I was looking back through my old blog posts and found this post from about 3 years ago that is unquestionably one of the best things I have ever written. Based on some of the comments I received back then, I think some people wondered what I was smoking. Rereading the post I did have to wond
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10/31/2012
I talk to lots of Washington State home inspectors and many of them report that they regularly see Black Widow spiders. Now while I would love to believe each and every one of them, I have yet to see one myself. I see LOTS of spiders in crawl spaces and routinely wind up miles of spider webs a
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10/29/2012
It is kind of fun to watch your website analytics to see what search terms people using to land on one of your blog posts. Sometimes the questions asked are not really answered by the post but I do know the answer. Unfortunately there is no way to “reply” to these questions. Sometimes these u
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10/26/2012
I have done posts in the past about the importance of the home inspector checking the water temperature at all points of use in the home. While outside the Standards of Practice for many home inspectors, in Washington State, we have a sort of Left Handed approach to this issue (we are on the le
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10/24/2012
There is no end to what people will spend their money on. But I think we can all agree that $325K for a bird house is a bit much, even in the land of conspicuous consumption. However I guess when you can do it in a way where it also happens to create habitat for human beings as a fringe benefit
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10/22/2012
When OSB sheathing gets wet it acts like a sponge. If I had my own planet it would be code to have metal flashings along the edge of the roof so that water that wraps around the shingles would not damage the roof sheathing. It is all too common for roofers to not extend the roofing material
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10/13/2012
I thought today it might be fun to play “Jurisdictional Inspector.” First of all, I must confess that I do not have the answer for you---but do have questions. So with your Jurisdictional Inspector thinking cap firmly in place what do you have to say about the deck guard in the following pict
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10/09/2012
Sometimes stories can be better told with pictures than with words. Since it is difficult to “see” electricity, it seems only appropriate that this circuitous story be told with pictures. As you follow the dotted blue lines, you will get a sense of just what can be accomplished with several exte
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10/06/2012
I love discovering the many ways people figure out how to get things to work---especially electrical things. Electrical things are especially interesting to me because the damn stuff flows and makes things glow even when installed in an unsafe manner. We take wires and connect them with pretty
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10/02/2012
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