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Memo to: Dylan Chalk House Talk From a reader, Chuck Ramey, who loves The Confident House Hunter and wishes to add information for handicapped and wheelchair dependent buyers: I am a big fan of your new book which provides much-needed information about houses for prospective home-buyers. As a professional in the building trades, with a long career as an executive at Weyerhaeuser, I do understand […]
All Hail the Temperature and Pressure Relief Valve The combination of temperature and pressure is no joke when it comes to heating water. If you have never seen an exploding water heater, watch this video: , then imagine this happening inside your house! I could bore you with the math, so I will spare the details; suffice it to say that a water heater can accumulate […]
Carbon monoxide is a colorless, tasteless and odorless gas that often enters our homes due to incomplete combustion of gas, oil, and wood-fired home appliances. Prolonged exposure to carbon monoxide can make people sick and even kill, earning carbon monoxide gas the dubious moniker of “the silent killer.” In Washington State, in 2013, carbon monoxide detectors became required for all new residential construction as well […]
If you are like me, you wait until the smoke detector starts chirping at you before you replace the batteries. If you are also like me, the chirping commences at about 1 in the morning and you wake up, bleary with sleep, cursing the creator of smoke detectors and try and find replacement 9-volt batteries in a mild sleep deprived rage. Many fire departments recommend […]
9 Tips for Preparing for the Big One Roughly 50 miles west of Washington State, under thousands of feet of chilly green Pacific Ocean water, lies the Cascadia subduction zone where the dense Pacific plate dives underneath the lighter North American plate. Running a distance of over 1000 kilometers from northern Vancouver Island, BC to northern California, this massive fault is storing energy as the […]
This homeowner found this great storage container on the internet and had it delivered to his house. His family is prepared with two weeks of food and water in the event of a large earthquake. Are you? Share with:
Thoughts on Roof Moss Control Living in the temperate rainforest of the Pacific Northwest, I sometimes get the feeling that if humans ever took even a temporary respite from the region, the tenacious blackberry vines and fecund cedar and fir trees would take back what was once theirs and leave us all rooting about to find our street address in the matter of a few […]
Tankless water heaters have been all the rage for nearly a decade now. They have become so common that it is rare for me to inspect a new construction house now that does not employ a tankless water heater. While these water heaters are energy efficient, they are not like your father’s water heater; these are high-tech appliances that require annual maintenance and servicing. Treating […]
When Home Owners Should Start with the Cheapest and Most Obvious Solutions A few months ago, I did a home inspection on a well-built custom home that was roughly 15 years old. When I worked my way around to the back deck, which was done as a membrane system that acted as a roof for the lower porch, I found signs of leakage and water […]
Should I get a home inspection on my new construction house? 4 critical things to understand about building codes In the midst of the recent recession which crippled the U.S. real estate economy, the new construction home inspection virtually disappeared. You don’t need to tell this to a builder. For several years there was too much available housing inventory at too low a price to […]
