Bellingham

Another Potential Fire

Why do home inspectors enter attics?  There are many things for the inspector to check in the attic including ventilation, insulation, wiring, plumbing pipes, termination of bathroom vent fans, moisture levels and the picture shown below.

 

 

 

Bellingham

Fire Waiting to Happen

This post is about solid fuel burning appliances and potential chimney fires.  Solid fuel appliances are usually wood burning fireplaces or stoves, including inserts.  The chimney serving these appliances should be cleaned every year.  The picture below shows a chimney with major creosote buildup.  The very next fire in the stove could be the one to set off a chimney fire; and chimney fires often burn houses down!

 

 

Bellingham

No Support!

I have done a few blogs on this site about various things that are found on home inspections.  This one is structural.  We inspectors spend a lot of time in crawl spaces, looking at many things.  One common one is caused by plumbers and HVAC technicians.  This isn’t to badmouth them.  They have their job to do and may not know about how structures are supported.

 

 

 

Bellingham

What is a Short Sale?

Everyone’s talking about this new phenonemum called the Short Sale.  What is it you ask?  A short sale in real estate is not always a pleasant transaction.  In times of declining home values, a homeowner can be caught in a position of negative appreciation.  In other words, the current market value of the home is less than what is owed to the bank.  This causes a problem if the homeowner experiences a hardship such as loss of work, or if he/she needs to relocate for any reason.

At this point the homeowner has 4 options available to him/her: 
 

• Continue making payments until market conditions improve to sell the home.
• Do a Deed in lieu of foreclosure.  Give the keys back to the bank and walk away.
• Quit making payments and allow the home to be foreclosed on by the bank.
• Do a Short Sale

A Short Sale is when the homeowner procures a buyer that is willing and able to purchase at a price less than what is owed to the bank.  Next you have to get the bank to agree to take this lesser (or short) amount.  This is where having a trained professional on your side makes all the difference.  The bank won’t want to let you off the hook too easily, and not without plenty of proper documentation. 

As a Real Estate agent, I am not licensed as a lawyer nor a CPA and cannot advise on those consequences. Except for certain conditions pursuant to the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, be aware the I.R.S. could consider debt forgiveness as income, and there is no guarantee that a lender who accepts a short sale will not legally pursue a borrower for the difference between the amount owed and the amount paid. In some states, this amount is known as a deficiency. A Real Estate lawyer can determine whether your loan qualifies for a deficiency judgment or claim.

If you are considering purchasing a property listed as a Short Sale, I can offer you some advice and strategy.  With a little patience, the upside in many cases is getting the Home you want for less than market value.

Call me…let’s talk Real Estate,

Dale Kreiser 360-319-6365

Bellingham

Pest Inspection: What is it and what does it cover?

Back in the early days of home inspections all that was done was called a pest inspection.  These days, a home inspection is much more comprehensive, covering grounds, structure, roof, crawl space/basement, all systems and of course, pests.  The term for pests is Wood Destroying Organisms (WDO).  This is a state mandated term that covers very specific things.  A WDO inspection searches for evidence of all the state recognized WDO (see my earlier post on WDO) and conditions that are conducive to WDOs.  What are conducive conditions?  They are things like plumbing leaks, inadequate ventilation, restricted or non functioning gutters, vegetation touching siding, earth to wood contact, failed or missing caulk or grout in water splash areas and conducive debris (cellulose based or storage that restricts air flow) in the substructure.  These are all important issues and generally represent at least 50% of issues found in home inspections.  In order to report on these issues, according to current Washington law, an inspector must be licensed as a Structural Pest Inspector by the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

As always, thanks for reading this.

David Helm, Bellingham home inspector

http://www.helmhomeinspections.com

Bellingham

What’s That Beautiful Green Stuff on my Roof?

In the wet Northwest, we sometimes get things that other parts of the country seldom see.  In this case, the beautiful green stuff is moss; and it is not beautiful on a roof.  Moss growth on a roof causes several problems and is considered a “conducive condition” for wood destroying organisms.  Moss growth can cause roofing nails to lift, hold moisture against the roof and ultimately destroy the shingles.  In the early stages, it is easy to deal with.  A little zinc powder strewn above the growth during the growing season (moss grows in the winter when it is wet) can kill the moss. If it gets a little farther along it can be mechanically removed.  This does not  mean pressure washing.  Pressure washing dramatically shortens the life of a roof.  The photos below show moss at a stage that is almost beyond control.  The whole point of this is to control it in the earliest stages.

Bellingham

Noxious Weeds

Most exotic garden plants are not particularly problematic.  The majority of garden plants do come from elsewhere in the world.  Some of them, because of their invasive nature, become a serious problem for the well being of native plants when the spread to wild areas.  One of the main ways they escape gardens is as seeds in the belly of birds.  Some of these invasive, noxious plants in the state of Washington are as follows.  Gardeners may be surprised by the inclusion of some of these plants.

Common Fennel, a non-bulbing type that has tall feathery licorice smelling foliage.  Escapees inhabit and colonize grasslands and crowd out native flora.

Purple Verbena, has attractive lavender tubular flowers, is vigorously self seeding and is rapidly spreading into fields and open areas.

Knotweeds, large, bamboo like shrubs with feathery white flower heads.  Bees love them.  The invade riparian areas, block sunlight and degrade habitat for wildlife and fish, including Salmon.  They have very deep roots and a difficult to get rid of.

Old Man’s Beard (clematis vitalba), is a climbing vine that when escaped get established in forests and along stream banks where the smother shrubs and trees forming dense mats in the understory.

English Ivy, spreads into forests and forms dense mats that block sunlight, smother trees and encourage rot.  In Western Washington there is a movement to remove English Ivy where ever it exists.

Purple and Garden Loosestrife, are a major threat to wetlands because they tolerate saturated soils and spread rapidly, it crowds out native plants and reduces wetland habitat.

Butterfly Bush, is problematic along rivers and streams where it traps sediment.

These are just a few of the noxious plants that appear in Washington.  Many of them are noxious and invasive in other parts of the country too.  It is a good idea, when planting a garden, to learn about the bad boys of the plant world in your area.  These plants are legal to buy, but they cause serious problems.

Thanks for looking.

David Helm, Bellingham home inspector

www.helmhomeinspections.com

Bellingham

What Does Green Really Mean?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while.  There is a lot of hoopla regarding green building and green lifestyle these days.  There are certainly many levels of greenness and I applaud you for whatever level you have reached.  Unfortunately, being truly green is a lot more complex than it might seem on the surface. 

Let’s start with transportation.  When we think of green, we need to take into consideration the carbon footprint for sure, but we also need to take into consideration the use of resources (after all, we do live in a finite world) and how long will it take that new green product to become a net gain for the environment.   You buy a new Prius.  This is very green because it gets very high mileage.  Not green immediately.  How much steel, oil (including all the plastics) and polution was used/caused in its manufacture?  How much oil was used in shipping it to the USA and then to your town?  Compare this with a ten year old high mileage vehicle  (since emission standards have not improved in this time I will not talk about that).  The manufacturing costs (polution, resource use) have nearly been amortized.  In the beginning, at least, the ten year old vehicle will be greener than the new Prius.  How long will it take the Prius to catch up? In this blog I’ll not talk about public transportation because the nature of most of our work requires private transportation (there is probably very little green about private transportation).

Food use and production; where does your food come from?  Is it shipped halfway around the world?  Is it a result of industrial monoculture farming (relying heavily on oil for fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides and harvesting)?  Truly green food is both local and seasonal. We eat what is produced in our local area, when it is produced.  If you want it to be green, you also have to take into consideration the treatment of the land and animals that you eat.  If the land is being despoiled with petroleum based chemicals, if the animals are treated as production units (feed lots, cages, etc.) it is not green.  Even if it is organic, if it’s shipped from far off, it’s not green.

Local economies; A green economy is one that is sustaining of the locality.  If your buying your goods and services from the big box stores/national or international chains, you are not sustaining your local economy.  This is not green.  Buying local circulates the money locally.  Buying from chains sends the money somewhere else. 

What is a truly green house?  The analogy written above about the Prius fits here too.  Can we find truly sustainable wood products?  Not with todays knowledge.  There are certainly some small, local mills and timber operations that strive to do sustainability, but on a national level it is pretty grim.  Building to LEEDS standards is certainly a large step in the right direction, but is only a step. Where do the materials and products for future housing come from?  What is the carbon/resource footprint of future housing?

This post is not meant as a pooh poohing of green building and practices.  It is only meant as a thought provoker.  I am thrilled that our industry is beginning to take these things into consideration, and I know that all of us fit somewhere in the continuum of green; either not green, partially green, predominately green (I doubt that there is anyone in this country that is 100% green; we do, after all, live in an industrial society).

Thanks for reading this screed.  I hope it provokes thought and action. 

REDUCE; REUSE; RECYCLE

David Helm, Bellingham home inspector

http://www.helmhomeinspections.com

Bellingham

REALTORSPEAK; A Dictionary

First a disclaimer.  This is all in jest and is not meant to offend anyone.  I spend a lot of time looking at listings, because I am a very small time RE investor.  I always get a kick out of the adjectives used to describe homes in these listings.  The following are some of my definitions.

ELEGANT   You can’t afford it!

FABULOUS    See ELEGANT

DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL  Bring a bulldozer!

CHARMER   Old and in the way!

LUXURIOUS    See ELEGANT

PRIVATE LOCATION    You can’t get there from here!

REMODELED    A few upgrades done twenty years ago!

FIXER or FIXER UPPER    See DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL

HISTORIC    See ELEGANT

CUTE    Your family won’t fit in this one!

STARTER HOME    See DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL

NEWER    At least thirty years old!

CLASSIC    See CHARMER

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH    See DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL

VINTAGE    See Charmer

These are a few of the terms I’ve discovered.  I know there are more.  Feel free to add any you’d like.

Thanks for looking

David Helm, Bellingham home inspector

www.helmhomeinspections.com

Bellingham

Tales of Inspecting

I know that many home inspectors have stories (some of them horror) of inspections that did not go exactly as planned.  I have heard one story about a very dangerous person, with gun, that happened to be in the house.  My own little story is nowhere near as nasty as that one, but it had me worried for a bit.  I always save the crawl space for last.  It is a dirty place and I don’t wish to take any of the dirt back into the home.  This particular day, my client was in California, the realtor came to open the house and left, so I was alone at the site.  The crawl space was a particularly tight one, but one I could traverse with some effort. As I was coming down the home stretch, so to speak, I came to  an area that had flexible duct work that was pretty close to the ground.  Since I needed to see some plumbing nearby, I decided that I could probably push my way under this duct (after all, it was flexible).  I got about halfway through when I found that I could not make it any further.  Okay I think, I’ll just back out from under it.  WRONG!  Here I am, stuck in a crawl space, my cell phone is in my tool bag outside the entry.  I can’t move forward, backward or sideways.  What a predicament!  After struggling for a good 5 minutes (seemed like hours), I figured I needed to stop, relax and think this through.  I wear heavy duty rain gear in crawl spaces.  First thing I did was remove the rain coat; it felt like I could move a little, but not enough.  It was winter, so I had a fairly heavy shirt on; removed it.  Now I am naked from the waste up and feeling really ridiculous.  My next move was to very slowly inch my way backward.  After about 5 minutes of this I was free.  Put my shirt and raincoat back on and went the long way to get out.  While laying there thinking what to do, I was seeing the headlines: “Home Inspector found dead lodged in crawl space!”  What a time!

Thanks for reading.

David Helm, Bellingham home inspector

www.helmhomeinspections.com

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