On a field training inspection with my students the other day, we came across this big heavy rusty wrench attached to the bottom panel of the garage overhead door. My first reaction was that perhaps it was art. However, later on in the inspection, when it came time to put the door through its rev
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06/29/2014
Inspectors, real estate agents and stagers (actually anyone involved in the real estate transaction) all have to deal with houses that have numerous “problems.” Sometimes this cornucopia of problems prevents us from seeing the more important “elephant in the room.” In most houses, any literal
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06/29/2014
It seems that there are always uninvited guests that know how to ruin a good picnic. As near as I can tell they rank right up there with rats and mosquitoes. I am equally sure that in the “big picture” they do serve some useful purpose as food to other species on the planet---just not humans. R
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06/25/2014
Lots of people, including me, have been confused, at one time or another, about the requirements for doors between the house and the garage. I will attempt to open that door and by the time I close it, hopefully everyone will be a little less confused–but then again perhaps not. Some sort of “spe
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06/22/2014
Crawl spaces are not the most fun environments, and the more difficult they are to get into, the more likely it is that they are not adequately inspected or maintained. Being small and unreasonably skinny, I can often get into crawl spaces that other inspectors, can’t, won’t or simply don’t. M
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06/21/2014
Sometimes something can look so normal, that one might not notice at first that it is not normal at all. It is easy to see something was wrong after it has failed, but if it has been a particular way for a long period of time it is easy to fall into the trap of its having “stood the test of time
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06/16/2014
Marmalade I am becoming my father. I guess it was inevitable. I am the one who now has pictures, in boxes and on walls, of how young I used to be. I am the one who now has baby pictures that look as old as his baby pictures. There are pictures of wives and girlfriends that look like kids. Now I
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06/14/2014
I realize that I am supposed to have some heartburn with some recent news I just heard—but I do not. It even seems weird to me that I don’t. The news, fresh out of the moldy swamps of Louisiana, is the announcement that the governor of the State of Louisiana has signed into law a change to Louisi
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06/13/2014
Is your home inspector a deal killer? If he needs to be, you better hope so. In my experience, if a deal goes south after the home inspection, it actually went south WAY before the home inspector ever gets hired. It is a bit like spreading tacks all over the highway 10 miles up the road. Yo
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06/10/2014