Random beetle info and..

[JayneEVHI]

Hey to all you HI professionals in here.

I am new here and a new HI, Well, truthfully I am still in the process of setting up my business about 40 min from Yosemite National Park. Still shopping for insurance, and have to do he website thing and ...well you know. I am not here to just pick your brains, though I will try to do that too.

I am actually in my first post.....here..am  going to share  a little Powder Post beetle stuff FYI. Here goes.

Powder Post beetles are a reddish brown to black, flattened bodied beetle. They bore 1/4" , 1/13" to 1/16" holes in wood members, like floor joists, rim boards, sill plates, beams in crawls as well as posts, ect. In CA they emerge in June usually.  You will see the holes with an extremely fine, flour like, powder falling from them. Holes with frass that is light in color and clear in appearance means the beetle ior beetles are active.Old holes and frass are dafk in color. To keep them out of crawl spaces, The moisture content in the crawl,,or under the hoise needs to be less than 6% . Or wood members can be treated with "Timber" or " BoraCare".

The frass left by other types of wood borers has tiny pellets in it and has a coarse texture and a tendancy to stick together. Holes are the size of a pinhead or pencil lead.

The Faulse Powder post beetle the frass stays imside the tunnels and usually infests wood less than 10 yrs old. Their holes are around 1/8" round. Not sure about moistire content for that kind.

The Deathwatch beetle leaves its frass in the galleries and are fine to coarse, small pellets. Cycle every 1 to 3 years and moisture comtent they need is 13% to 30%..

I foumd this info by Googling up PowderPost beetle. I foumd them in the floor joosts in  a crawl the otjer day. I did not just spout it  off the top of my head, wish I could.

Apparently the sellers listing agent is insisting they have the house tented to rid it of an inactive infestation of the ends of 3 or 4 floor joists in one corner of the house. The listing agents pest control guy said so. No use in tenting,  the floor joists and rim board have to be replaced anyway because of rot from a ledger board that was installed with inadequate  flashing on one end of the house when the hoise was built. I saw no other damage and no active beetles. The expense will be devestating as it is, why insist they go to the expense of tenting?

This agent has her own inspector, and he must have deffered a lot of the work to specialized inspectors because the listing agent sent out a window and door inspector, deck inspector, plumbimg inspector, roof inspector and a pest inspector.

She also has "her repair guy" who completed some simple repairs by making them worse,  the so called repairs he made were a joke, had no clue what he was doing.

All of those inspections and those bad repairs were charged to the seller. They are paying for the IMO, unnecessary tenting as well.They decided to take the agents advice and do things her way. In my opinion she is acting shady and should not be the person hiring and ordering inspections and hireing repair men. All this after one home inspection when they got one offer and the potential buyer backed out.

 

oh my oh mu

 

Any thougjts on this kind of behaivior by a sellers listimg agent? Sorry for the superlong post!

 

[JayneEVHI]

oh heck, did my font come out too tiny?

 

[Marc]

How is it that you're in this fight?  What's your role in this story?

[Mycakers]

5 hours ago, JayneEVHI said:

Hey to all you HI professionals in here.

I am new here and a new HI, Well, truthfully I am still in the process of setting up my business about 40 min from Yosemite National Park. Still shopping for insurance, and have to do he website thing and ...well you know. I am not here to just pick your brains, though I will try to do that too.

I am actually in my first post.....here..am  going to share  a little Powder Post beetle stuff FYI. Here goes.

Powder Post beetles are a reddish brown to black, flattened bodied beetle. They bore 1/4" , 1/13" to 1/16" holes in wood members, like floor joists, rim boards, sill plates, beams in crawls as well as posts, ect. In CA they emerge in June usually.  You will see the holes with an extremely fine, flour like, powder falling from them. Holes with frass that is light in color and clear in appearance means the beetle ior beetles are active.Old holes and frass are dafk in color. To keep them out of crawl spaces, The moisture content in the crawl,,or under the hoise needs to be less than 6% . Or wood members can be treated with "Timber" or " BoraCare".

The frass left by other types of wood borers has tiny pellets in it and has a coarse texture and a tendancy to stick together. Holes are the size of a pinhead or pencil lead.

The Faulse Powder post beetle the frass stays imside the tunnels and usually infests wood less than 10 yrs old. Their holes are around 1/8" round. Not sure about moistire content for that kind.

The Deathwatch beetle leaves its frass in the galleries and are fine to coarse, small pellets. Cycle every 1 to 3 years and moisture comtent they need is 13% to 30%..

I foumd this info by Googling up PowderPost beetle. I foumd them in the floor joosts in  a crawl the otjer day. I did not just spout it  off the top of my head, wish I could.

Apparently the sellers listing agent is insisting they have the house tented to rid it of an inactive infestation of the ends of 3 or 4 floor joists in one corner of the house. The listing agents pest control guy said so. No use in tenting,  the floor joists and rim board have to be replaced anyway because of rot from a ledger board that was installed with inadequate  flashing on one end of the house when the hoise was built. I saw no other damage and no active beetles. The expense will be devestating as it is, why insist they go to the expense of tenting?

This agent has her own inspector, and he must have deffered a lot of the work to specialized inspectors because the listing agent sent out a window and door inspector, deck inspector, plumbimg inspector, roof inspector and a pest inspector.

She also has "her repair guy" who completed some simple repairs by making them worse,  the so called repairs he made were a joke, had no clue what he was doing.

All of those inspections and those bad repairs were charged to the seller. They are paying for the IMO, unnecessary tenting as well.They decided to take the agents advice and do things her way. In my opinion she is acting shady and should not be the person hiring and ordering inspections and hireing repair men. All this after one home inspection when they got one offer and the potential buyer backed out.

 

oh my oh mu

 

Any thougjts on this kind of behaivior by a sellers listimg agent? Sorry for the superlong post!

I increased the font.  I couldn't get past the first sentence without wanting to vomit.  

[JayneEVHI]

Thankyou Mycakers, much appreciated.

Mark, my favorite nephew ( I have 6 adult nephews) is engaged to the sellers daughter. They have lived in the home for past 7 years. My nephew was complaining about all the seperate specialist sent for inspections and about the repair man who made some small repairs causing more damage than he fixed.

My nephew has been in constuction trades for years and knows how repairs should be done. He asked me to come over and inspect the crawl and the few repairs that guy did. So he could give his future father-in-law my opinion.

I am not a licenced pest control person, but I am well trained and certainly know the diff between wood rot from water damage and pest damage.

 

when I use the defaut font I can't even see what I'm typing. hmmmmm.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by JayneEVHI
paragraph seperation and grammar correction

[Marc]

I'd never trust any inspector that was picked by an agent.  I wouldn't even care to see his report nor hear his advice.  If the seller chooses to do so and to pay for it, that's his lost.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Marc

[JayneEVHI]

Indeed, I agree completely. However, my opinion was requested by family and it was given. I explained the roles of the buyer's agent and sellers agent and the inspector. In this case the agent is playing both roles.

I also told them who normaly hires who. Thanks for your input Marc, I am well aware this is not my fight and never considered it to be a fight at all. I see. it as an unethical real estate agent, and an ill-informed seller.

I was just asking. I guess I must be sounding like a gossip, or a useless thread inventor. That was not my intention, I apologise.

 

 

 

[Marc]

It's an issue I've engaged in very seriously for well over a decade. No apology needed.  If I were in your shoes, I'd tell them all of those inspectors and their reports are compromised.  They're worthless.  They're worse than worthless, they can be highly damaging if heeded.

[JayneEVHI]

I will do that, thank you for the advice.