The whitish vapor you see coming out the flue that is closest to you is indicative of a safety problem. It is also something an inspector sees a lot of. I was up on a roof and had identified the two flues to the right as having come from abandoned fireplaces. In that case, they should have been c
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04/30/2008
My friend Charles Buell is always very critical of duct tape -- the miracle cure of last century and still a hot commodity today. I have seen everything from the skins of mobile homes and fuel tanks to shoes repaired with the stuff. I always love it when I open a cabinet and find it at the drain
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04/17/2008
Below is an electric water heater with an installation that is close to right. But close is not good enough. There is a temperature pressure relief valve and the drain line from it is even routed down and out of the home. And the lower section of the drain is CPVC tubing which is a plastic that i
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04/17/2008
The view in this photo is so very common, but I always hate to see it. When a roofer takes an old wood shingle or shake roof off, it seems that about eight times out of ten the wood debris ends up inside the attic. Just what a homeowner wants is a bunch of old wood shingles in the attic. What mak
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04/16/2008
In life there are many gambles. Anyone in business has to assume some risk and take some gambles. Even hanging out your shingle, doing whatever it is you plan to do, involves risk. I am not one who is afraid of some risk. One of the best business decisions I ever made, which I can now look back o
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04/16/2008
This is not an out of body experience, or some tale that will make you think I am any weirder than what you might already think. After all, you have probably heard stories of the dead coming back to life -- on shows like the Twilight Zone. Call it reincarnation, call it hibernation, or call it wh
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04/15/2008
I was looking at my statistics the other day and found that my first serious activity at Active Rain was one year ago yesterday, as in last Sunday. Wow, how time flies when you are getting all wet in the rain. A while back, a friend had suggested that he had positive comments by posting, or re-po
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04/14/2008
The local daily newspaper, the Bellingham Herald, had a story today that confirmed a trend I have noticed in my inspection business for the past eight months or so -- the rising Canadian dollar, which fluctuates from a bit below to a bit above the US dollar, has led to more Canadians spending mon
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04/11/2008
No wonder people who are learning English go crazy sometimes. Take, for example, the word "cricket." You probably think it means an insect or a game the British favor that is similar to baseball. Well, there is a third meaning as you are about to learn. The photo below is a good example of a wide
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04/10/2008
Charlie Buell and I sometimes joke around that there are times you could do a home inspection from the publicity photos of the property. It is amazing the things the trained eye can see and, from the photos, you know to look very carefully at certain areas or you might be able to predict a proble
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04/09/2008
