The other day I posted the following picture on Facebook and it got quite a bunch of interesting comments.The circled vent caps on the building are the dryer exhaust vents of three of units in the four unit building.The question is: “How are the homeowners going to maintain/clean these dryer exh
...
12/11/2016
A recent inspection I did was of a 2002 build home.Both floors of bedrooms that were adjacent to each other---opposite sides of the house---had floors that creaked mercilessly. These very annoying noises were focused primarily toward the walls that separated the two rooms. The floor joists were
...
12/01/2016
Several years ago I wrote a post called, “A Reasoned Indictment of the Green Movement.”In that post I detailed a method of building super-insulated houses that did not cost any more than conventional 2×4 houses. A question that came up in comments on that article boiled down to, “That sounds grea
...
11/28/2016
One of my favorite angels was John Travolta in “Michael.” And if you like angels that smoke cigarettes it may be just the movie for you too.At an inspection a while back I actually saw signs of a real angel on the basement wall.Of course this dark discoloration was merely the location where a re
...
11/06/2016
This is a house I designed and built in 1978. For the most part it looks the way I built it, except for the big wrap-around deck and the addition to the back of the home.On a recent adventure to see how some of my wood foundation houses are behaving (after more than 35 years), I stopped and intr
...
10/25/2016
It is very common to find dark staining and dirt on window frames whether those window frames are metal or wood or vinyl. Generally they can be cleaned with soap and water and a little vinegar. But what if you are concerned it might be mold?While there is plenty of confusion, myth and misinform
...
09/26/2016