressure usually have old rust filled iron pipe. The rustier it gets then the more likely it will leak.
Whereas leaking water pipes will ruin you carpet or walls, rusted out gas lines can end your life. If you have an older home-fifteen years or older-then have your gas lines checked. If you have gas lines that have been added to a gas light in the yard or out to a barbecue grill then you may have the situation described at the beginning where the gas line is buried in the moist soil. If you do have this then have a plumber re-route the gas using copper or one of the plastic pipes. But watch out for old galvanized or black iron pipe.
Have you hugged your purge fan this morning?
The crawlspace under the home had a strong gas odor…..all of my red flags shot up! Was the concentration of gas in the crawlspace high enough to cause an explosion? Fortunately it appeared that although there was an obvious gas leak it had not reached the critical level necessary to launch the house into space.
What was going on? An examination of the modern gas furnace indicated a tremendously alarming situation. When the thermostat was turned on calling for heat the main gas valve released the gas necessary for the main burner but the burner did not light up allowing great amounts of raw gas to pour out of the burner. This is a lot of gas-think in terms of turning on all of the stove top burners wide open but not lighting them. Lots of gas waiting to explode!
For the furnace to allow the gas to pour out without a flame is almost unheard of. There are several safety devices installed to prevent this. The main safety is something called a thermocouple which will sense whether the pilot flame was operating. If there was no flame, or if the thermocouple was broken then it is supposed to automatically prevent gas from flowing. Unfortunately in this case things did not work out and by all rights this house should have been a smoldering ruin except for the ……….purge fan!
The purge fan is a recent development with gas furnaces. When the thermostat calls for heat then a small fan on the furnace (the purge fan) turns on which is designed to suck out extra gas in the furnace as well as to pull the flames through the heat exchanger in high efficiency heaters. In the case of our insane furnace this little fan was able to suck most of the gas (but not all) out of the burner area and out the furnace flue. Although we don’t like sending raw gas out of the flue pipe it sure beats the alternative which would be a gas filled crawlspace better described as a giant bomb!
Gas furnaces have layers and layers of fail safe controls to prevent explosion. As a result of these safeties I have never seen a fire or explosion due to a malfunctioning gas furnace in over 14,000 home inspections. In this case it went down to the final layer of protections. But that was all it needed to protect the home. Keep you furnace maintained. Have it checked annually to make sure all is well and give that purge fan a little kiss.
Do your floors bounce?
Is this you? As you walk across the floor of your living room all of the china and knickknacks in the lovely china cabinet begin to shake rattle and roll. I used to get a complex when this happened which caused me to suck in my stomach and make resolutions about dining on SlimFast for the next few weeks. I want to encourage you that usually this is not the fault of our fat selves but rather a result of the way the house is built.
It is a basic business fact that if a builder can use smaller and cheaper lumber in his floor system then he can save money. Many builders will try to use the minimum allowable size of lumber that they can get away with so as to save $100 or so on the project. There is a point with any thickness lumber that if you are using a long enough piece then it will sag or bounce (the trampoline effect). The greater the thickness of the lumber then the further you can go without sag or bounce.
The building code is designed to specify what the absolute minimum sized lumber is permitted. The writers of the building codes are much more interested in preventing floors from collapse than they are in preventing bounce in the floor. As a result we frequently find homes in which the floors bounce a great deal but have been approved by the building inspector. The issue becomes one of quality rather than of compliance with building code. If you are buying a fancy expensive house then you should expect that your floors will not bounce or sag. If you are buying a budget home at the low end of the price range then you can expect the floors to bounce but not to collapse.
Let’s say that your floors are bouncing anyway. Here’s what to do (at least for the first floor). Go under the house and install a dropsill header. Usually this is a doubled 2x8 will be installed down the middle of the floor system of the bouncing room perpendicular to the floor joists. The doubled 2x8 should fit snugly against the floor joists and should be supported every eight feet by a pressure treated 4x4 which in turn is sitting on a poured concrete footing. The footing should be 18 inches square by 8 inches deep. This new beam under the floor effectively cuts the unsupported floor span in half and will greatly reduce or eliminate the bounce. Removing the bounce in second story floor is much harder and usually the best way of dealing with it is simply to get used to it.
Insulate your house with bales of Straw!
That’s right! Bales of Straw- who woulda thunk it! There are folks who are building their houses incorporating complete bales of straw into their walls and ceilings. The straw is quite effective as an insulating material. In fact an 18” wide bale of hay has an insulating value of R-42 which is actually comparable in insulating value for blown fiberglass. The hay can be treated with a fire retardant but the biggest problem with bales is the weight on your ceiling….In fact one recommendation is to scatter the straw loose in your ceiling and use the bales for your walls. Beware of neighboring horses and cows.
Another product is a material called Inno-therm. This is insulation made from cotton. You can buy this material in loose fill or in batts. The loose fill insulates similarly to cellulose insulation which is about 8 inches for R-30. The blankets or batts are relatively expensive but is reportedly very good for folks who are allergic to some of the conventional insulating products.
One of the best insulation is actually made from wool. A product called Thermofleece uses wool from New Zealand. Wool insulates somewhat better than fiberglass and as most hunters know, wool insulates even better when it is wet. Wool insulation is fireproofed with Boric Acid. There is one weakness however-it can be damaged by moths. I’m not kidding!
One of the more common although still exotic forms of insulation is blown foam. There are a variety of foam insulations almost all of which are polyurethane based. Some of these are closed cell which will not allow water vapor to intrude and others are open cell which will accept moisture. These foams are sprayed into your walls, ceilings, floors and even onto roof surfaces. They spray on in a thin coating. Almost immediately they begin to expand often 100 times thicker than the initial thin coating. Most of us have used or seen the foam in the spray can that expands-this is similar. One interesting variation on the foams is a product called Healthy Seal which is made out of Soy Bean Oil rather than Polyurethane.
The bottom line is that most anything material with air spaces in it will serve as insulation. I have seen plastic packing peanuts dumped into attic, bubble wrap, layers of cardboard, old carpet…you name it. Most of these home made insulations are flammable and can burn you out. Be careful but be creative!
The Amazing Folding House!
This week I was hired to inspect a new home out in the country. It was a very nice frame house with vinyl siding and a high pitched roof. When I entered the attic I discovered a very unusual feature. The roof was designed to fold up! Or more precisely it was designed to unfold. It turns out that the house is a manufactured home. Whoa! Stop! I can see the lips curling as the phrase “manufactured home” was used.
Let’s all confess that we have seen some unusually nice looking homes on some of these mobile home lots in the last few years. Homes that bear no resemblance to a trailer or the low profile doublewides that we have grown to hate. In fact a couple of weeks ago I passed a manufactured home in Eatonton which looked as though it would nicely fit the architecture of the Historic District in Macon! So it was with interest that I conducted the inspection of one of these fancy places.
What I discovered was a home that structurally superior to many conventional new homes. For example; the floor system was built with 2x10s rather than 2x8s. The ceiling framing was also 2x10s (almost unheard of in conventional homes). The wall were 2x6s instead of 2x4s and finally the roof trusses were built with larger than normal truss material providing greater strength against wind and ice storms. What I am saying is that the basic construction of this home was actually SUPERIOR to a conventional wood frame home of recent construction.
Frankly, I was stunned. Clearly there are many of the “cheesier” variety of manufactured homes still available. But even these tend to have framing at least as heavy as conventional construction. Let me clarify that when I speak of manufactured homes these are not trailers. The sections of the house are delivered and set upon a conventional concrete block foundation with standard block piers. They are designed to be permanent construction and in the case of the home I inspected, it was not cheap either.
My point is that a quality manufactured home is something that can reasonably be considered when talking about building a house. There are numerous designs including two story homes. I fully expect to see a “high Victorian” manufactured home complete with turrets and gargoyles.
Don’t turn on the air conditioning in cold weather -it could cost you thousands!
Last Christmas day we had been cooking up a storm. The turkey had been in the oven for about four hours, all burners were in operation on the stove top, the fireplace was going and so was the heat. All of a sudden one of the ladies in the house( I dare not say which) said “does anyone feel hot?” She then made a beeline toward the thermostat to turn on the air conditioning. I desperately threw my body between her and the thermostat just as she was reaching for the clicker to move it to “cool” stopping her just in time.
“What’s the big idea?” she hollered. I replied, “ Just open a door or a window-you almost destroyed our central air conditioning system!”
Did you know that you can destroy your air conditioning compressor if you use it when the weather is cold? The compressor (read that $1200.00 compressor) is designed to compress the refrigerant as a gas. However most of the refrigerants will change from gas to a liquid state at about 55-60 degrees. So, if you turn on the air conditioning when the Freon is liquid the compressor will try its best to compress that liquid but unfortunately liquid does not compress very well. Often the compressor will squeeze and squeeze until it gives itself a hernia and then dies! At this point the only thing to do is get out your wallet and call the heating and air company and have a new compressor installed.
If you need to cool down the house then here’s what to do. Turn the heat down to about 60 and then turn the fan switch from “auto” to “on”. Then open a door or a window preferably one that is close to the grill where the filter is installed. This will pull cool air from the window or door and distribute it through the house. It will cool the house and not destroy your bank account. Merry Christmas!
“He huffed and he puffed……!”
It seems that some new home builders hate home inspectors! Many home builders look like the stereotype testosterone guy! You know big bulgy arms. Loud voices, giant pick up trucks. When the home inspector arrives some of these guys seem to puff up to twice their size and stomp around as though their honor has been questioned. I don’t get it and I don’t like it. Neither should you.
As a rule a home builder doesn’t actually build the house, he may do the framing or a portion of the house but he will contract many portions of the construction out to others such as roofers, brick layers, plumbers etc, etc. In fact many builders never do any work on the house at all and basically serve as the financial guy only. The bigger the construction company then the less likely the builder is directly involved. Some builders don’t even have a superintendent on site. When this happens then nobody is coordinating the work or solving problem that arise such as making sure that structural floor joists are repaired when a plumber cut it to allow for his pipes to pass. We see this happen a lot-the plumber cuts the floor joist but there is no superintendent on site so the joist is never repaired.
I know of one builder who had twenty three homes under construction at one time with only one supervisor. How did he keep up with all the situations that arose in the multiple homes. He didn’t. Yet when we came and inspected one of his homes he blew a gasket when we found stuff that wasn’t installed correctly. For example we found an oven that was not secured to the counter. Imagine pulling a Thanksgiving turkey out on the oven rack and having the oven fall out of the cabinet spilling hot turkey fat all over you! That could be a trip to the Augusta Burn Unit. But the builder was mad. Hello!
If you expect, it then inspect it
“That repair was supposed to have been done by the seller of the house. They said that it was done!” The frustration was palpable in the voice of the home owner. I had just emerged from under the house and had presented a list of defects ranging from a disconnected heating duct to a rotted floor by the deck doorway.
Unfortunately this situation is not unusual. A home buyer will have his home inspected and then the realtor will negotiate the list of repairs. Typically many of these repairs will be in locations that normal homeowners will not want to go such as in the bowels of the crawlspace, the corners of the attic or on top of the roof. So when the seller assures everyone that they have completed the agreed upon repairs then the money changes hands and the seller disappears in the sunset….with the money and without having done the repairs.
Sometimes the seller will provide the purchaser with receipts from contractors which is better but not perfect. An example of this is that some contractors perform repairs improperly. For example the inspection calls for a structural support but the support is installed on a cap block under the house without a poured cement footing. These repairs would be improper and be written up by the inspector the next go around.
The only way to combat these issues is to check the repairs out. This can be done personally or it can be done by your home inspector. This also works when you have additions built on your house or repairs that are not part of a home transaction. Contractors should welcome the presence of a home inspector and not be defensive. One contractor that I know actually meets with the inspector when we check repairs so that he can make any adjustments on the spot.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia for 27 years. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net
Dual fuel heat pumps
“The price of natural gas is going up 30% this winter” the headlines screamed. Oops! Make that 50% Oops make that only 14%.! Are you crazy yet?
For the last twenty years natural gas has been the most economical way of heating your house. Gas heat provides a hotter heat than its heat pump alternative and gas has been cheaper than electricity….until this year. How can one intelligently anticipate what type of heating is the best when energy prices are fluctuating wildly?
Fortunately you can have it both ways. A few years ago we began to hear of something called a dual fuel heat pump. This is a combination heat pump and gas furnace. Some years ago a wise engineer discovered that if you took an air conditioning compressor and reversed the flow of the Freon under pressure then it would not only cool your house but that it would heat the home as well and quite efficiently-this is a heat pump system. The downside is that when the weather get below about 45 degrees that it is no longer able to heat very well. To compensate most heat pumps have a secondary electric heating component which is called auxiliary heat. Most thermostats for heat pumps have a little light that comes onto indicate when this secondary heat comes on. The light really means that you need to go directly to the bank and get more money to send to the power company! The secondary heat is very similar to that red coils that you see in your toaster or hair dryer except on a much larger scale. This is called resistance electric heat and it is wildly inefficient and expensive to operate…but it will keep you warm as long as you can pay.
Back when natural gas was cheap, someone had the great idea that you could use gas heat instead of the expensive electric secondary heat on a heat pump. All you had to do is stick a gas furnace onto the end of a heat pump and when the weather got too cold for the heat pump then the gas furnace would come on as the secondary heat. This is called a dual fuel heat pump.
If you can afford this setup then you have the ability to flex with the energy market all you want. When electricity is cheaper than gas then you can use the heat pump but if gas gets cheaper than electricity (probably next month) you can simply flip a switch called “emergency heat” and have gas heat exclusively. So to summarize, if you are changing out your heat and air or building a new house I would look carefully at a dual fuel system. They are more expensive but I think they will be worth it in the long run.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net
Horsehair in your walls! Really!
If you live in an old house with plaster walls then you can bet that your walls are full of horsehair. It’s true! Imagine some guy whose job it was to shave the hair off of horses so that it would end up in your house. It’s amazing the things that people do to make a living.
Plasterers discovered early on that the base coat of plaster tended to shrink and crack. So in some sort of flash of understanding someone decided to try adding horse hair to the mix. The horse hair acts like tiny rebar in the plaster and causes it to have much greater strength and resistance to cracking than before. So if you have a piece of plaster fall out of your ceiling, before you throw it away then look carefully at the edges and you will see little horsehairs sticking out.
For you Bible scholars out there, you might have wondered why it was such as big deal when the Egyptians told the Hebrew slaves to make bricks without straw. The straw was used for the same reason as the horsehair, without chopped up straw in the mud the bricks would fall apart when they dried and be of no use. This really irritated the Hebrew slaves since they would be whipped when the bricks fell apart! Where was the Brick Layers Union when they were really needed?
The modern version of horsehair is fiber-fill in concrete. Most concrete slabs are significantly strengthened with the addition of fiber. This can be a plastic fiber (polypropylene) which looks remarkably similar to horse hair. Typically when the cement truck comes the driver will dump several pounds of these ½ to ¾ inch plastic fibers into the giant mixer and slop it all together into an even mix. With the fibers in place the concrete will be dramatically less likely to crack and have greater strength.
What if You Buy the Wrong House?
Imagine moving into your new home and the toilet leaks, the air conditioning doesn’t work and the hot water comes out of the toilet? You can’t take it back to the store-you are stuck. An experienced and qualified home inspector can help make sure that your largest purchase is not a money pit.
In Georgia home inspectors are not licensed. I know one who was a personal trainer before he started inspecting homes. Who is going to check your home?
……I have been inspecting homes in Warner Robins and Middle Georgia for nearly thirty years. My inspectors are trained and have inspected over 14,000 homes in Middle Georgia. We know what we are doing.
The Sky is falling! Suspended ceilings.
There is an old story about Chicken Little who ran around saying that the “sky is falling” needless to say people got tired of that! However when I returned to my office earlier this week I found that the “sky” or at least the ceiling had indeed fallen! My desk, computer, even the elephant ear leaf that Meg, my wife had put into flower pot-all were covered in ceiling debris and a thick blanket of blown fiberglass insulation. What a bummer.
There was some good news however and that was that the heavy fluorescent light fixture that is positioned above my chair had crashed down when I was absent. Had I been in the chair then you would have been reading a re-run article this week or maybe my obituary!
We had a suspended acoustic ceiling that was installed in the ceiling of the old house that contains our office. It was installed years ago, long before my inspection company moved in. When considering suspended ceilings laid into tracks please understand that usually the only thing holding it up is some wire-real skinny wire which is run to a threaded eyelet which is hopefully screwed into the ceiling structure. When I say “hopefully, it appears that some of the eyelets in my ceiling where screwed into the ancient plaster and that it didn’t fully engage the wood structure. When the eyelet pulled free, the entire works deposited itself on my chair and desk.
A visit to the USG website (formerly United State Gypsum Company) gave an excellent tutorial in which they made a major point that any light fixtures must be suspended directly to the ceiling structure and not simply laid into the flimsy metal ceiling track. Ah-Ha! The light that fell onto my chair was not supported independently at all which certainly contributed to the CRASH.
If you are installing suspended ceilings or already have them (usually in basements) then get a ladder and stick your head through the ceiling. Are the wire hangers in good shape? Are they installed every four feet or closer together? Are they actually attached to the ceiling? And finally, check how the lights are installed-do they have their own hangers or are they simply being held up by the aluminum frame. If they are not then move your chair, your bed or your 60 inch multi-jillion dollar TV from below until you get it straightened out.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to Housetalk.net.
Breaking your neck-or how are your attic stairs?
There was blood shooting out of the inspectors head and he was seeing butterflies! “Whoa! What happened?”
He had just lowered the folding attic stairs when he was suddenly clobbered. He was hit so fast that all he knew was that he was driven to his knees. It turned out that one of the brackets which held a spring on the attic stairs had pulled loose and was launched by the stair spring like a missile finally smacking into the poor head of the inspector-Ouch! Glad it wasn’t his eye.
Attic folding stairs are full of potential safety hazards and almost all of our homes have them. If you look on the label you will find that the manufacturers specify that at least twelve 16 penny nails or three inch screws be used to fasten the stair system to the ceiling. Most of the time I see only about five or six nails. A few years back a Warner Robins man was climbing his attic folding stairs and it fell out. He was killed! How many nails are holding your attic stairway to the ceiling structure?
Let’s not forget the screws on the hinges. Every time that I get ready to go up a folding stair I check the screws and most of the time I will find some that have loose nuts or that the nut is completely missing. These stair units are generally not very high quality and they tend to fall apart.
For you big folks out there, almost all of the stair units are rated at a maximum of 250 pounds. Beware. The final thing to check is the stair tread itself. Most of the stair units reinforce the stair tread with a wire support which runs underneath the tread. These wires run through the sides of the ladder and are held in place by nuts. Often these nuts have come loose and are missing-the wood used for the tread is so cheesy that they will easily fracture without the reinforcement.
Do yourself a favor. Get out a screw driver and pliers and do some attic stair maintenance.
Is it soaking wet under your house? There is hope!
This summer has beaten all records as regards wet crawlspaces, associated wood decaying fungus and other moisture related problems. I have been inspecting Middle Georgia crawlspaces since 1978 and have seen some hot humid summers but this one beats all.
I have seen crawlspaces with floor insulation dripping with condensation, ductwork with moisture pouring off creating wet soil conditions even though there has been no water entry from the outside. I have seen buckling floors, mildew growth inside the home, happy termites enjoying the moisture as well as sneezing homeowners who are allergic to the molds. Traditional methods of dealing with the problem have had no effect. Normally if one has a damp humid crawlspace then the one-two punch is to open all the foundation vents and install 6 mil plastic sheeting over the soil. Voila! Problem solved. This year however it just didn’t work. The air which entered through the vents was wetter than the air under the house. When it met the cool ductwork or cold layer under the floor it would condense and begin to drip. What was happening was that rainy conditions were forming under the house. What to do?
It seems that whenever a new problem occurs then a new solution is developed -the American entrepreneurial spirit in action. At least two different companies have appeared who will solve the problem. What they do is to completely close off all foundation ventilation (unthinkable) and then cover the crawlspace soil and foundation walls with a sealed covering of heavy sheet plastic. They then reduce the humidity in the crawlspace by the use of de-humidifiers. These units have an alarm attached so that if they conk out you will know. If the dehumidifier conks out then there would be a huge problem if left un-repaired as the wonderful sealed area would eventually turn into an enormous steam bath! As outrageous as this solution seems to a conventional construction mind, the fact is that the system seems to work.
If you do opt to try this new method then I recommend that your termite man be included into the conversation so that he will be aware that the interior walls of the foundations will be covered and retreat or bait the house as necessary.
What’s different about YellaWood?
You have to admit that the advertisements with the great big guy dressed in outrageous yellow outfits gets your attention. If you ever get your brain past his choice of clothing you may have noticed that he is advertising a new form of pressure treated lumber.
Pressure treated lumber is wood that has chemical injected into it so that it will not rot or be eaten by termites. Up until now the wood was soaked in an arsenic solution which not only would stop termites and rot, it would also eventually stop you and me. As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency decided that arsenic no longer acceptable. Which brings us to YellaWood……
YellaWood decking apparently does a good job of protecting the lumber but it uses a different chemical to do so. They use something called an Alkaline Copper Quaternary solution to preserve their wood products and like all chemical solutions it has its weak points. In this case the problem has to do with corrosion. If you read the tag stapled to a piece of YellaWood it says “Do not use preserved wood in direct contact with Aluminum”. So what?
The problem that comes up is that most builders use aluminum as flashing between the deck and the house. Building code requires the use of flashing. It turns out that the copper in the solution used to treat YellaWood causes rapid corrosion when in contact with aluminum products. When you add water between the two metals then the aluminum breaks down quickly and soon you will have no flashings. If the contractor uses the wrong nails or screws then the deck may fall off the house and your lovely barbecue will end with a crash and a trip in the ambulance!
Most carpenters don’t know much about chemistry or metallurgy and they generally don’t read the labels on the wood. After all they have been building decks for years using aluminum flashing just like their daddy’s did. It will be up to you to keep your eyes open.
You can go to the website at www.greatsouthernwood.com and on their home page will be a link called “Important fastener information”. Print this out and hand it to your contractor.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net.
Commode Hugging
This phrase conjures up images best forgotten……. However, to this home inspector it brings me into remembrance of a remarkable ride that one Middle Georgia lady endured some years ago. It seems that one fateful evening she found herself perched upon the throne in her upstairs bathroom when there was a sudden sinking sensation accompanied by a crash…. As our dear lady rode her commode down through the floor to land unceremoniously onto the dining room table below. As far as I know she was miraculously un-injured although her house and her dignity were severely damaged not to mention the dining room table!
Most of us at one time or another have experienced sitting on a toilet which seems to rock somewhat or move around under us. Some of us even have to balance ourselves. The reason for this phenomenon is almost always a rotten floor under the toilet and the reason for the rotten floor is a failed wax ring. The wax ring is a nifty little wax filled donut that seals the connection between the bottom of the toilet and the sewer pipe. Unfortunately after some years it may dry out, or the toilet may shift due to a very large uncle….or for whatever reason it begins to leak. The leak hits the wooden subfloor, softening the wood, then turning to rot and ultimately can lead to an unfortunate event such as experienced by the lady in our story.
Here’s the deal. The wax ring costs about $2.99. A new sub floor, tile or vinyl covering and associated plumbing can run upward of a thousand dollars! Every so often go up under your house and look below your commode. If the floor is wet then change the wax ring. If you are not a do-it yourselfer then a handy man or plumber can make the change for you. I recommend taking a look under your house at least annually. By way of confession your trusty home inspector didn’t check his this year and he is replacing the wax ring and doing some rather expensive repair work to his own bathroom floor.
“Do as I say-not as I do!”
Mold Mildew and You! -It rhymes!
During the last three or four weeks I have been receiving an avalanche of calls and emails regarding the formation of mold and mildews on walls and ceilings. Ten years ago if someone found mildew in their house they would get some Clorox solution clean it off and shake their head about our hot, humid, Southern climate. Today, however, we are assaulted by newspaper articles and advertisements from law firms talking about toxic molds and interior biological pollution. So what’s the deal?
The immediate answer to what we are seeing is that for several weeks we had insanely hot humid conditions in Middle Georgia. The usual methods of controlling humidity by opening foundation vents and installing vapor barriers or having free attic ventilation did not do the trick since the air that was passing through our crawlspace vents was almost completely saturated with moisture and therefore didn’t do any drying at all. This tremendously humid air collided with a cold layer above our ceilings and under our floors caused by our air conditioning which caused condensation to form-then wetting of the floors and ceilings and then finally hosting the molds and mildews.
I believe that we are past the problem time and that you can take solution of Clorox and water or a mildew cleaner and clean the surfaces. Things should be fine until the next wildly moist hot period.
Regarding the mold and mildew scare I recommend that you go to an Environmental Protection Agency site on the internet at http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/bio_1.html and see what they say.
There is no discussion of terrifying toxic molds since the science has not been adequate. It doesn’t recommend tearing down your walls or moving out of town. What it does recommend is that you locate and stop areas where moisture enters your house. This can include fixing roof leaks, maintaining the drains in your air conditioning and having it serviced. If your house is wet in the crawlspace then take steps to stop the water entry. Keep all vents in your foundations and roof open.
Other recommendations include-cleaning your house!!!! If mildew forms then clean it up. Are you getting the picture? Do the obvious things but don’t freak out.
Now there are folks that are wildly allergic to molds and mildews, also people with reduced immune systems such as older people and people with AIDS are more susceptible. I’m sorry to say that the climate in the South is the wrong place for these folks. Just a walk outside in Middle Georgia will give you a lung full of molds and mildews. Consider Arizona.
If you feel that you must do a mold hunt and want scientific remediation then call someone with real credentials such as an industrial hygienist. Avoid the local mold tester who got his credential in a one day seminar in Atlanta or on the internet…..and be prepared to spend big money.
As for me and my house, I will open the vents, clean the air conditioning units and get out the Clorox.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his web site at www.housetalk.net
How tough is your house or what if Katrina came to Middle Georgia?
Imagine that hurricane Katrina came to Macon and the wind is blowing at about 100 miles per hour. The sign at the corner store is ripped off of its hangers and slams into your house. Will the sign be stopped by exterior wall of your home or will it blast through and end up in your big screen TV or worse end up lodged in your head!?
If your home is sided with brick then you are in the best position unless of course the sign hits a window. The next toughest would be older wooden siding followed by cement stucco installed over metal lath. Following cement stucco I would suggest that Hardie Board- a cement like siding would be fairly tough. At this point this question gets a little more dicey…..
Vinyl siding and synthetic stucco will provide virtually no protection and hardboard or light wooden siding isn’t a whole lot tougher. The question with these materials is what is underneath-what material is being used for sheathing-if anything. Imagine your house with only wooden wall studs showing. Building codes only require that plywood sheathing be installed in the corners of the house. The sheathing is not installed for the purpose of making the walls tough but rather to prevent the studs from “racking” or leaning over like a parallelogram and collapsing. Some builders decide to go ahead and cover all of the walls with plywood or OSB board which is a wonderful and more expensive decision on their part. The codes however will permit that the house can be wrapped with Styrofoam board which you can poke your finger through, or it might be wrapped with Gypsum board which is a type of sheetrock and not very tough when faced with the flying sign test.
The bottom line is that if your house is already constructed you can usually poke around and find out what the sheathing is made of. If you have one of the weaker versions such as vinyl siding and Styrofoam insulating board for sheathing then you might want to identify a strong point in your house such as an interior bathroom or in the event that you have warning that the storm is coming then get to another location with big thick concrete walls.
If your house is under construction or you are going to build one then insist on full plywood or OSB (oriented strand board) sheathing. It will make your home extremely rigid and tough.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins, Dublin and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors
What if I paint my house and don’t like the color?
In a former life I spent some years as a professional house painter (I was so much younger then!). I remember seeing a cartoon at a paint store taped to the cash register. It showed a home maker telling her painter about the color she was selecting. “We are going to use a “burnt cinnamon combined with a hint of mauve rose”. “Yes ma’am”, said the painter. The cartoon jumped to the paint store with the painter leaning over the counter to make his order. “ Hey, Gary, mix me up a big bucket of the light brown!”
Some years ago we restored a three story house in Macon’s Historic District. We chose to paint it bright yellow so as to brighten up the streetscape. Unfortunately after about $15,000 of paint job the yellow had a certain electric green cast to it-a certain lizard like quality. The solution was either to paint it again at enormous expense or the alternative was, as my mother would say, “learn to like it!”……..
For you middle aged and older readers, have you noticed that our younger friends and children always seem to have the new techno solution to everything. Well earlier this week one of my home inspectors, Bruce Dotson, was watching Meg and I wrestle over the color issue and he suggested, “why not just get one of those computer programs that will let you take a picture of your house and then try different colors on it?” I laughed at his suggestion remarking that such a thing was only in science fiction movies.
The next day I was over at the paint store looking at the incredibly expensive paint that I would need and causally mentioned the possibility of such a computer program to the manager. “Oh sure”, he said and handed me a CD with a paint program on it. All I had to do was to take a digital photo of my house, import it to the paint program and follow some fairly easy instructions. Once I got the program working Meg and I were able to change the colors of the body of the house, the trim, cut out the windows with yet another color. In fact I could have as many as seven different areas. So with a click of the mouse the house turned yellow, then brown then PINK, then green-Instantly! It appears that thanks to all of this technology our marriage will remain secure. Meg and I have agreed on the new colors- Gray with Gray trim!
Check with your paint store and see if they have one of these magic programs-it may save your marriage.
This house has settled all that it’s going to-right?
Most homes that have been around for a few years will show some signs of settling. This will show up as diagonal cracking in foundations and perhaps cracking in walls along interior opening at doors. Basically what is happening is that the foundation or the interior piers are slowly squishing (an engineering term) down into the soil until there is enough soil compaction that it can’t squish anymore. When I am asked whether or not the settling has stopped I ask for some information such as: Is the house more than three or four year old? Is it really wet underneath and similar questions. Assuming that the answer is that the house has been sitting there for a few years and that it is not located in a swamp or equally wet soil then the answer is a definite maybe…..even probably.
Take my house for example. It was built 25 years ago and is constructed on piers, located on the side of a hill and the piers have enormous footings. In the four years that I have lived there no settling has occurred-no wall cracking, no movement……until last week.
Last Thursday as I was heading for the kitchen in my bare feet I noticed an unusual hump in the hardwood floor- in fact is was a fairly big hump where the floor had always been flat. Upon investigation under the house I expected to find some rotted floor structure or similar problems. However there was no damage-no visible damage.
In fact my house has begun to settle again…after twenty five years! Without having an engineering company to perform core samples of the soil I suspect that our very wet summer has made some changes in the subsoil. Previously stable clay and soils have swollen and shrunk so many times this summer that something has given way.
What can be done? I am going to wait until the rainy season passes and things get back to normal hoping that the soils will again stabilize-if they have, then I will jack up my house and level the floor-if it is still settling then I will have to call a professional engineer for soil studies and possible drainage improvements. Ooooph!!!! I feel my wallet screaming in protest!
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI.
For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net
Remembering Old Sparky
Remember “old’ Sparky?” This was the pet name given to Georgia’s electric chair! Electric chairs work when the person is made to be the conduit for huge amounts of electricity. Just this morning I saw an instance in a home where the homeowner could experience a similar charge.
The house was somewhat older, about 50 years and had a large electrical service of approximately 200 amps. The system was in fairly good repair but recently a plumber had come to repair a leak in the iron supply lines under the house. Wisely the plumber had replaced a section of completely rusted galvanized iron pipe with some PEX or polyethylene plumbing which is the latest and greatest. He fixed the leak and left the home without realizing he had destroyed the grounding ability of the home’s electrical system! The absence of the main ground for this house might have made it hard for the plumber to pick up his check. The homeowner might have been electrocuted before he could get the bill!
Now don’t blame the plumber, he fixes pipes and leaks not electrical systems.
Here’s the fix! An electrician should be hired to run a solid copper grounding wire to a ground rod which has an important name called the “ground electrode” This ground rod should be driven eight feet into the soil so that the electricity has a great opportunity to run into the soil rather than you! The thickness of the ground wire or the “grounding electrode conductor” for those of us cool enough to know depends on how much electrical capacity your house has. The more capacity (200 amps for example) then the thicker the wire will be. The ground wire is also not supposed to have any splices in it. Since there are a variety of calculations involved with deciding how big the wire should be and what precisely the ground rod should be made of etc, etc. it is a good idea to hire a licensed electrician to do the work.
If you have a home built during or before the mid 1970’s then your system is probably grounded to the water pipes. Do yourself or your loved ones a favor and have this changed over to a ground rod……or stock up on life insurance.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia for the last 27 years. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI.. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net
Crazy!
When Willie Nelson wrote “Crazy” I think he would have been surprised at the subject matter that this song triggered in my mind……….water heaters, storage, gas cans, weed eaters etc.
It happens about this time every summer. I will be inspecting a typical Middle Georgia home and I open the closet containing the water heater only to find the entire closet jammed with lawn mowers, power saws, weed eaters and all manner of gasoline powered equipment. Usually a couple of gas cans will be shoved in as well. No one seems to notice that all of this gasoline is only a few inches from the open flame of the water heater! One little spill and the whole house will go up. Please stop reading and go directly to your water heater closet and remove all flammable fluids or machines with gas tanks from the closet. Don’t just move it to the other side of the closet-get them out. This can be a matter of life and death.
Then there is “Charcoal Grill Syndrome” or CGS. I remember the first time that I encountered this issue. I was inspecting the vinyl siding on a vacant home and went around to the deck only to find a fairly large area of damaged siding part of which was bulging out and the bottom of the area was sagging almost as though it has melted. In fact it had melted when the home owner had placed his hot charcoal grill close to the wall of the house. The heat from the grill was too much for the siding causing it to droop and sag. Vinyl siding will also burn if it gets hot enough. Where is your grill located?
Finally, for all of you wise enough to have gutters on your house. Remember that gutters are usually the first line of defense against having a crawlspace full of water. All of the roof water will generally find its way under the house if it is not stopped by your gutters. However, if you see little trees growing out of your gutters you might need to clean them. Also if you don’t have any extensions on your downspouts then you may be collecting the roof water only the deliver it to the base of your foundation which will then seep right back under your house. A length of black flexible drain line will fit right onto your downspout and deliver that water far enough from the house to keep it from flowing back- flexible pipe is very inexpensive. Be sure to get the kind without the holes in it!
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home inspectors ASHI. For more go to his web site at www.housetalk.net.
Wind driven rain
The answer my friend is blowing the wind
Dennis the menace! Some weather guy thought that was cute name for the hurricane that grazed our area this week. As I write this the Ocmulgee River is flowing beneath my home. Fortunately the house is up on very long legs yet I have spent more time than usual talking to God this week on the subject of flooding!
In any case another side issue is that after every major storm we receive phone calls from folks who have had leaky roofs. Often these leaks have never occurred before or they only happen when there are major storms with high winds. One lady told me today that her roof only leaks during big storms but only when the wind is from the west….so what can be done to fix these leaks once and for all???? An old rock song from the 70’s gives the answer which is “Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Say it again……”
Almost every roof you find in Middle Georgia involves some sort of overlapping shingle or roof panel. These are designed to shed rain water that is coming from the sky and then downhill. All of us with fiberglass shingles or even wood shingles should relaise that these are not hermetically sealed which simply means that if the wind is driving the rain horizontally against these overlapped shingles then some of it will get in. The same goes for the metal flashings around chimney and pipes. Wind driven rain is so outrageous that one industry source has stated that when sideways driven rain hits a flat wall then for every ten miles of wind velocity over 60 miles per hour then the rain will actually be driven up hill one inch and sneak it’s way in through your siding or fascia board….wind driven rain is hard to deal with.
The long and the short of this article is that short of coating your house in a plastic capsule then there are circumstances in which all of our houses are going to leak. So before the next storm comes through, call your insurance company and make sure that your home owners insurance is current and that it covers water damage.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes and roofs and stained ceilings since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net.
Are you paying extra for water stains in your ceiling???
It is one of the great ironies of the modern day home…..from time to time we find that our modern conveniences are literally bringing the house down around us. Sometimes it is the smallest thing……take duct insulation on your heating and air duct.
When we think of insulation in our homes we think of thick blankets of fiberglass or virtual snow drifts of blown cellulose or fiberglass in our attics-The thicker the better. Yet when we look at the insulating blanket around our heating and air ductwork it is downright puny-maybe R-2 or R-3 which is nearly the same as no insulation…..nearly.
It turns out that the primary purpose of duct insulation is not to save energy but rather to prevent condensation from forming on the ductwork, dripping into the crawlspace and rusting out the duct. Here’s out it works- Assume that the air in your crawlspace and attic is extremely humid. Yeah! The air in Middle Georgia in July is humid HUMID!. Then assume that your nice sheet metal ductwork is running through this humid area and that it is icy cold due to the wonderful air conditioning blowing cold air through it. The metal duct gets cold, the humidity condenses on the duct and then drips all over the ceiling causing water stains or drips into the crawlspace creating a wet muddy mess with associated wood decaying fungus, rot and even termites!
So if you wrap the metal duct with some insulation then the humid air condenses to a much less degree and you avoid the above problems. Even when the house does have duct insulation often the heating and air men forget to insulate the very ends which are called boots. Last week we inspected a home where the floor joists and subfloor right around the boots were rotted- all because they forgot to insulate the boots. Like I said,” sometimes it’s the little things”.
If you go into your attic or crawlspace after reading this article and you see a great big duct with no insulation don’t freak out. That is probably the return air duct which never gets cold enough to cause condensation but if the others are bare of insulation then call the heating and air man.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his web site at www.housetalk.net
Feeling saggy?
This is an unpleasant question since I recently turned 56! Yes 56 and sagging! Do you feel my pain????
It was on a day like today in a Middle Georgia neighborhood. I was making my first cursory check of the exterior of this 10 year old wood frame home. It looked pretty nice, a well trimmed yard, and a large front porch with a roofline that extended right along to the carport. It was at the carport that my eyeballs were arrested by a visibly sagging beam across the top of the entry of the carport. Which brings me to the subject of this article- is your garage beam saggy?
Many homes today either have enormously wide garage doors or wide openings to carports. Some of these opening extend 20 feet or longer with no support posts along the way. Builders typically nail a couple of 2x10s together and assume that this will hold up the weight of the roof or second story. This is a strange assumption since a similar doubled two by ten is only allowed to extend eight feet without supports when used under the house. The result is that after some months or years the beam across the top of your garage door begins to saggggggg…..Usually it will not fracture or collapse but occasionally one will fail so much that associated brick work will crack or even the garage door won’t operate. It also looks funky.
The solution to a problem like this is relatively simple yet unpleasant. If you install a wooden or steel post below the sagging beam you can fix it that way. It can even be jacked up and then the post installed, unfortunately this means that you will have to drive more carefully as you swing your HumVee through the opening so as to avoid knocking out the support. The other solution would be to strengthen the over extended garage beam. This can be accomplished by removing the wall covering over the beam, jacking it back up and then installing a piece of steel support along it to provide rigidity. This sounds easy until you see how heavy a steel beam is. I recommend a hydraulic lift or Arnold Schwarzenegger to raise it in place. It can then be bolted to the old garage beam which will take the sag out.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia
since1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI.
Hail the size of baseballs!
Have you ever thought about reports of hail the size of baseballs or golf balls or cannon balls! If I got hit by a few of these baseball size chunks of ice then you could just dig the hole and throw me in cause I would already be dead and on the way to Heaven!
I have never seen any of the giant hail stones but I have seen plenty of the smaller variety-about the size of dimes or ball bearings. These are plenty heavy enough to destroy the finish on cars and to upset the insurance company. What you might not realize is that a good hail storm can do terrible damage to your roof.
I was examining a roof this week and noticed that there seemed to be freckles all over the surface. These were big freckles, about the size of a dime and on closer examination (meaning that I put on my reading glasses) I notice that the granules on the shingle were missing at these freckles. “Ah-Ha!” Said I, “hail damage”.
Hail damage is a funny thing. If you examine the roof the same day as the hail storm then you may not see any problems at all. However the impact of the hail on the shingle appears to bruise the shingles in such a way that the granules are loosened and some time later –even months the damage will show up either as large spots are small blisters that have broken open on the surface of the shingle. Since the granules are primarily designed to protect the shingles from the damaging effect of ultra violet frpom the sunlight then the shingles will begin to wear out much faster than normal following the hail damage.
Often your roof will sustain most of the damage at one side or the other since the hail is usually wind driven, so it is isn’t unusual to see one side of the roof heavily damaged while the other side fared much better. Hail damage is usually covered by your home owner’s insurance policy so it will be worth your while to check out your roof after a hail storm or after the storm season has passed.
Amazing anti-gravity concrete blocks! Or where is the lintel?
Nahhh, there’s no such thing as anti gravity brick & block but to look at some of the houses that I have inspected lately you would think that there was. Twice, this week alone I have seen foundations in which the heating and air contractors broke large holes without providing any support for the heavy cinder blocks above the hole. Now when I say holes I am talking about knocking out sections of brick approximately 4 feet by three feet-that’s a big hole indeed!
In both of these cases the heating and air guys were installing package systems. These are units in which both the heat and air are installed in a unit outside of the house rather than in the crawlspace. This is a fine way to provide central heat and air however the ductwork must somehow get into the crawlspace from the heating system outside. To accomplish this, the foundation and brickwork must have a big hole broken out so as to allow the very large ductwork to pass. When this is done a steel support is supposed to be installed at the top of the hole in the foundation so as to support the blocks and brickwork above. This steel support is called a lintel. If the lintel is not installed then sooner or later the block or brick above the hole will finally collapse. If the floor system is supported over the unsupported hole then you can expect the floor to sag also! Very bad scene!
Unfortunately I have seen this practice of leaving the block and brick unsupported many, many times. At the very least the brick will crack as is sags toward the hole- at the worst there is structural collapse! Building code requires that contractors install steel lintels or similar supports. So if you look under your house and see a large hole where heating and air duct pass but with no support above the hole then call your contractor-quick!
Lintels are used other places also. If you have a brick house then typically the openings for your doors and windows will have a steel lintel running over them holding up the brick. The ones that I am talking about for the heating and air are similar but usually larger.
Into the bowels of your home……
“I am too old for this!” I complained to myself. I was in the process of wedging my increasingly feeble body between a heating duct and a floor joist. The crawlspace was only about eighteen inches high which had my body in full frontal contact with the muddy soil under the house. Argghhhh…..
Unfortunately it is exactly these low, damp locations that reveal the most problems to the structure of a home. The proximity of damp soil to the wood floor structure allows the soil humidity to constantly bathe the wood floor structure raising the moisture content of the wood to the level that will host wood decaying fungus ultimately causing the floor to rot completely out. It can also make the interior of your house smell bad!
It is these very low, nasty corners of the crawlspace that the termites particularly enjoy. Dampness and darkness are music to a termite colony’s ear. These low dark areas are far away from predators and it turns out that they are often far away from the termite man…..that’s right I have found that over the years that when I crawl into a particularly low, miserable section of the crawlspace that the termite man decided that it was too horrible for him to enter resulting in that area not being treated. I also find that the plastic vapor barrier is often omitted from these areas due to the difficulty of access. The problem is that these are the places that are THE most important to be checked and treated for termites or wet conditions.
How can you be sure that your termite man or insulation man has actually done their work in these horrible places? You can either get under the house and check it out personally (watch out for spiders and snakes) or you can hire someone to go under there for you such as a home inspector. While he is under the house he can also check to see if the toilets are leaking, whether the electrical wires are in good condition as well as a host of other problems that you will never know about unless someone knowledgeable crawls about in the bowels of your home.
Ned Dominick has been wiggling around under homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Middle Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to his website at www.housetalk.net.
Middle Georgia Termites and You.
Last week I was crawling under a beautiful and expensive North Macon home. Everything was looking good until I checked under a suspended porch. I noticed that there were some wooden supports between the porch floor and the soil underneath. Fearing the worst I probed on of the supports only to see the wood disintegrate with a pale cascade of termites tumbling out. Yuckkkk!
It really doesn’t matter how old the house is, if any part of the wood is in contact with the soil then it will immediately begin absorbing moisture from the soil which will ultimately result in rot. Secondly, since termites generally live in the soil the wood serves as a bridge in which the termites can cross into your home so as to enjoy the house as their Sunday lunch. Typically other than secondary wood braces in the crawlspaces I normally see wood touching the ground at the door casings at either side of the garage door. I also frequently see the wood or hardboard siding touching the soil when the home is constructed on a low slab such as many of the homes in Warmer Robins. Even in homes built on crawlspaces the area around the garage often is touching the soil or bedding so watch out how high you build up your flower beds around the house..
Ideally there should be a gap between the soil and any wood products of at least eight inches-more is better. But in areas where a gap this large is impossible then you need to be careful that there is at least SOME gap between the dirt and wood or hardboard siding. Even when the siding is vinyl it must be kept out of soil contact since the termites will build their tunnels unseen between the vinyl siding and the wood framing.
Ned Dominick has been inspecting homes in Macon, Warner Robins and Central Georgia since 1978. He is a certified member of the American Society of Home Inspectors ASHI. For more go to www.housetalk.net.
