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sudden valley home inspection: Ferndale Home Inspection -- Gutter Cleaning - 03/23/11 09:19 PM
Manufacturers are, constantly, trying to come up with gutter guards that will make it possible for a homeowner to ignore the state of the gutters. My experience, as a home inspector, is that when there are gutter guards in place they tend to create more problems than they solve. I will agree that they slow down the amount of organic debris that will collect in the gutter. But they do not stop that buildup of crud.
The problem is that the contented homeowner, figuring that the gutters are swell, forgets about them. Yet, you give a few months of years of … (6 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Bellingham Home Inspection: Vented Sub-structure Areas - 08/29/10 03:30 PM
When a home has an unconditioned (unheated) crawl space, most building codes require that there be some form of crawl space ventilation. This comes in various forms but, at least in Bellingham and Whatcom County, more often than not the builders put in foundation vents -- typically a few feet from each corner and spaced quite evenly from one another, every few feet.
The preferred vents are those with wire mesh, typically 1/4" galvanized screens. Often, instead, I will see vent screens like the one below.
This is a louvered vent screen and the average person may not know it, … (5 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Sudden Valley Serenity - 02/26/10 12:04 AM
I was out at Sudden Valley the other day. That is a community south of Bellingham. You go by Lake Whatcom and suddenly you are at Sudden Valley. It has it's own little lake -- Lake Louise. I remember going to see Lake Louise as a kid, before Sudden Valley was a thought in anyone's mind. My dad would drive there, with me in tow, and no one was ever around except an old guy, probably a squatter, who lived in a tar paper shack. There were deer too, and I still take photos of deer almost every time I go … (12 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: It's Like A Runaway Train -- More Naked Home Inspector Photos - 07/13/09 05:02 PM
My old buddy, Charlie Buell, snapped mentally and morally over the weekend. Too much tequila with my home inspector assistant, Nutsy, I think. Charlie posted some of the most revealing images ever submitted to Active Rain. Boy, they left little to the imagination. We all saw way more of Charlie than we wanted to see. Poor Nutsy feels partly to blame for Charlie snapping. If you have not seen this rated-X blog post, that was banned in Boston, you should look here.
Since Charlie got so much notoriety for his shenanigan, I decided that I too, should post home inspection photos that … (35 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Bellingham Home Inspector (King of the House) -- In-Service, Out-of-Service - 04/22/09 09:43 AM
Outdoor receptacles (outlets) that do not have "in-use" or "in-service" waterproof hooded covers are not meant to accommodate plugs and cords on a permanent basis. If a person thinks about it, the reason is obvious. Water, from rain or watering a garden, can get into the receptacle and water and electricity do not mix well. The photo below would be an example of the problem inspectors often see. So what are those cords? It is hard to tell but they usually go to some yard feature -- a pond, a fountain, a timer, maybe low-voltage yard lights.
I know this arrangement does not … (7 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Stranger than Fiction -- Digging for Dollars - 12/29/08 07:13 PM
At one of my posts the other day Active Rain's James Quarello, a home inspector from Connecticut, wrote something that got me reminiscing. He made a comment about a house he inspected that was memorable because the client had been part of a well-known rock music group from the 1960's.
That had me thinking back about anything unusual, beyond the unusual things one finds at a home inspection, that has made any one house most memorable to me. There is no question about it that the one that comes to mind is a home that made the national and international news. I inspected it about six … (40 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Stories Behind the Music -- Hey Stan, Ever Heard the Wife Sing? - 09/25/08 12:15 PM
This story is the classic case of an unlikely singing career that began as a result of unusual circumstances. We will go back to 1963. Stan Getz, a famed jazz musician, was working on an album, which would be influenced by Brazilian rhythms. He was recording with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto who was a well-known Brazilian artist.
The recording session was in New York City. The album would be called Getz/Gilberto. The producer wanted a hook to make it more popular with the U.S. audience so he decided that they should have a song with English lyrics. They wanted … (2 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Home Inspector Licensing Board Sub-Committee Meeting - 09/05/08 05:19 PM
I know this is dry, but a few inspectors have asked me to periodically update them, here at Active Rain, as to the happenings with the Washington State Home Inspector Licensing Board.
The first meeting of the licensing sub-committee met yesterday, September 4, in Olympia at the Washington State Department of Licensing, Real Estate division. The agenda was quite basic and a number of ideas were put on the table. The sub-committee will, when it is all ironed out, make a recommendation to the board.
Much of the work of the licensing sub-committee has to do with administration of home inspector … (3 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: School Daze: How Time Flies - 09/02/08 08:35 AM
Boy, how time flies.
Last night the wife and I had to stop at a large department store, Fred Meyer, to buy paint for one of our rental houses. We were getting there late and we could not believe all the cars in the parking lot. The place was packed. When we got inside, we asked the checker what was going on.
She said that it was last minute shoppers, from Bellingham and the county, getting ready for school today. That startled me. You might say I was in a school daze. No longer having a kid in school, I had lost track of … (6 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: No Inspection? Don't Take New Construction For Granted - 08/29/08 11:28 PM
I spoke a week back at a John L. Scott Real Estate class for new home-buyers. One well-intentioned student asked the realtor instructor if there was, financially, any justification to spend money for an inspection at a new property.
The realtor said a resounding "yes" and, when my time came, I further elaborated on that statement.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, I can think of a major reason to have an inspection at a new home. Sure, there are the run of the mill things -- insulation not installed, insulation packed around the B-vent, heat ducts that are not attached, plumbing … (84 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Peeping Tom Alert - 08/16/08 12:11 AM
Well, you would not expect that a 50 something year-old male, such as myself -- startlingly handsome as I may be -- would have a problem with peeping toms. But I had this feeling the last few days, in my Bellingham, WA home, that something was gawking at me through the bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning. You know it, that feeling of eyes on you. Everyone thought I was crazy. One prominent active rain member from Shoreline, who shall go nameless, made fun of me. He said that was wishful thinking on my part.
Boy, I got … (10 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Bellingham WA Home Inspection (King of the House): Keeping the Water Out - 09/18/07 02:07 PM
A much misunderstood aspect of home maintenance involves caulking. What to caulk and what not to caulk, and where does it work? Basically, caulking is not a substitute for good workmanship. I have seen houses where the siding was cut short, with an inch between the butt end of the siding and the corner board on the house. That was all dabbed at with caulking. That is not a proper use of caulking. Nor is caulking effective filling a 2" hole. A guideline, despite what it might say on the tube, is that it can be suitable to fill up to … (0 comments)
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sudden valley home inspection: Bellingham Home Inspection (King of the House Inc): Conducive Conditions - 09/05/07 06:55 PM
In this state we talk a lot about conducive conditions. Conducive conditions are even written into the Washington State law -- part of the structural pest inspector law. I took this photo at an inspection yesterday and thought it does a good job of illustrating a point. In an earlier blog, I spoke about vegetation against siding and how that can lead to moisture issues: fungal growth, siding not drying, potential for rot or insect pests. The photo below is vinyl siding. Look at just how green it is where the bushes are crowding the home. It is continually damp. If … (1 comments)
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Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector
Bellingham,
WA
More about me…
King of the House Home Inspection, Inc
Address: Bellingham, Ferndale, Lynden, Blaine, Sumas, Nooksack, Lake Whatcom, Lake Samish, Anacortes, Mount Vernon, Whatcom County, Bellingham, WA, 98225
Office Phone: (360) 676-6908
Cell Phone: (360) 319-0038
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