Charles's Seattle Home Inspection Blog

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Home Inspector - Charles Buell Inspections Inc.
My blog is intended to provide information related to home inspections in Seattle, surrounding communities and anyone else interested. Sometimes I will provide information that has nothing to do with home inspections. Enjoy!

ARCHIVED BLOG POSTS

2014 

I am pretty sure houses do not have “ghosts.” However they are certainly known to have phantoms!  I have blogged about these phantoms before and if you want a good ghost story please visit:  What is Phantom Voltage?  Phantom Voltage or "induced voltage" is the result of wire or other metal compo...
02/27/2014
If it was not for roof penetrations of all sorts, roofs would not leak very often.  But roofs are full of plumbing pipe penetrations, exhaust vent terminations, Furnace and water heater vent penetrations, electrical mast penetrations and chimney penetrations.  Then there are skylights and dormer...
02/25/2014
Just like the rubber hoses on your washing machine, sump pumps are obviously programmed to fail when you are on vacation. A home that needs a sump pump can suffer a lot of damage if the sump pump fails to operate when needed. When do sump pumps fail? Typically they fail when you need them the mos...
02/23/2014
I am sure that someone is still installing new oil heating equipment in homes, but I should think in the Seattle area it would be pretty rare. I do see new oil furnaces, but they are usually a replacement of an older unit. I inspected such a home the other day.  It had a relatively new oil fire b...
02/21/2014
We have all heard statements from sellers and builders about how this or that code not being applicable. Just the other day someone stated that a certain Washington State Energy Code was not applicable for the houses he was building because that particular aspect of the code “was not being enfor...
02/19/2014
The Anti-siphon valve----the what, the where, the why, and the how. To keep it simple, today we are only going to discuss the anti-siphon valves associated with outside faucets.  However, these valves are also present as part of your lawn sprinkler systems, toilets, bidets etc. These valves attac...
02/17/2014
All of my dear friends and family in the Northeast are deep in the throes of winter.  Most are wrestling in and out of endless layers of clothing, jack-hammering ice off of windshields, kicking brown blocks of icy-salt-snow out of wheel wells, and shoveling unforgiving relentless piles of snow on...
02/15/2014
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I have always liked Valentine's Day.  I consider myself pretty darn lucky to have had many Valentines in my life.  I hope that all of you that have Valentines today, will appreciate this poem that I wrote for my Valentine Julie.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!
02/13/2014
GFCI breakers and devices have been around for quite awhile--since the early 1970’s.  This one you see pictured here was installed in 1979 and provided GFCI protection to all of the bathroom receptacles and the receptacles at the exterior of the home.  It still tripped with the test button and sh...
02/12/2014
I think the new Tamper Resistant receptacles are probably a good idea.  While every day we are making it more and more difficult for stupid people to weed themselves out of the gene pool, I think I can safely argue for protecting those that are ignorant at a time in their lives when they should b...
02/10/2014
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Charles Buell

Seattle Home Inspector
local_phone(206) 478-7371
smartphone(206) 478-7371
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My blog is intended to provide information related to home inspections in Seattle, surrounding communities and anyone else interested. Sometimes I will provide information that has nothing to do with home inspections. Enjoy!

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