Oregon Floating Home Inspector Needed.

[hausdok]

Do they come with floating termite bait stations?

LOL,

No, subs aren't a problem for these because subs normally nest in soil 6 to 10ft. below grade. I guess they might have issues with subs all over the place down in Portland because that's a couple of hundred miles south of here, but the only place subs are an issue around Seattle is in West Seattle. I'm not sure why - perhaps they can't get exit visas issued so that they can emigrate to other parts of the county.

Pacific Dampwood Termites can be an issue though; PDWT nest in small colonies above grade in damp wood and they're pretty big. I can see some PDWT winged reproductives finding one of these, discovering a rotting deck board or rail and taking up residence along with a few others. I doubt that they'd be able to establish a firm presence though, they're not hard to spot and they're pretty easy to eliminate because they don't have the large nest and support structure that subs have.

I should think that the biggest bug threat to these things around here would be annobiidae - death watch beetles. Those little bastards seem to get into everything that the other guys don't.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[John Kogel]

Do they come with floating termite bait stations?

Logs submerged in fresh water can last literally forever.

But in salt water around here, toredo worms are worse than termites will ever be. Toredos eat wood like there's no tomorrow. I've seen them turn 2X4s into swiss cheese in a couple of weeks. They're actually a shellfish, a long worm with a shell on their head that's a cutter.

The old fishermen used to tie their boats up the river for the winter so the fresh water would kill off any toredos that got past the copper paint into the hull. So you want to be tied up in fresh water if your floathouse is on a log raft. []

[FatBear]

You guys crack me up.

Yes, a "floating home" is a conventional house built on a float. There are some differences in vapor barriers, but not much. A well made stick-built home can float on the water just fine. You do want to use plywood sheathing rather than the chippy-looking stuff (is that stuff made in China or something? []) But basically the home part of it is a home. Just make sure you are familiar with Columbia county's floating home codes.

The float inspection is a whole 'nuther thing and should really be done by an experienced float inspector. I live in a floating home (in Scappoose!) which failed its float inspection. The cost to repair it was $60K. Fortunately, we had the float inspection when making our counter offer and the owner read it and knocked $60K off of the price. He really didn't know how bad it was. Now we have a nice house on a code-built float and we are very happy.

I know it's a little late for Brandon, but he could have called Duck's Marine contracting, Too Deep Diving, or Carl Engelgau for a float inspection. He could probably do the home inspection himself. You do need both. Or at least the buyer and his bank should require both.

For those who aren't up on floating homes, the floats can be made of logs with very heavy wood or steel i-beam stringers running cross-wise on top of the logs. Or they can actually be big concrete "foundations" filled with foam. Anything will float if you put enough foam under it. If the float settles too low in the water - during construction, while moving in, or during the endless creeping accumulation of possessions, you just hire a diver to put more foam under it. A "barrel" of foam (plastic-encapsulated styrofoam is required by law) will usually lift 600 pounds. They are placed where needed to buoy up and level the house.

Logs are code-required to be a minimum of 16" at the small end (logs taper). So a log float or a concrete one is very massive. They handle wakes just fine. And once you ride out some big wakes in a house that looks like any suburban home, you'll wonder why all the fuss about earthquakes.

I could go on, but you've probably got the idea now. I have no idea why they are not common on lakes and other inland waterways around the country. Makes no sense to me. I cannot imagine why anyone would live on land when they could live ON the water.

[Jim Katen]

. . . I live in a floating home (in Scappoose!) which failed its float inspection. The cost to repair it was $60K. Fortunately, we had the float inspection when making our counter offer and the owner read it and knocked $60K off of the price. He really didn't know how bad it was. Now we have a nice house on a code-built float and we are very happy.. . .

So what, exactly, was wrong with the float and how did they fix it?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

[Brandon Whitmore]

That reminds me...

Jim, that customer told me they used the guy listed in this post-- thanks for the info.

PS: Some clients told me you said to say hello a week or two ago. It seems you were booked out too far, so I got the job. My commute was better than yours -- only about a block from my house.[:-thumbu]

I'm pretty swamped right now, so I'm hoping everyone else out there is as well.

[FatBear]

So what, exactly, was wrong with the float and how did they fix it?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Hi Jim,

Sorry I didn't notice your question long ago!!!

What was wrong with our original float was that it was made from 12" boom logs (logs with a hole in each end which are chained together to surround log booms while they are towed to the mill by a tug.) Code requires 16" diameter at the small end. When you place stringers across logs you cut notches for the stringers to sit in. Those remove thickness from the logs. The guy I bought the house from had purchased a float from a shyster who had re-used some old logs. He had rotated them so the notches were down and then cut more notches. Now the logs were really thin. After quite a few years the owner wanted to sell the house but some of his wooden stringers were rotten, so he had all the stringers replaced with steel I-beams. The I-beams had to be taller than the wood ones (wood is stronger than steel) so the logs were notched even deeper yet. Thankfully our float inspector noticed this.

We had to have the logs removed and replaced. They do this one log at a time with workers releasing a log and a diver moving foam around and guiding a new one into place.

While logs that are in fresh water do not rot very fast, the parts of them that are above the water do and rot does creep down into the logs from there, though slowly. The notches top and bottom left only two or three inches of wood in some spots, so instead of logs the house was really just resting on 3x12 planks laying flat with stringers across them and lots of foam. The contractor told me that some of the logs came out in pieces. When I told the former owner he turned white.

There was another problem with our house. It is 24 feet tall to the peak of the roof. Code requires that the height of a house cannot be more than 3/4 of its width. Our float was 28 feet wide so it had to be widened to 32 feet. Four extra feet had to be welded onto the I-beam stringers and two extra logs attached.

We now have a wide, heavy, steady float with nice wide side decks. We do rock a bit in the wakes (we are in an outside slip) but not too much. People tell us it used to look like the house was going to fall right over sometimes.

By the way, Jim, I used to live in Laurelwood before moving to my first houseboat. [:-thumbu]

--FatBear

[David Meiland]

I got a call recently from someone who wanted know if I had any experience dowsing. In his previous house, both he an his wife were having trouble sleeping. A dowser finally determined there was flowing water under the house, 100 feet down!

We have that too. I drilled a well into it and we get free water.

[Jim Katen]

So what, exactly, was wrong with the float and how did they fix it?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Hi Jim,

Sorry I didn't notice your question long ago!!!

. . . By the way, Jim, I used to live in Laurelwood before moving to my first houseboat. [:-thumbu]

--FatBear

Thanks very much for the explanation. I now know about 10 times more about floating homes than I did 10 minutes ago.

It's a small world. I live on the hillside just north of Laurelwood.

[hausdok]

So what, exactly, was wrong with the float and how did they fix it?

- Jim Katen, Oregon

Hi Jim,

Sorry I didn't notice your question long ago!!!

What was wrong with our original float was that it was made from 12" boom logs (logs with a hole in each end which are chained together to surround log booms while they are towed to the mill by a tug.) Code requires 16" diameter at the small end. When you place stringers across logs you cut notches for the stringers to sit in. Those remove thickness from the logs. The guy I bought the house from had purchased a float from a shyster who had re-used some old logs. He had rotated them so the notches were down and then cut more notches. Now the logs were really thin. After quite a few years the owner wanted to sell the house but some of his wooden stringers were rotten, so he had all the stringers replaced with steel I-beams. The I-beams had to be taller than the wood ones (wood is stronger than steel) so the logs were notched even deeper yet. Thankfully our float inspector noticed this.

We had to have the logs removed and replaced. They do this one log at a time with workers releasing a log and a diver moving foam around and guiding a new one into place.

While logs that are in fresh water do not rot very fast, the parts of them that are above the water do and rot does creep down into the logs from there, though slowly. The notches top and bottom left only two or three inches of wood in some spots, so instead of logs the house was really just resting on 3x12 planks laying flat with stringers across them and lots of foam. The contractor told me that some of the logs came out in pieces. When I told the former owner he turned white.

There was another problem with our house. It is 24 feet tall to the peak of the roof. Code requires that the height of a house cannot be more than 3/4 of its width. Our float was 28 feet wide so it had to be widened to 32 feet. Four extra feet had to be welded onto the I-beam stringers and two extra logs attached.

We now have a wide, heavy, steady float with nice wide side decks. We do rock a bit in the wakes (we are in an outside slip) but not too much. People tell us it used to look like the house was going to fall right over sometimes.

By the way, Jim, I used to live in Laurelwood before moving to my first houseboat. [:-thumbu]

--FatBear

That's old school. Up here in Seattle there are some with concrete floats that are so deep they have basement level rooms with glass windows so folks can look out.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[prsweb]

I am a floating home owner in Portland, Oregon and have been for more than 12 years. I found this post looking for an inspector and came away with a couple names. However, I am absolutely stunned at all this dialog by home inspectors that are unaware of the building code. How do you make an inspection if you don't know the local building code? Hmmmm?

Title 28 of the Portland code is specifically floating homes, as another posting said, there is equivalent code in his local Columbia County. There is also code out there with regard to the construction of land based homes and commercial development FYI.

People build homes in trees, on land, on water, on wheels, over a grocery store, under an office building and almost everywhere. Get with it inspectors, leave the comfort of your little microcosmic everyday work world. And for your customer's sake, please take a quick look at the building code once and a while.

[hausdok]

Well, Friend from Portland,

If you had read the entire thread and noted the locations of respondents you would have noticed that most of them come from other parts of the country and many from land-locked parts of the country where floating homes are non-existent. Their local codes won't have any supplements pertaining to floating homes so they naturally wouldn't have any knowledge about floating home codes.

The residential code doesn't have a default floating home code. The floating home sections are supplements put together by code authorities in jurisdictions where there is a need for a floating home code and then those are appended to the residential code. As has been mentioned, you have them where you are and we have one here appended to the Seattle version of the IRC.

I don't know where you ever got the idea home inspectors don't look at code. You certainly didn't get it from this thread; unless you have a reading comprehension problem and simply misunderstood something that someone wrote above.

If you do some reading outside of this thread on TIJ you'll find that we - inspectors in general - often are more versed in the code requirements than the local code authorities; it's just that we don't base every observation we make on a code requirement - although many are based on code. Code is the bare minimum standard for acceptable construction - it doesn't always result in the best quality structure or circumstance in a home. We often make calls based on quality of work or best practices; in fact many of us follow best practices because we feel that to recommend anything less than a best practice - such as minimum code requirements which are less restrictive than best practices in many cases - can leave us open to liability. Building a house strictly to code is like striving only to get a C- in every course you take in school. Sure, you passed, but you didn't excel. Lots of builders want to excel and they want an A+ - building strictly to code won't get them there. That's where an inspectors experience and knowledge kick in. Something can be to code but it can make absolutely no sense from a practical standpoint - like omitting drip edge flashings at the perimeter of a roof. The inspector's job is to point out the issue, explain it to the client in terms the client can understand, explain the ramifications of the issue for the home and then make a recommendation to the client about how to best deal with the issue - ie. consult an engineer, have it repaired by a foundation guy, have a contractor re-frame it properly, etc..

The next time you want to jump in and plant your foot in your mouth, feel free do do so. You probably gave a few folks a chuckle and we always appreciate a good laugh here. However, if you'd prefer not to come away with egg on your face, you might do a little more reading on these forums before you start chiding folks.

ONE TEAM - ONE FIGHT!!!

Mike

[Bill Kibbel]

How does a "floating home owner" determine that we are "inspectors that are unaware of the building code" from a single little topic discussion on an internet forum?

Could it be possible that most of us have extensive knowledge of building codes applicable to our specific areas of service? Could it be possible that many of us have taken the National Certification exams offered by the International Code Council? Could it be possible that some of us have to know all applicable codes to the letter when frequently serving as an expert witness? Could it be possible that some of us are actually employed by or contracted by municipalities to perform code-compliance inspections?

Could it be possible prsweb (Pete Koons) is an internet troll with absolutely nothing going on in his life, so he takes time to register, sign in and post just to irritate a handful of inspectors?

[Brandon Whitmore]

Pete, or whatever your name is...

If you think that a single inspector can specialize in every type of structure out there, you're insane, or at least ignorant. That's kind of like saying a doctor should be able to do anything from general practice to brain surgery. But hey, the proctologist just needs to read a book on brain surgery, and then he can get it done.