I hear the remark, even from home inspectors, that the garage is not fire-rated or 20 minute fire-rated. Home inspectors are not code inspectors, but this kind of talk is based on codes and a misunderstanding of residential code requirements. Let's look at garage/house separation requirements. Th
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11/29/2011
They follow me everywhere, I cannot get away from them. This last week I had to work with, and around, five house destroying organisms at various residences in Bellingham and Whatcom County. Their stalking me might have been revenge for the widely circulated expose piece that I wrote about the s
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11/27/2011
On behalf of the King of the House staff, I would like to wish all of my Active Rain friends, and my associates in Bellingham, a great Thanksgiving and a holiday season. I was reading an editorial today, in the newspaper, that claims that the period we are going through as a nation, right now, on
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11/24/2011
In the last week, half of the home inspections that I performed in Bellingham were at houses with knob and tube wiring systems. The minute I say that, the inspectors know that the houses I inspected were at least 50 years of age. Knob and tube wiring, the first wiring system to be used on a wides
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11/20/2011
Wow, how this year has been flying by. The schedule has been released at Bellingham Technical College and it has been announced that the next home inspection training course will begin on February 6, 2012. The BTC offering, the first such course to be approved in the state when state licensing be
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11/20/2011
In the wet Pacific Northwest, an ongoing problem is trying to inspect crawl spaces that have an abundance of crawl space water or flooding. The concern is, at the least, three-fold. First, the water should not be down there and it is conducive to creating all sorts of problems -- wood decay, attr
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11/18/2011
Okay, now I saw this in Pisa when I was in Italy a month ago. I did not see this while eating pizza. When my wife and I were wandering around the vendors in Pisa, I saw these tee-shirts that caught my eye. Now I really wanted one and thought it was pretty funny. My wife, on the other hand, did no
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11/15/2011
This information might save time, and be handy, for any Active Rain real estate professionals who send, or post, URL's or links to Online maps. In the majority of the home inspection reports that I send out in Bellingham and Whatcom County, I insert a description of the home and provide a map
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11/07/2011
Just when people thought it was safe to get back into the housing market, it has been revealed that many houses in the USA are vulnerable to, and being subjected to, serious infestations by House Destroying Organisms. Inspectors have, for years, used the term Wood Destroying Organism or WDO to de
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11/06/2011
A couple years ago I tossed one of those orange safety or hazard cones in the back of my truck. Somewhere along the line, at one of the Washington State Home Inspector Licensing Board meetings, a member made some mention that such a cone could be very handy. For example, such a device might be va
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11/04/2011
