Time for the 4th, 14 Carrot meetup, at the 14 Carrot Café of course. Rene Fabre and I will be hosting the meetup and all Rainers are welcome. What better way to start your day than a good cup of joe, some eggs and/or cinnamon buns and some great camaraderie with the likes of Kerrie Greenhalgh---
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03/29/2013
It is painfully obvious to everyone that home inspectors get to find all the odd things created by homeowners and Uncle Bob. There is apparently no end to these oddities and it keeps me entertained as a home inspector and is great for blog fodder. This post however is about how sometimes we also
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03/26/2013
If wood has a goal it is to decay so that it can become food for new growth. Human beings and beavers like to take wood and do useful things with it---but sooner or later---no matter how we try, wood eventually finds its way back to the earth---back to being dirt. The best homes are the ones that
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03/23/2013
It actually takes a lot of experience to make the old wisdom, “if it looks wrong---it probably is wrong,” true. Inspectors throw the phrase around as if there is a level of “obviousness” that is genetic or primal----as opposed to something that must be learned over time. Even in teaching future h
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03/20/2013
People are always trying to figure out ways to build in all those things that just lay around if they are not built in. I think this trend became very popular with the advent of the magazine “Popular Mechanics” as far back as 1902. When I was a kid we always had the magazine kicking around the h
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03/18/2013
More to the point---at least I had never seen one before. The critter actually let me get up close and personal to see just how pointy those pointy horns actually are. I wonder if the point about their being endangered has something to do with their points? It looks more like they would be a
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03/14/2013
There are three means of heat transfer that we talk about in the context of heating our homes. While all three are likely to be involved in all heating scenarios, there is usually one that predominates. 1. Heating by radiation 2. Heating by conduction 3. Heating by convection Everyone is familia
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03/14/2013
It is only natural that home inspectors (and those that hire us) like to think we will find everything. The hard reality is that we are not going to find everything and nobody should expect us to find everything. On a good day we are not going to miss anything vital. In fact even on a bad day
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03/11/2013
Thermal tracking, soot marking, thermal bridging, thermophoresis—what does heat loss look like? How to become an air control freak! This post will attempt to get everyone on board with the idea of being an air control freak, and becoming one will give you one of the biggest bangs for your buck in
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03/10/2013