Our company as well as my family have relocated to beautiful sunny Northeast Ohio and have settled down in the city of Medina.  We have changed our logo. The old one was so drab and boring.  Cookie has grown up since my last post and is the absolutely best dog I have ever had. Absolutely smartest dog as well. Sit, lay down, roll over, play dead all taught in one 5 minute session each. Hand signals were added later as commands were given and it took her about twice before she picked them up.

So one sold house, two temporary apartments(one in Columbus, one in Medina) one bought house and 6 days of moving fun later. Here we are moved into Medina, OH.  This isn't our first trip to NE Ohio. We lived in Wooster (where my wife grew up) for 8 years prior to moving down to Westerville, so at least everything isn't new.

Anyhow, what a tough time time to pick up and relocate and reestablish a referral base for inspections.  Need some help from you local Medina and Cleveland folks.  What are the current market conditions here in this area. I just need to know so that I don't get so frustrated banging my head against the wall with marketing producing zero results.  I know the agents usually have a better grasp on what the market realities are.  If you would leave a comment about this below. Thanks.

After visiting several shelters around Columbus trying to match a new family member with existing family members and calling the various rescue groups, I had given up the search for awhile. I can't believe what is expected of a person trying to rescue an unwanted dog these days. It is truly easier and sometimes more cost effective to just purchase a new puppy from a breeder.  But I did't want to add to the overpopulation problem. Still, the thought of a long drawn out application process, including sometimes two home visits and a rehoming fee that was sometimes just ludicrous was not appealing either. Did I mention, all this trouble is to take an unwanted dog off of somebody's hands...Geesh. I know, I know, they don't want them back and they don't want them used in any dog fighting practice, but there has to be a happy medium.

Anyhoo, I decided that during our weekend visit back to my adopted hometown of Wooster,OH that I would stop by the Wayne County Humane Society for a peek at their pooches. We had recently lost our last WCHS dog last February to what appeared to be tainted dog food problems. Their adoption procedures were much relaxed compared to C-bus.  The family decided on a new family member and I will be making the drive up tomorrow to pick her up and bring her home.

Trees and/or shrubs are in contact with or are close to the roof in one or more areas. Damage to the roof may result, especially during high winds. Vegetation can also act as a conduit for wood destroying insects. Vegetation should be pruned back and/or removed as necessary to prevent damage and infestation by wood destroying insects.

C'mon is it really that important?  So what the trees are touching the roof surface on this house. It's no big deal. The trees are touching on my house too and I have never seen any damage!

Therein lies the problem. Many times this situation presents a blind area, where of course, there is no damage apparent; sometimes, until it is too late.  The problem does not necessarily come from the tree touching the roof. The problem is when the wind moves the tree that is touching the roof.  See the picture below. This is typical damage from a similar situation although this occurs at the edge of the roof, which can be even more susceptible to this type of damage, although it is not uncommon to see the above photo resulting in shingles that have been caught by a moving limb and bent backwards until they break.

 This all happens in addition to providing carpenter ants and the like easy access from the tree to your home, where they just might start gnawing on that new wet wood under the damaged shingles.

Well, today's case study has us looking at a brand new home costing around $400K, maybe more considering it's neighborhood.

What you see is quite common among some Columbus builders.  Do not be distracted by the torn shingle. That is a little unusual for these builders and was called out for repair.  The typical finding is in the background. Notice the couple of areas with 4 dots in a square. There are two areas visible in this shot.  Now there were no leaks but these patches are the result of scaffolding that the stucco contractors used.  It is quite common for the stucco contractors and or the siding contractors to come in after the roof is completed and to leave these patched shingles. The question is, if you are buying a $400K home, do you want the shingles on your home to be less than new. These individual shingles have had their lifespan shortened to at the most 10 years, which is the highest life expectancy I could find for roof patching products of this type(flexible asphalt based) whilst doing research for this blog entry. After the siding contractors have removed their equipment, it would be a better building practice to have the roofer come along and replace these damaged shingles rather than the siding guys patching them.

Unfortuanately the buyer had still not heeded the advice of having the contractor repair these shingles at his one year warranty inspection as these defects were still present.

What could be so wrong about this seemingly benign situation.  The vent is taking the odors out of the bath isn't it. So what if the so called "fart fan" sends my bouquet into the nether regions of the attic. That's better than my in-laws gagging as they walk into my house. Right?

Wrong. The so called "fart fan" is there not to remove odors, but to redirect moisture out of the interior of the home.  If it redirects moisture to the attic, then the result will be inevitable. You will get wood rot and mold, two things we never want to see in our homes.  Take a look at the results of a similar problem in another home with the same issue.

This one won't need much explaining.  The first picture shows the source of the mystery ducting coming up the back wall and the first and second picture shows the attachment of the mystery ducting to the gas fired appliances flue.

This was a wrong application on so many levels, it was hard to find a place to start.  I was flabbergasted at Johnny Handy Homeowner's(JHH) complete lack of common sense.

 As you can probably imagine the top of the inside of the furnace was corroded and filled with lint.  This application presented both Carbon monoxide problems as well as fire issues. 

Truly one for the ages.

With end of the year paperwork, Christmas shopping and entertaining, its easy to forget to have some fun.

My boys and I did a little "fun having" during our recent snowfall

This day gave us the only opportunity in about 4 days of snow pack to make a snowman. The boys had patiently waited through the first day of very fine dry(if you will) snow that is terrible for packing and then a couple of days of well below freezing temperatures that didn't help the snow packing at all. Finally on the fourth day temps rose into the 40's which started the melting process and gave us the perfect opportunity to roll those little snowballs into great big snowmen. The kids kept saying it was magic how you start with a little snowball and just keep rolling it until its almost too big for dad to carry and place on top of the previous one.  Remember that magic carries over into business as well. Grab your snowball in the middle of the meltdown and start rolling (persistency and consistency) and see how big your snowman gets.

What's the problem?

 Notice the bowing wall on the right wall.

This defect is characterized by a long horizontal crack usually along the entire length of the affected wall.

The cause is usually due to wet, heavy soil that is antagonized by water not being diverted from the foundation via proper grading or gutter systems. Rick has some timely info on that here. Many times concrete or pavement that is not properly pitched can be found on the outside of this wall.

So how does one take care of this problem?

First of all: fix the underlying issue, water, frost pressure, other excessive weight behing the wall, etc.

Then there are a multitude of fixes. The most common is probably a pier system as pictured in the bottom photo.

This system involves sinking I beams into the concrete and fastening the beams to the frame overhead. This slows the movement of the block wall, but in most cases will not alleviate the crack which should be filled to prevent further moisture intrusion.

Another system uses reinforced carbon strips to accomplish similar results. It can be found at the following link.

http://www.nachi.org/reinforcer.htm

Many home inspectors are used to hearing something similar to: "That's not a necessary item on the report, this house was built in 1947, and XXX was not required then."

We as home inspectors for the most part will not cite code and for the most part things that look like they are "code related" defects are indeed "safety defects."  There are many items in a home or are not in a home built 50 years ago that are not in agreement with current codes, and many of these are never mentioned in a home inspection report, but there are some that are routinely called out to sometimes the disagreement of an agent or agents involved in the deal.

Today we will look at GFCI's.

What are they:

GFCI's mechanically function in the same way a breaker does. Input A causes the mechanical switch to change locations and open the circuit, thereby cutting off the flow of electrons through the circuit or in simple terms it kills the juice.  The difference lies in the input type of the devices. Breakers use either a thermal or magnetic input to trigger the open current situation. GFCI's utilize a small circuit board to analyze the amount of current out compared to the amount of current coming back in. GFCI's will trip or open the circuit when this comparison is unbalanced or in other words if current is leaking to ground and not coming back to the circuit board analyzer the GFCI trips.  This happens in the blink of an eye.  The small amount of current required to trip a GFCI in many case may not be enough to trip a breaker. This ability to detect small current changes is what makes a GFCI a recommended addition to areas where shock likelihood is higher such as wet areas.

Why are they included in a home inspection report:

According to the CPSC if every household installed GFCI's, electrocution rates in households would drop by half.

http://pregnancy.parenthood.com/articles.html?article_id=1598

This is one of those areas in which we need to strive for perfection. 

So, no they may not have been called for in the original construction of homes and the local code inspector is not going to come by the house and insist on their installation but let's start looking at this defect as a valid one for inclusion on home inspection reports, even if it only ranks under Recommended Safety Upgrades.

We don't want our clients or yours ending up with scenarios similar to these:

http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=78718

http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2007/12/01/wi/00wis01.txt

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=SL&p_theme=sl&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB0505EDFA351BB&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

If you have a problem item that you keep seeing on reports that you would like addressed, please send me an email or leave it in the comments and I will try to get to them as they come in.

Hire a virtual assistant.  I got to the point where I really needed help answering phones and scheduling appointments last February. It really made no sense for me to hire someone to sit around all day waiting for the phone to ring, so I started looking for options.  That's when I discovered what a virtual assistant is. Imagine having to pay someone only when they are actually working.

 From my experience, there are many types of VA's available. Some only do typing; some only do administrative tasks; others do marketing; and still others do all or some of these in combination.

The way mine works is that I have phones and email forwarded to my VA's office and she takes care of answering phones, scheduling inspections, following up on contracts and confirmation emails and the like. I then receive a bill at the end of the month showing the hours logged per week and the bill due.

I have found that VA's fees vary wildly and some can include a retainer that guarantees that you will pay for X amount of hours per week or month. I have found a very reasonable provider who has no such retainers and has been very flexible with what I need done and is willling to learn whatever I throw at her.

 I have recently invited her to Active Rain, but she has not got her full profile set up.  She can be visited here: http://activerain.com/astrosnider .  I highly recommend her services for all those looking for help in their small business.

 I encourage others to actively encourage her to fully set up her profile so she can begin to reap the benefits of the Active Rain community.