resqman

See that condition every day in Ga. Usually just replace the trim and life is good. Threshold might find some water intrusion in crawl and sill rot.

First son has no interest. Graduated business school and has a job. He loves cold call sales and would hate working with houses. Second son is going into the medical field. He might like this after he tires of medicine. He likes tinkering. He could do it. Was in IT for 25 years prior to this. Suit and tie office job. Miss working indoors during lousy weather. I could see myself going back to being an ambulance driver. Was a volunteer EMT for about a decade. Patients are getting fatter. Not sure I wanna lift fatties into the truck all day. Miss the ability to make a real difference in peoples lives.

There is no need for a National License. Most inspectors operate in a single state. Those that live near a state border might be licensed in both states. A few inspectors who do expert witness work that travel around the country might need multiple state licenses. Only about 35 states license home inspectors. Some have reciprocity, some don't. If you move, take a 2 hr test, pay the $200 and go on your merry way. Licensing is not the cure for bad home inspections. It sets a very minimum bar to weed out the very worst test takers. Licensing provides a specific path to take a home inspector to court. Licensing defines an SOP. It also sets up rules so the licensing board can reprimand inspectors that don't follow the SOP, basic report writing and basic business practices. What would be the benefit of having a national license? How much money would you be willing to pay a year to maintain a national license? How many hours of ConEd would you be willing to take above and beyond your state required ConEd to maintain a national license? How many more customers would you get if you had a national license? I work in an unlicensed state. Most consumers don't know that inspectors are not licensed. When I tell them they are horrified. Does having a marriage license make you a better spouse? Does a drivers license make you a better driver? I worked in a licensed state for 7 years. Cost me about $750 a year for required classes and license fees. Since everyone had to be licensed to inspect, having a license did not provide any marketing value. National license would probably cost at least $500 a year between fees and continuing training. I don't think it would generate more than 1 or 2 inspections a year so it would be a zero sum certificate. Why bother.

Decade as volunteer firefighter & technical rescue. Three rungs above the roof plane. Side step.

Disagree with Scott. He said someone would... I insulated half the crawlspace of a 1200 sq ft ranch in Atlanta Ga around 1986. Just never got around to insulating the other half. I could physically feel a temperature difference when walking between rooms. Don't recall energy savings but sure did make a big difference in comfort while living in the house.

No, there is no disconnect to service the circuit.

Fix the water leak in the upstairs bathroom before you play with remediation.

Disagree. Spent some time working with a home inspector licensing board regarding report format & structure. The real estate board lobbyist was pushing for a more consistent report format. Home inspectors were resisting more control by outsiders. Standardization is simplification.

Not sure I want a licensing body to be too specific about format & structure. Most SOPs specify what must be in a report but not how to report. As you move to a more specific format and structure, the report becomes more cookie cutter. Filling in blanks, checking boxes. The profession gets reduced to the lowest denominator. Forms do not handle variety well. Houses are diverse. Reporting needs to be flexible to accommodate all the stupid stuff people do to them. I agree that most HI don't really understand communication and transfer of information. Sharing technical information between a competent inspector and a novice homeowner is a challenge to dumb it down enough anyone can understand but technical enough that the point comes across. Oral conversations have give and take. Written words do not. Converting oral conversation into written word that has multiple audiences is an imperfect task. The listing agent, buyers agent, buyer, tradespeople and home inspector all have different knowledge bases and to write a single document that all can understand and effectively communicate the problem is a challenging task. The different audiences have different needs and put importance on different parts of the report. Each feels their demands are the most important. Determining what is important and what is fluff often depends on which player you are.

Prescriptive Residential Wood Deck Construction Guide is a free online document that tells all regarding deck construction. Google is your friend.

I report improper screws. I carry replacements and will replace one or two in a panel if missing or wrong. I am not replacing all of them. Gotta draw the line somewhere. $3 for 6 screws at the big box store gets expensive. I carry both the coarse and fine thread screws. Will pickup loose extra screws in the bottom of panels to share at the next inspection.

In my area, many home inspectors become associate members of the MLS and get a Supra code. There is a box on the door, we enter a PIN and the CBS (call before showing) code and can open the door. We request the CBS code at the time the inspection is booked. Use this method for at least 98%+ of my inspections. Most agents show up about 2 hours after the scheduled inspection start time to chat with the buyer and get a recap of the inspection. Unless it is the first time an agent has met me. Then they will often arrive at the beginning to check me out. Occasionally have inspections where I am the only attendee. No buyer, no agents. Happens with both vacant and occupied. 10 years never been accused of any wrong doing. Look forward to vacant homes with no attendees. In and out in record time.

Where do you find that CODE requires a heat source? Your right. Circular thinking. My fault. Habitable space must be able to be heated to 68 degrees, 3 feet above the floor, 2 feet from the wall. Since sleeping rooms are habitable space, must be heated. Does not say a dedicated heating supply, just able to achieve temperature.

To broaden the comment there is no such thing as a bedroom in the code... It is a sleeping room. CODE only requires a heat source, emergency egress, 8% natural light, 4% natural ventilation, and smoke alarm. Closets are not required. That is a agent thing. Code does not require any closets anywhere anytime. If there is a closet, then there are a variety of things that can and cannot happen in closets. For example the spacing of light fixtures to storage, housing an electrical panel if designed for clothes storage, etc.

You can have a single gas furnace heat an entire home. The heat is distributed via a duct system. Usually there is a supply duct to the sleeping room to ensure it is heated.

10 year old SurveyMaster is flaky. Goes into error code and "hangs" Cant turn it off or on, just hung in an useable state. I have it set to auto turnoff after a couple of minutes. Leave it alone, it turns off, power it back on and mostly works. Probably time for a new one. Boss has decided I am going to start doing stucco/efis/manufactured stone inspections so will need one with exterior probes. Wondering if people still like the GE SurveyMaster or is there some new or better player in the market?

Have a bunch of photos on Advocate Inspections facebook album page. Take any you want.

Was a member of a rescue squad. During our training we started out easy and increased the stress level over the day until people were doing things they thought were not possible. I held national certifications in confined space, trench and building collapse rescue and trained other rescue squads and fire departments. There were training days I was overjoyed to be looking down from the 1000 ft platform of a TV broadcast tower and days I had to sit, close my eyes and talk to myself at only 150 feet. Saw some of the biggest burly guys totally freak out. Some it was heights, some it was the dark, some if was the tight space. We wanted to find out who would crack during training so when it came to an actual rescue we knew who needed to be support and who should be going into the hot zone. Sounds like you were able to manage your fears. You will be better next time. It is mostly a mental game. If you let your fears run too long, you freeze up. Congratulations on coming out the other side.

For sure, if you don't want / feel you need to change then I'm not trying to "sell" you guys anything. I'd be interested to hear what the younger guys coming into to the industry have to say about the current software on offer. Younger is a relative term. Most home inspectors come to the industry after having a previous career. The average home inspector does not get into the industry until age 45 or 55+. People new to the industry don't know what they don't know. People new to the industry are more likely to accept a new or different software package because they have no investment in the current offerings. One of the attractive parts of this industry is the relatively low entry cost of tools and training. Any software package that claims to be better for a lower cost will likely attract attention of the newcomers. We discuss the optimum report formatting frequently on this forum. Several are very outspoken on their view of the ideal report while others are more about tweaking the basic industry standard. Newcomers generally flounder around with a home made document processing system until they buy a package. Then they tweak the software to look like their word processing package. I am confused by Scotts dream. He knows absolutely nothing about the home inspection industry. His questionnaire demonstrates that. He has chosen to revolutionize an industry that has a very limited market with virtually no opportunity for growth. Of all the industries to choose to revolutionize, why Home Inspections? Sorry, he has sparked a good debate and the same five posters have quibbled back and forth. Mildly entertaining but I am baffled by Scotts goal.

The hidden data base in part of the data collection/report generation software. The inspector enters data in the collection system via phone, tablet, pc. The software stores the collected data. The user does not really care if it is an phone app, web app, or pc app. Its magic. Then the inspector enters the report generation software/app and requests a report to be generated. The app/software gets the collected data, shuffles it around, formats it, and generates a report. Likely the inspector will have to add a few comments of the day prior to actual generation. The database might live in the cloud if data entry is done on a portable device (phone, tablet) but would eventually have to be visible to the report generation device which is likely to be a PC.

You might be missing the point of a Forum. We discuss things online in the forum. Develop your questionnaire. Post here. Forums users will post replies. My needs and wants are significantly different from what many of the TIJ regulars want. I ran my own business for a while. Did ok with a paper calendar and MSWord report generation. Joined a multi-inspector firm and we have an office manger that does the emailing to all the interested parties, scheduling, price negotiating, upselling services, marketing, chasing down CBS codes, etc. Basically everything except the inspection and report writing. What I want is a report writing system that is easy, intuitive, and really, really fast. I don't care if it interacts with a business management system but the boss probably does. We use ISN which does a bunch of all the business stuff really well. At least I think it does it well because basically I upload my report and magic happens. I use a camera for data collection. I just take a picture of everything I have to put in the report. Gotta include the type and materials for a bunch of stuff. Snap a pic of the supply and waste pipes. Snap a pic of the serial number. Snap a pic of the roof vents. After the inspection, scroll thru my pics and click the boxes in HomeGauge to indicate type and materials. Then I go back and click on my stored comments for todays defects. Then I go through and write new comments for goofy stuff du jure. I tried onsite data collection by opening a laptop in the kitchen. Run off to some part of the house, take some pics, remember some stuff, run back to the kitchen and enter data. Run off and gather more data. I found I was filling out the report instead of inspecting. Lots of what I consider wasted steps running back and forth. Does not work for me. I followed around an inspector who carried a tablet. Set it down at the door frame, go in the room and inspect. As he left the room he picked up the tablet and entered the data. Moved to the next room and do it again. He had been at it a while and had a rather extensive library of defect comments. Comments were pretty generic and I felt did not provide enough detail for the client but made it easier for the home inspector. Good news lots less typing by using the stored comments. Bad news finding/scrolling/searching thru his list to find the comment. Software package needed to search better or store the comments in a better organization manner to increase ease of finding the comment. I wear reading glasses. It is a bitch to walk around with reading glasses on because it messes with depth perception. But if I have to use as a phone/tablet, then I have to have my reading glasses on. So then I gotta take the glasses off on off on off on. Arrrgh! So you walk up to the electrical panel. Pull out the screwdriver and start removing screws. One hand on the screwdriver, one hand to catch the screws. One hand to hold the panel cover and one hand to hold the phone/tablet. Wait, not enough hands. So you gotta put down the phone/tablet, or in a pouch or on a cord around your neck or ??? One more thing to keep track of. Ok so you add a holster/pouch to store the phone/tablet on your tool belt. Ridiculous 24" wide doorways are too small to start with and my 250lb 6'2" frame wearing a tool belt has been known to crash into the door frame on occasion. Not sure how many jolts from a door frame a phone or tablet could withstand. As already mentioned, ask 10 inspectors the same question and get 9 answers. Home inspecting is still up to the guy in the house, even if part of a multi inspector firm. I know a guy who uses a voice recorder and listens to himself to write the report. I am a visual person and that would drive me crazy. Marc is deaf. I doubt a voice recorder would work well for him. Somebody said they carry around a pad of paper to take notes. Tried that. Hated it. Tried checklists. Hated flipping through 12 pages to find a box to check and then not enough space to write a note for the one off goofy thing that day. There is a fella on another forum who was a military flight mechanic. He is used to years of having every single thing laid out in a step by step manual. One way, the only way. He is trying to write a home inspection manual so he can become a multi inspector firm and feel confident his employees are doing it right and not missing anything. Planes are built in a factory and are assembled in a single manner. Houses are built in the field and no two are assembled in the same manner. His book is going to work fine until he has to use it to an inspection. Some days I go through the house clockwise and some days counter clockwise. Just because I am bored. Usually start outside and then top to bottom. Sometimes weather suggests I wait and do the outside later and I have been known to ping pong around the inside helter skelter. My data collection system doesn't care. The data collection software should allow data collection in a totally different and random manner for each and every inspection but still spit out a report in a consistent template that each and every home inspector gets to customize. This talks to Kurt's viewpoint that it is really a database behind the scene that cobbles the data together into what appears to be a narrative document.

I started writing reports using MSWord. Used it for 7 years. Could complete what I thought was a good report in 2-4 hrs. Had a template with saved comments. Made a copy of the template, deleted all the comments that did not apply to that specific inspection, and then added new comments pertinent to that days home. Added a photo in the doc for every defect. Joined a multi-inspector firm. Used HIP. The firm had shuffled around the location of specific elements that was confusing to me. For instance, AC compressors are outside the home so go into the exterior section. The AC coil is inside the home so goes in the HVAC section. Anyway, used HIP. Took about 2 hours to write a report once I figured out the crazy layout. Moved to a different multi-inspector firm. Use HomeGauge. Takes about 2 hours to write a report. The time consuming part of writing a report is not all the mundane problems that we see at 2 outta 3 homes that we already have canned statements we can just drop in. It is writing a new statement that fits the specific weirdness of todays inspection. They has been discussion about being a better typist. I took typing in high school and sat in front of a computer keyboard for 25 years prior to becoming an HI. I can type using a real keyboard. Handheld devices not so much. Typing a defect statement on a phone seems ludicrous. But I am not a millennial. It has more to do with Kurt's viewpoint of how to say "Something is broken at this location, Fix it or someone will get hurt/die or the house will fall apart". Being able to convey enough information that a first time buyer with no previous understanding of how a house works can make an informed decision on whether to buy this specific house with this set of problems and yet at the same time be brief and succinct. That is the challenging part. It also has to do with Data Collection vs. Report Writing. With phone and tablet interfaces, the general idea is to do the data collection during the inspection directly into the report writing software. The report writing system should make data collection easy and collect data in the format we find data in a home inspection. In other words, we collect data in a non-linear method. We find electrical, hvac, plumbing all in a single room. So the collection tool should be able to collect data for all the various systems easily at the same time. Then the Reporting system should shuffle the data around and generate a report in a manner that makes more logical sense to most people, which is by systems. And then there is the inclusion of photos. Lordy. I have never understood why photo insertion is such a confusing quagmire to home inspectors. But for some reason it seems that many inspectors really struggle with downloading of photos, sizing of photos, placement of photos, editing of photos, annotating photos, etc. But a reporting system should be able to easily download, organize, edit and place photos in a report. Then we can argue how many and where they should be placed. With the use of phones and tablets, the photo taken on the device should automagically be connected to the comment and placed in the correct section of the report. The second part of the business is managing all the other information. So people want schedulers; email reminders to clients, agents, lawyers, etc., billing systems, accounting systems, etc. all rolled into a single system so that you enter the client data once and all the various other components get the data. So when some inspectors talk about Reporting software they are lumping a business management system in with report generation. While others are speaking strictly about a document that is delivered to the client. Keep in mind that there is no one perfect report model. Most of the existing report generation systems allow the output to be narrative, checkbox, or some hybrid of both. And of course there is the inclusion of photos with arrows and other notations. I would question Scottb1978 if he had even looked at the size of his potential marketplace. 1000 inspectors per US state times 50 states is a maximum of 50,000 clients assuming 100% penetration. 1000 inspectors per state is way too high for Montana and other low population states. 33 states have licensing so he should be able to determine how many inspectors there are in those states and then WAG the other states. So lets say he gets 10% penetration. 5000 copies of his software. Average price for existing packages is $800-$1000. How often to home inspectors throw away a reporting system they have invested years tweaking? Lots of comments on these and other msg boards that people are using software running on obsolete operating systems with no support for either the report or operating system. Home inspectors tend to come from the trades and be a little less tech savy. Almost every US citizen has a PC of some flavor and most people have some basic computer skills. But there are still lots of people who have very low knowledge regarding software installation, setup and maintenance. Most inspectors know the system they using is not as effective as they want it to be. But at the same time, spending money and learning a new system knowing it will take months to get it to a point where you are spending the same amount of time writing a report is a big hurdle. Data collection and partial report generation on site seems to be the movement underfoot now. If I can add 15-30 minutes onsite but save 1 hr. offsite, then that is a good tradeoff. If I can integrate data collection as part of the inspection not a separate process that takes away from the client interaction, that is good. But it also means that I will have to have a another tool/device in my hand to collect this data. I will have to alter my inspection process. Is the camera in my phone/tablet sufficiently good to take close ups of serial numbers and distant photos of rotting soffits from the ground? If I did not have to write a report, that would make it more fun and productive. If I could spend not more than 1hr per inspection writing a report that would make it more profitable.

The infamous "Church Key"

stepped on a pop top, cut my heel, had to cruise on back home... Jimmy Buffett

Fuel only ignites in the presence of the proper concentration of oxygen. Too much or too little and it will not ignite. A sealed gas pipe should have no oxygen. Regardless of how hot it gets, it should not combust... unless oxygen at the proper concentration is available inside the pipe.